ZNAK SAGITE — više od fantastike — edicija, časopis, knjižara...

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/135726.php

QuoteEver since the 1966 Hollywood movie, doctors have imagined a real-life Fantastic Voyage a medical vehicle shrunk small enough to "submarine" in and fix faulty cells in the body. Thanks to new research by Tel Aviv University scientists, that reality may be only three years away.

The blueprints for the submarine and a map of its proposed maiden voyage were published earlier this year in Science by Dr. Dan Peer, who now leads the Tel Aviv University team at the Department of Cell Research and Immunology. The team will build and test-run the actual "machine" in human bodies. Dr. Peer originally developed the scenario at Harvard University.

Made from biological materials, the real-life medical submarine's Fantastic Voyage won't have enough room for Raquel Welch, but the nano-sized structure will be big enough to deliver the payload: effective drugs to kill cancer cells and eradicate faulty proteins.

A Nano-GPS System

"Our lab is creating biological nano-machines," says Dr. Peer. "These machines can target specific cells. In fact, we can target any protein that might be causing disease or disorder in the human body. This new invention treats the source, not the symptoms."

Dr. Peer's recent paper reported on the device's ability to target leukocytes (immune cells) in the guts of mice with ulcerative colitis. Calling his new invention a submarine, Dr. Peer has developed a nano-sized carrier which operates like a GPS system to locate and target cells. In the case of Crohn's disease, for example, it will target overactive immune system cells in the gut. In other diseases such as cancer, the submarine can aim for and deliver material to specific cancer cells, leaving the surrounding healthy cells intact.

While other researchers are working in the area of nano-medicine and drug delivery, Dr. Peer's submarines are among the first to combine a drug candidate with a drug delivery system. As the submarines float through the body, they latch onto the target cell and deliver their payload, a drug based on RNAi. This new kind of drug can affect faulty RNA machinery and reprogram cells to operate in normal ways. In essence, RNAi can essentially restore health to diseased cells or cause cells to die (like in the case of cancer cells).

Learning from the Body's Own System

Large pharmaceutical companies have already expressed interest in this research and in the area of RNAi in general. Currently, the Tel Aviv University lab is pairing its medical submarine with different RNAi compounds to target different pathologies, such as cancer, inflammation, and neurodegenerative diseases.

"We have tapped into the same ancient system the human body uses to protect itself from viruses," says Dr. Peer, who is also investigating a number of topical applications for his medical subs. "And the beauty of it is the basic material of our nano-carriers is natural," he says.

The Tel Aviv University team plans to launch their medical submarines, following FDA regulations, within three to five years. Their immediate focus is on blood, pancreatic, breast and brain cancers.

The researchers are currently collaborating with a number of teams around the world. In the area of breast cancer, they are working with researchers from Harvard University and MIT. In blood cancers, collaboration with the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute at Harvard Medical School is already progressing towards clinical trials.

http://vimeo.com/michaelkoenig/earth-timelapse-iss (http://vimeo.com/michaelkoenig/earth-timelapse-iss)

http://www.cracked.com/article_19662_6-real-planets-that-put-science-fiction-to-shame.html (http://www.cracked.com/article_19662_6-real-planets-that-put-science-fiction-to-shame.html)

Ah, da... A:

http://www.cracked.com/article_19659_7-theories-time-that-would-make-doc-browns-head-explode.html (http://www.cracked.com/article_19659_7-theories-time-that-would-make-doc-browns-head-explode.html) ?

 :lol:   Upravo sam došo da i to okačim.

Moje vreme je brze od tvog  :!:

Tokelau to shed diesel dependence (http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/south-pacific/7408149/Tokelau-to-shed-diesel-dependence)

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Diesel-dependent Tokelau is still on track to become the first entirely solar-powered places on Earth in a project led by a New Zealand solar company.
All three atolls in the South Pacific dependency, a New Zealand territory, will have their own solar power system by the end of October, despite a slight delay switching on the first system.
Once the project is complete, Tokelau will be the first country to meet 100 per cent of its climate change obligations and will only need fossil fuel to power its fleet of three cars.
Lead contractor Powersmart Solar is helping Tokelau replace its diesel generators - which burn about 200 litres of fuel daily - with 4032 solar panels, 392 inverters and 1344 batteries.
Powersmart Solar director Mike Bassett-Smith said the company was proud to be leading the project because of the impact it would have on the well-being of the people of Tokelau.
"All across the Pacific there are clear issues with the current and expected future costs of electricity generated using diesel, not to mention the environmental costs and risks of unloading diesel drums on tropical atolls," he said.
"Energy costs underpin the economic and social development of these nations and making a positive impact on these issues is the single most important reason we started this business."
Tokelau has a population of about 1400 and they have access to electricity for between 15-18 hours a day.
The solar power systems will be capable of providing 150 per cent of the annual electricity demand without increasing diesel demand.
Companies from all over the globe tendered for the project and it was a "big win" for the Mount Maunganui-based company, Bassett-Smith said.
The first solar system on the atoll of Fakaofo was due to be switched on this week but had been postponed for up to two weeks.
Bassett-Smith said the delay would not affect the schedule of the installations on the other atolls, with the next system to be switched on in about six weeks.
Tokelau's isolation and the scale of the project meant the system required significant testing and development in Mt Manganui before it could be moved to the atolls.
The system would be able to withstand cyclone force winds of up to 230kmh.
Bassett-Smith said Powersmart Solar could monitor how it was performing remotely and work with the Tokelauans to diagnose any issues.

Oh, znao sam da ćete u budućnosti jesti bube:

Future foods: What will we be eating in 20 years' time? (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18813075)

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Volatile food prices and a growing population mean we have to rethink what we eat, say food futurologists. So what might we be serving up in 20 years' time?
It's not immediately obvious what links Nasa, the price of meat and brass bands, but all three are playing a part in shaping what we will eat in the future and how we will eat it.


Rising food prices, the growing population and environmental concerns are just a few issues that have organisations - including the United Nations and the government - worrying about how we will feed ourselves in the future.
In the UK, meat prices are anticipated to have a huge impact on our diets. Some in the food industry estimate they could double in the next five to seven years, making meat a luxury item.
"In the West many of us have grown up with cheap, abundant meat," says food futurologist Morgaine Gaye.
"Rising prices mean we are now starting to see the return of meat as a luxury. As a result we are looking for new ways to fill the meat gap."
So what will fill such gaps and our stomachs - and how will we eat it?

   Insects (http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Insect), or mini-livestock as they could become known, will become a staple of our diet, says Gaye.
It's a win-win situation. Insects provide as much nutritional value as ordinary meat and are a great source of protein (http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/treatments/healthy_living/nutrition/healthy_protein.shtml), according to researchers at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. They also cost less to raise than cattle, consume less water and do not have much of a carbon footprint. Plus, there are an estimated 1,400 species that are edible to man.

Gaye is not talking about bushtucker-style witchetty grubs arriving on a plate near you. Insect burgers and sausages are likely to resemble their meat counterparts.
"Things like crickets and grasshoppers will be ground down and used as an ingredient in things like burgers."
The Dutch government is putting serious money into getting insects into mainstream diets. It recently invested one million euros (£783,000) into research and to prepare legislation governing insect farms.
A large chunk of the world's population already eat insects as a regular part of their diet. Caterpillars (http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Lepidoptera) and locusts (http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Desert_locust) are popular in Africa, wasps (http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Vespidae) are a delicacy in Japan, crickets (http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Orthoptera) are eaten in Thailand.
But insects will need an image overhaul if they are to become more palatable to the squeamish Europeans and North Americans, says Gaye, who is a member of the Experimental Food Society.
"They will become popular when we get away from the word insects and use something like mini-livestock."

Insect nutritional value /100g 

Food source	Protein (g)	Calcium (mg)	Iron (mg)
			Source: Montana State University
Caterpillar (http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Lepidoptera)	28.2	n/a	35.5
Grasshopper (http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Orthoptera)	20.6	35.2	5
Dung beetle (http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Dung_beetle)	17.2	30.9	7.7
Minced beef	27.4	n/a	3.5

   
• Discover more about insects (http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Insect)
• More on protein and healthy eating (http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/treatments/healthy_living/nutrition/healthy_protein.shtml)

Sonic-enhanced food 
It's well documented how the appearance of food and its smell influence what we eat, but the effect sound has on taste (http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/body/factfiles/taste/taste_animation.shtml) is an expanding area of research. A recent study by scientists at Oxford University found certain tones could make things taste sweeter or more bitter.
"No experience is a single sense experience," says Russell Jones, from sonic branding company Condiment Junkie, who were involved in the study. "So much attention is paid to what food looks like and what it smells like, but sound is just as important."

The Bittersweet Study, conducted by Charles Spence, a professor of experimental psychology at Oxford University, found the taste of food could be adjusted by changing the sonic properties of a background soundtrack.
"We're not entirely sure what happens in brain as yet, but something does happen and that's really exciting," says Jones.
Sound and food have been experimented with by chef Heston Blumenthal. His Fat Duck restaurant has a dish called the Sound of the Sea, which is served with an iPod playing sounds of the seaside. The sounds reportedly make the food taste fresher.
But more widespread uses are developing. One that could have an important impact is the use of music to remove unhealthy ingredients without people noticing the difference in taste.
"We know what frequency makes things taste sweeter," says Jones, also a member of the Experimental Food Society. "Potentially you could reduce the sugar in a food but use music to make it seem just as sweet to the person eating it."
Companies are also increasingly using the link between food and sound in packaging. One crisp company changed the material it used to make packets as the crunchier sound made the crisps taste fresher to consumers. Recommended playlists could also appear on packaging to help enhance the taste of the product.
Jones says the use of sound is even being applied to white goods. Companies are looking into the hum fridges make, as a certain tone could make people think their food is fresher.

Lab-grown meat 
Earlier this year, Dutch scientists successfully produced in-vitro meat, also known as cultured meat. They grew strips of muscle tissue using stem cells taken from cows, which were said to resemble calamari in appearance. They hope to create the world's first "test-tube burger" by the end of the year.
The first scientific paper on lab-grown meat was funded by Nasa, says social scientist Dr Neil Stephens, based at Cardiff University's ESRC Cesagen research centre. It investigated in-vitro meat to see if it was a food astronauts could eat in space.

Ten years on and scientists in the field are now promoting it as a more efficient and environmentally friendly way of putting meat on our plates.
A recent study by Oxford University found growing meat in a lab rather than slaughtering animals would significantly reduce greenhouse gases, along with energy and water use (http://oxford.academia.edu/HannaTuomisto/Papers/358909/Life_cycle_assessment_of_cultured_meat_production). Production also requires a fraction of the land needed to raise cattle. In addition it could be customised to cut the fat content and add nutrients.
Prof Mark Post, who led the Dutch team of scientists at Maastricht University, says he wants to make lab meat "indistinguishable" from the real stuff, but it could potentially look very different. Stephens, who is studying the debate over in-vitro meat, says there are on-going discussions in the field about what it should look like.
He says the idea of such a product is hard for people to take on board because nothing like it currently exists.
"We simply don't have a category for this type of stuff in our world, we don't know what to make of it," he says. "It is radically different in terms of provenance and product."

Algae


Algae might be at the bottom of the food chain but it could provide a solution to some the world's most complex problems, including food shortages.
It can feed humans and animals and can be grown in the ocean (http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/earth/water_and_ice/ocean), a big bonus with land and fresh water in increasingly short supply, say researchers. Many scientists also say the biofuel derived from algae could help reduce the need for fossil fuels.

Some in the sustainable food industry predict algae farming could become the world's biggest cropping industry. It has long been a staple in Asia and countries including Japan have huge farms. Currently there is no large-scale, commercial farm in the UK, says Dr Craig Rose, executive director of the Seaweed Health Foundation.
"Such farms could easily work in the UK and be very successful. The great thing about seaweed is it grows at a phenomenal rate, it's the fastest growing plant on earth. Its use in the UK is going to rise dramatically."
Like insects, it could be worked into our diet without us really knowing. Scientists at Sheffield Hallam University used seaweed granules to replace salt in bread and processed foods. The granules provide a strong flavour but were low in salt, which is blamed for high blood pressure, strokes and early deaths. They believe the granules could be used to replace salt in supermarket ready meals, sausages and even cheese.
"It's multi-functional," says Gaye. "And many of its properties are only just being explored. It such a big resource that we really haven't tapped into yet."
With 10,000 types of seaweed in the world, including 630 in the UK alone, the taste of each can vary a lot, says Rose.

A ovo?

$5 Million Grant Awarded by Private Foundation to Study Immortality (http://ucrtoday.ucr.edu/7496)

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RIVERSIDE, Calif. — For millennia, humans have pondered their mortality and whether death is the end of existence or a gateway to an afterlife. Millions of Americans have reported near-death or out-of-body experiences. And adherents of the world's major religions believe in an afterlife, from reincarnation to resurrection and immortality.
Anecdotal reports of glimpses of an afterlife abound, but there has been no comprehensive and rigorous, scientific study of global reports about near-death and other experiences, or of how belief in immortality influences human behavior. That will change with the award of a three-year, $5 million grant by the John Templeton Foundation to John Martin Fischer, distinguished professor of philosophy at the University of California, Riverside, to undertake a rigorous examination of a wide range of issues related to immortality. It is the largest grant ever awarded to a humanities professor at UC Riverside, and one of the largest given to an individual at the university.
"People have been thinking about immortality throughout history. We have a deep human need to figure out what happens to us after death," said Fischer, the principal investigator of The Immortality Project. "Much of the discussion has been in literature, especially in fantasy and science fiction, and in theology in the context of an afterlife, heaven, hell, purgatory and karma. No one has taken a comprehensive and sustained look at immortality that brings together the science, theology and philosophy."
The John Templeton Foundation, located near Philadelphia, supports research on subjects ranging from complexity, evolution and infinity to creativity, forgiveness, love, and free will.
Half of the $5 million grant will be awarded for research projects. The grant will also fund two conferences, the first of which will be held at the end of the project's second year and the second at the end of the grant period. A website (http://sptimmortalityproject.com/) will include a variety of resources, from glossaries and bibliographies to announcements of research conferences and links to published research. Some recent work in Anglo-American philosophy will be translated for German philosophers who, in the last 30 years, have been increasingly studying the work of American philosophers.
UC Riverside Chancellor Timothy P. White said Fischer's research "takes a universal concern and subjects it to rigorous examination to sift fact from fiction. His work will provide guidance for discussion of immortality and the human experience for generations to come.  We are extremely proud that he is leading the investigation of this critical area of knowledge."
Noting Fischer's renown as a scholar of free will and moral responsibility, Stephen Cullenberg, dean of the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, said, "There is perhaps no one better suited to lead a multidisciplinary research project on the question of immortality and its social implications. The Templeton Foundation's generous support will enable scholars from across the world to come to UCR to investigate how the question of immortality affects all cultures, albeit in different ways."
Anecdotal reports of near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences and past lives are plentiful, but it is important to subject these reports to careful analysis, Fischer said. The Immortality Project will solicit research proposals from eminent scientists, philosophers and theologians whose work will be reviewed by respected leaders in their fields and published in academic and popular journals.
"We will be very careful in documenting near-death experiences and other phenomena, trying to figure out if these offer plausible glimpses of an afterlife or are biologically induced illusions," Fischer said. "Our approach will be uncompromisingly scientifically rigorous. We're not going to spend money to study alien-abduction reports. We will look at near-death experiences and try to find out what's going on there — what is promising, what is nonsense, and what is scientifically debunked. We may find something important about our lives and our values, even if not glimpses into an afterlife."
Fischer noted that while philosophers and theologians have pondered questions of immortality and life after death for millennia, scientific research into immortality and longevity are very recent. The Immortality Project will promote collaborative research between scientists, philosophers and theologians. A major goal will be to encourage interdisciplinary inquiry into the family of issues relating to immortality — and how these bear on the way we conceptualize our own (finite) lives.
One of the questions he hopes researchers will address is cultural variations in reports of near-death experiences. For example, the millions of Americans who have experienced the phenomenon consistently report a tunnel with a bright light at the end. In Japan, reports often find the individual tending a garden.
"Is there something in our culture that leads people to see tunnels while the Japanese see gardens?" he asked. "Are there variations in other cultures?" What can we learn about our own values and the meanings of our finite lives by studying near-death experiences cross-culturally (as well as within our own culture)?
Other questions philosophers may consider are: Is immortality potentially worthwhile or not? Would existence in an afterlife be repetitive or boring? Does death give meaning to life? Could we still have virtues like courage if we knew we couldn't die? What can we learn about the meaning of our lives by thinking about immortality?
Theologians and philosophers who examine various concepts of an afterlife may delve into the relationship between belief in life after death and individual behavior, and how individuals could survive death as the same person.
"Many people and religions hold there is an afterlife, and that often gives people consolation when faced with death," Fischer said. "Philosophy and theology are slightly different ways to bring reason to beliefs about religion to evaluate their rationality. If you believe we exist as immortal beings, you could ask how we could survive death as the very same person in an afterlife. If you believe in reincarnation, how can the very same person exist if you start over with no memories?
"We hope to bring to the general public a greater awareness of some of the complexities involved in simple beliefs about heaven, hell and reincarnation, and encourage people to better understand and evaluate their own beliefs about an afterlife and the role of those beliefs in their lives."
For example, "We think that free will is very important to us theologically and philosophically. And heaven in the Judeo-Christian tradition is supposed to be the best place. Yet we arguably wouldn't have free will in heaven. How do you fit these ideas together?"
At the end of the project Fischer will analyze findings from the Immortality Project and write a book with the working title "Immortality and the Meaning of Death," slated for publication by Oxford University Press.
The John Templeton Foundation (http://www.templeton.org/) serves as a philanthropic catalyst for discoveries relating to the Big Questions of human purpose and ultimate reality. The foundation supports research on subjects ranging from complexity, evolution and infinity to creativity, forgiveness, love, and free will. It encourages civil, informed dialogue among scientists, philosophers and theologians, and between such experts and the public at large, for the purposes of definitional clarity and new insights. The foundation's vision is derived from the late Sir John Templeton's optimism about the possibility of acquiring "new spiritual information" and from his commitment to rigorous scientific research and related scholarship. The foundation's motto, "How little we know, how eager to learn," exemplifies its support for open-minded inquiry and its hope for advancing human progress through breakthrough discoveries.

Možda je ovo neko već okačio drugde na forumu al evo:

Sci-Fi writers of the past predict life in 2012 (http://www.gizmag.com/sf-time-capsule/23556/) 

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As part of the L, Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future award in 1987, a group of science fiction luminaries put together a text "time capsule" of their predictions about life in the far off year of 2012. Including such names as Orson Scott Card, Robert Silverberg, Jack Williamson, Algis Budrys and Frederik Pohl, it gives us an interesting glimpse into how those living in the age before smartphones, tablets, Wi-Fi and on-demand streaming episodes of Community thought the future might turn out.
Written during the Cold War, many of the predictions reflect the anxiety of a time when universal nuclear armageddon was still a daily threat. In fact, Isaac Asimov began his prediction with what was a standard preamble of the time.
"Assuming we haven't destroyed ourselves in a nuclear war, there will be 8-10 billion of us on this planet – and widespread hunger."
It's some small comfort to know that the Earth today is neither a radioactive wasteland, nor is it yet as crowded as Asimov feared – although he wasn't far off. With most of us now living in cities (http://www.gizmag.com/go/7613/), the U.S. Census Bureau estimates the world's population hit seven billion in March of this year, (although the UN put the estimated date at September 2011). Unfortunately, he was on the money the latter prediction, with people in many parts of the world continuing to go hungry.
Meanwhile, Gregory Benford predicted that the population would never reach 10 billion, with negative consequences.
"There will have been major "diebacks" in overcrowded Third World countries, all across southern Asia and through Africa. This will be a major effect keeping population from reaching 10 billion."
On the other hand, Benford was more optimistic regarding advances in manned spaceflight.
"Bases on the Moon, an expedition to Mars ... all done. But the big news will be some problematical evidence for intelligent life elsewhere."
It's ironic that Benford's prediction of Moon bases and manned Mars expeditions (http://www.gizmag.com/nasa-space-launch-system/19840/) happening 25 years in the future is still pretty close to how we see it today.
Algis Budrys submitted a dense prediction that revolved around a post peak-oil world.
"Because we will be in a trough between 20th-century resources and 21st-century needs, in 2012 all storable forms of energy will be expensive. Machines will be designed to use only minimal amounts of it."
Cutting the power requirements of all manner of electronic devices – from light bulbs to supercomputers – has indeed become a major concern for manufacturers and consumers. Budrys believed the need to conserve energy would lead to an information-based society. This idea of an information society that is, in some ways, very like our own is echoed by Roger Zelazny in a sentence of herculean proportions.
"It is good to see that a cashless, checkless society has just about come to pass, that automation has transformed offices and robotics manufacturing in mainly beneficial ways, including telecommuting, that defense spending has finally slowed for a few of the right reasons, that population growth has also slowed and that biotechnology has transformed, agriculture and industry – all of this resulting in an older, slightly conservative, but longer-lived and healthier society possessed of more leisure and a wider range of educational and recreational options in which to enjoy it – and it is very good at last to see this much industry located off-planet, this many permanent space residents and increased exploration of the solar system."
The world is certainly is going toward a cashless society, and biotechnology has seen huge advances in recent decades. Thanks to advances in medicine, populations in the developed world now live longer, healthier lives and population growth has indeed slowed in most developed countries. Defense spending has also declined (relatively speaking), but in response to financial pressures rather than a more conservative society.
Sadly, Zelazny's prediction of more leisure time hasn't eventuated. Instead of cutting working hours, technologies such as wireless Internet, smaller and more powerful laptops, tablets and smartphones now allow us to work anywhere and everywhere, so that work now encroaches on our so called leisure time more than ever before.
And while the whole space industry thing has yet to take off to the extent Zelazny predicted, recent developments from the private sector with commercial spaceflights (http://www.gizmag.com/virgin-galactic-launcher-one/23276/) set to launch in the near future and continuing exploration of the solar system (http://www.gizmag.com/curiosity-shield/23588/), it appears he may only have been a little too optimistic in terms of time-frame.
However, Zelazny did hit the nail on the head with his foreseeing the e-book (http://www.gizmag.com/tag/e-book/).
"I would like to take this opportunity to plug my new book, to be published in both computerized and printed versions in time for 2012 Christmas sales – but I've not yet decided on its proper title. Grandchildren of Amber sounds at this point a little clumsy, but may have to serve."
Unfortunately, Zelazny died in 1995, but his books – including his popular The Chronicles of Amber series – are readily available in electronic format.
Jerry Pournelle missed the mark by not predicting that the Deep Blue computer would defeat world chess champion Garry Kasparov, but he did present this frightening prognostication – for writers, anyway.
"A computer will win the (John W.) Campbell (Jr.) and (L. Ron) Hubbard Awards."
Tim Powers had an interesting take that is wrong on every count.
"Probate and copyright law will be entirely restructured by 2012 because people will be frozen at death, and there will be electronic means of consulting them. Many attorneys will specialize in advocacy for the dead."
However, Russian media magnate Dmitry Itskov is attempting to make Powers' prediction a reality by 2045 with the "Avatar" Project (http://www.gizmag.com/avatar-project-2045/23454/).
A particularly interesting prediction comes from Frederik Pohl.
"(Y)ou live in a world at peace. Something like the World Court, as an arm of something like the United Nations, resolves international disputes, and has the power to enforce its decisions. For that reason, you live in a world almost without weaponry; and, because you therefore do not have to bear the crippling financial burden of paying for military establishments and hardware, all of you enjoy and average standard of living about equal to a contemporary millionaire's. Your health is generally superb. Your life expectancy is not much less than a century. The most unpleasant and debilitating jobs (heavy industry, mining, large-scale farming) are given over to machines; most work performed by human beings is in some sense creative. The exploration of space is picking up speed, both by manned colonization and robot probes, and by vast orbiting telescopes and other instruments. Deforestation, desertification and the destruction of arable land has been halted and even reversed. Pollution is controlled, and all the winds and the waters of the Earth are sweet again."
Pohl goes on to call this an extremely improbable outcome, but he argues that if anyone is reading his predictions, that's what happened. What's interesting here is that some of what Pohl predicted did, to one degree or another, come to pass. Life expectancy is longer, standards of living did rise, robots are becoming more common in industry and agriculture, and the Hubble telescope and its successors (http://www.gizmag.com/spysatellite/22813/) are orbiting as you read this.
However, the collapse of the Soviet Union, which even the CIA missed predicting, made the whole U.N. running the world to avoid nuclear war thing moot. Meanwhile, the current situation in Syria and the ineffectiveness of the U.N. in dealing with it only illustrates how far off the mark he was in predicting a world at peace.
A prediction by Gene Wolfe sounds very familiar to any film-goer.
"Sports and televised dramas are the only commonly available recreations. The dramas are performed by computer-generated images indistinguishable (on screen) from living people. Scenery is provided by the same method. Although science fiction and fantasy characterize the majority of these dramas, they are not so identified."
While we still have plenty of activities to partake in other than plonking ourselves down in front of the TV, – with technology even providing new ways (http://www.gizmag.com/rock-climbing-climbblock-rotor-wall/23250/) to enjoy old ones – CGI characters (http://www.gizmag.com/avatar-movie-james-cameron-technology/13628/), ubiquitous use of green screen and stories that are sci-fi, but not called that have all come to pass.
But of all the predictions, Gregory Benford's is probably the most apt.
"I will be old, but not dead. Come by to see me, and bring a bottle."
Benford is still alive and continues to write. He has a new novel coming out later this year, with more to follow.
Source: Writers of the Future (http://www.writersofthefuture.com/time-capsule-predictions)

19th Century French Artists Predicted The World Of The Future In This Series Of Postcards (http://singularityhub.com/2012/10/15/19th-century-french-artists-predicted-the-world-of-the-future-in-this-series-of-postcards/) 

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If you've ever struggled to imagine how life will change over the next century thanks to technology, take comfort — you're not alone. Over 100 year ago, some French artists tried to do the same thing.
(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fsingularityhub.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F10%2Fjules-verne.jpg&hash=a85e09936de8b9f40ab04185c5130a5e91cde0bb) (http://singularityhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/jules-verne.jpg) French science fiction novelist Jules Verne During that time, one of the most influential science fiction writers ever had been busy letting his imagination run wild with all the possibilities that the age of science was opening up. That writer was Jules Verne, whose collection called Voyages Extraordinaires contained 55 novels, including the well known  "20,000 Leagues Under The Sea" and "Around The World In 80 Days". He even wrote a short work imagining what life would be like a millennium in the future called In The Year 2889.
Verne's stories were popular among the French, and their imagination swooned with the endless possibilities of the future.
Starting in 1899, a commercial artist named Jean-Marc Côté and other artists (http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/03/09/villemards-vision-of-the-future/) were hired by a toy or cigarette manufacturer to create a series of picture cards as inserts, according to Matt Noval who writes for the Smithsonian magazine (http://www.paleofuture.com/blog/2010/5/2/jean-marc-cotes-visions-of-the-year-2000-1899.html). The images were to depict how life in France would look in a century's time, no doubt heavily influenced by Verne's writings. Sadly, they were never actually distributed. However, the only known set of cards to exist was discovered by Isaac Asimov, who wrote a book in 1986 called "Futuredays" (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0805001204) in which he presented the illustrations with commentary.
What's amazing about this collection is how close their predictions were in a lot of cases, and how others are close at hand.
To begin, technological strides were made in electromagnetism and wireless communication that led to the invention of the telephone and radio during the latter decades of the 19th century. To the artists, these technologies must play an important part in the future, so a machine was imagined that would transcribe spoken language into print, something that automated audio transcription services like Dragon Dictate (http://singularityhub.com/2009/12/14/dragon-dictation-voice-recognition-comes-to-the-iphone-for-free-video/) or voice recognition with Google Search (http://singularityhub.com/2011/06/16/google-launches-voice-search-%E2%80%93-and-two-other-brand-new-features-video/) now make possible:
(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fsingularityhub.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F10%2Fdictant.jpg&hash=df344da6b7949cebbf7361e5a948109130ad6d0b) (http://singularityhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/dictant.jpg)
Another card shows video calls imagined from the technology of the day (a projector), but functionally the same as Apple's FaceTime, Google Hangout, or any other standard video conferencing software:
(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fsingularityhub.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F10%2Fcorrespondence.jpg&hash=633b343f6d82d9af68696202670e11fffd582f38) (http://singularityhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/correspondence.jpg)
Other types of advances in projection were expected as well, allowing microscope or telescope images to be much more visible. While projection technologies like these were developed, today digital instruments and monitors are the workhorses for microscopy:
(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fsingularityhub.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F10%2Fmicrobes1.jpg&hash=b3c818406e999d5d83fbc848353084ba41207bdf) (http://singularityhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/microbes1.jpg)
In light of the Industrial revolution that occurred in France in the early part of the 19th century, automation would have been rife with possibilities. Among the collection, personal automatons — or robots as we call them — showed up prominently. Clearly, the artists felt they would be a big part of the future, taking care of many of the mechanical tasks used in daily life, such as robot barbers:
(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fsingularityhub.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F10%2Frobot-barber.jpg&hash=63ecc22d15fa613b5373034d305d43a6b27b529e) (http://singularityhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/robot-barber.jpg)
For women, the vision was more extensive, including an all-in-one robotic make-up artist and hairdresser:
(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fsingularityhub.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F10%2Frobot-hairdresser1.jpg&hash=140683843006d6837f093b441bf462aded09ebe3) (http://singularityhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/robot-hairdresser1.jpg)
Technological advances in robotics is seriously on the move, so while we have robots to wash hair (http://singularityhub.com/2010/10/04/panasonic-unveils-robot-hair-washer-and-robotic-wheelchairbed-video/), service bots in hospitals (http://singularityhub.com/2010/09/02/hospital-to-lay-off-workers-hiring-new-robots/) and cleaning bots like the Roomba (http://singularityhub.com/2011/01/05/irobot-unveils-smarter-roomba-and-smaller-scooba-video/) to help in small ways, bots to take care of all our personal needs are probably only years away. Whether we'll have a robot that can custom tailor clothes for us at will, as shown in the following illustration, is debatable, however:
(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fsingularityhub.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F10%2Frobot-tailor.jpg&hash=43179bafa952d9f6fea17835cf4a26a4c23dc0e0) (http://singularityhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/robot-tailor.jpg)
One card shows all the instruments of an orchestra being controlled by the conductor, which isn't too far off from the robotic instruments designed by Festo (http://singularityhub.com/2012/05/30/robotic-quintet-composes-and-plays-its-own-music/):
(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fsingularityhub.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F10%2Frobot-orchestra.jpg&hash=2787a54d4637fd9d96eb6e9435338a6e1bdde466) (http://singularityhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/robot-orchestra.jpg)
But the scope of using machines to do work wasn't seen to be limited to smaller scale activities. Why not use machines to allow a single person to construct buildings? We aren't there yet, but recent advances in 3D printing almost beg for houses and other buildings to be printed out (http://singularityhub.com/2012/08/22/3d-printers-may-someday-construct-homes-in-less-than-a-day/), if the technology could be worked out.

The artists also imagined how robots would have an even bigger impact on society, as in helping farmers plow fields. Robots on farms are on the rise, as bots have been developed to milk cows (http://singularityhub.com/2010/11/16/dairy-farms-go-robotic-cows-have-never-been-happier-video/), pick only ripe strawberries (http://singularityhub.com/2010/12/04/japans-robot-picks-only-the-ripest-strawberries-video/), and even kill weeds (http://singularityhub.com/2012/09/19/lettuce-bot-rolls-through-crops-terminates-weeds-it-visually-identifies/).
(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fsingularityhub.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F10%2Felectrical-farming.jpg&hash=fc85d2bddf616c2e50f9828f3309fe087894c102) (http://singularityhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/electrical-farming.jpg)
The possibilities of science must have seemed endless, and technologies that would fundamentally change society would seem all but likely, as in one illustration that shows books being ground up and fed directly into the ears of schoolchildren. While it may seem a bit to Matrix-like to become a reality, one could argue that this is fundamentally what an audiobook is or what the Internet does with information. We may not be at the point where information is fed directly into our brains, but reality isn't that far off.
(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fsingularityhub.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F10%2Ftransfer-of-knowledge.jpg&hash=218014ddaa0d8d70dc5ecbc8c27529b9d2a3cbca) (http://singularityhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/transfer-of-knowledge.jpg)
In what some French people might consider an abomination, one illustration depicted the modern kitchen as a place of food science. While synthetic food in commercial products is sadly more common today than we'd like to admit (sorry Easy Cheese lovers, but I'm calling you out), the rise of molecular gastronomy in fine dining has made food chemistry a modern reality. It may seem like food science has its limitations, but one only needs to consider efforts to grow meat in a laboratory (http://singularityhub.com/2012/02/28/lab-grown-burger-to-be-served-in-six-months/) to see how far technology may go.
(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fsingularityhub.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F10%2Fmolecular-gastronomy.jpg&hash=c55d5ab8f14fb27eb2bfc8fb23f05e8e264c511c) (http://singularityhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/molecular-gastronomy.jpg)
As incredible as it is that Côté, Villemard, and others were able to envision some of our modern technologies, one would expect more misses than hits. They are, after all,  making fantastical predictions about technological progress over a century's time, and it's challenging to be accurate (unless you are Ray Kurzweil (http://singularityhub.com/2011/01/04/kurzweil-defends-his-predictions-again-was-he-86-correct/)).
Making predictions in the shadow of Verne's body of work, one would take for granted that the sea and the air would be open to all.
For instance, the artists were fascinated by the possibilities of flight. This makes sense, considering that powered gliders were in development during the 1890s, the first Zeppelin was being constructed in 1900, and the Wright brothers made their historic flight in 1903. But personal flight was envisioned to be much more integrated into daily life, envisioning that wings would help people do all sorts of things like delivering mail...physics be damned!
(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fsingularityhub.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F10%2Fair-postman.jpg&hash=67a847cc672f5768f0fdec1e51615f2330e33abb) (http://singularityhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/air-postman.jpg)
Air transport was also imagined, and though they didn't quite capture modern air travel, they weren't too far off:
(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fsingularityhub.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F10%2Fair-ship.jpg&hash=86744bbfa5bdbc302885c6e1a1ec7507ec5c4575) (http://singularityhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/air-ship.jpg)
The artists also seemed to believe that people would be interacting with ocean life as a part of their daily lives, perhaps because of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. Everything from fish races complete with jockeys to travelling underwater by whale were seen as inevitable. It's sad that the ocean is still such a mystery, but perhaps Google's efforts to allow underwater exploration in Google Maps (http://singularityhub.com/2012/10/04/google-maps-lets-you-explore-the-last-great-frontier-on-earth-the-ocean/) will begin to help:
(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fsingularityhub.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F10%2Fdivers-racing.jpg&hash=2a252464b8e8cf4ca57d2d2d70f5a6d738e66d17) (http://singularityhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/divers-racing.jpg)
Finally, there are some illustrations that we look at today and know they are bad ideas, such as rapid biological development of eggs into chicks:
(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fsingularityhub.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F10%2Fbio-development.jpg&hash=06fc364d26e680a890e5c52b4e3552d5211fcb11) (http://singularityhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/bio-development.jpg)
Or using radium in the fireplace to warm a house:

Imagining the future is vital to progress, as it means technological advances are the result of deliberate efforts to make ideas reality, rather than simply humans reacting to their surroundings like animals. These illustrations are a testament to a handful of very creative artists who tried to bring a vision of the future to the masses.
How unfortunate that the people of the time never got to seem them.

Ovo uopšte nije toliko impresivno za 1899. godinu, tj. praktično početak 20. veka. Imali su valjda ljudi još luđe i tačnije premonicije i pre toga.

 :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry:

Hacked terminals capable of causing pacemaker deaths (http://www.scmagazine.com.au/News/319508,hacked-terminals-capable-of-causing-pacemaker-mass-murder.aspx)

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IOActive researcher Barnaby Jack has reverse-engineered a pacemaker transmitter to make it possible to deliver deadly electric shocks to pacemakers within 30 feet and rewrite their firmware.
The effect of the wireless attacks could not be overstated — in a speech at the BreakPoint security conference (http://www.scmagazine.com.au/Topic/319430,breakpoint.aspx) in Melbourne today, Jack said such attacks were tantamount to "anonymous assassination", and in a realistic but worse-case scenario, "mass murder".
In a video demonstration, which Jack declined to release publicly because it may reveal the name of the manufacturer, he issued a series of 830 volt shocks to the pacemaker using a laptop.
The pacemakers contained a "secret function" which could be used to activate all pacemakers and implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs) in a 30 foot -plus vicinity.
Each device would return model and serial numbers.
"With that information, we have enough information to authenticate with any device in range," Jack said.
In reverse-engineering the terminals – which communicate with the pacemakers – he discovered no obfuscation efforts and even found usernames and passwords for what appeared to be the manufacturer's development server.
That data could be used to load rogue firmware which could spread between pacemakers with the "potential to commit mass murder".
"The worst case scenario that I can think of, which is 100 percent possible with these devices, would be to load a compromised firmware update onto a programmer and ... the compromised programmer would then infect the next pacemaker or ICD and then each would subsequently infect all others in range," Jack said.
He was developing a graphical adminstration platform dubbed "Electric Feel" which could scan for medical devices in range and with no more than a right-click, could enable shocking of the device, and reading and writing firmware and patient data.
"With a max voltage of 830 volts, it's not hard to see why this is a fairly deadly feature. Not only could you induce cardiac arrest, but you could continually recharge the device and deliver shocks on loop," he said.
Jack said his goal was not to cause harm, but to help manufacturers secure their devices.
"Sometimes you have to demonstrate the darker side," he said.  Copyright © SC Magazine, Australia (http://www.scmagazine.com.au/)

Pa, šta ja sad da radim? :-?

Ne znam  :(  Ovo je zastrašujuće.

Ali, uskoro: benzin iz vazduha!!!!!!!!!! Naravno, za sada skup u smislu energije koju valja uložiti i sve to, ali opet, to je obnovljiv izvor itd. itd.

Exclusive: Pioneering scientists turn fresh air into petrol in massive boost in fight against energy crisis  (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/exclusive-pioneering-scientists-turn-fresh-air-into-petrol-in-massive-boost-in-fight-against-energy-crisis-8217382.html)

Quote

A small British company has produced the first "petrol from air" using a revolutionary technology that promises to solve the energy crisis as well as helping to curb global warming by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Air Fuel Synthesis in Stockton-on-Tees has produced five litres of petrol since August when it switched on a small refinery that manufactures gasoline from carbon dioxide and water vapour.
The company hopes that within two years it will build a larger, commercial-scale plant capable of producing a ton of petrol a day. It also plans to produce green aviation fuel to make airline travel more carbon-neutral.

Tim Fox, head of energy and the environment at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in London, said: "It sounds too good to be true, but it is true. They are doing it and I've been up there myself and seen it. The innovation is that they have made it happen as a process. It's a small pilot plant capturing air and extracting CO2 from it based on well known principles. It uses well-known and well-established components but what is exciting is that they have put the whole thing together and shown that it can work."
Although the process is still in the early developmental stages and needs to take electricity from the national grid to work, the company believes it will eventually be possible to use power from renewable sources such as wind farms or tidal barrages.
"We've taken carbon dioxide from air and hydrogen from water and turned these elements into petrol," said Peter Harrison, the company's chief executive, who revealed the breakthrough at a conference at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in London.
"There's nobody else doing it in this country or indeed overseas as far as we know. It looks and smells like petrol but it's a much cleaner and clearer product than petrol derived from fossil oil," Mr Harrison told The Independent.
"We don't have any of the additives and nasty bits found in conventional petrol, and yet our fuel can be used in existing engines," he said.
"It means that people could go on to a garage forecourt and put our product into their car without having to install batteries or adapt the vehicle for fuel cells or having hydrogen tanks fitted. It means that the existing infrastructure for transport can be used," Mr Harrison said.
Being able to capture carbon dioxide from the air, and effectively remove the principal industrial greenhouse gas resulting from the burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal, has been the holy grail of the emerging green economy.
Using the extracted carbon dioxide to make petrol that can be stored, transported and used as fuel for existing engines takes the idea one step further. It could transform the environmental and economic landscape of Britain, Mr Harrison explained.
"We are converting renewable electricity into a more versatile, useable and storable form of energy, namely liquid transport fuels. We think that by the end of 2014, provided we can get the funding going, we can be producing petrol using renewable energy and doing it on a commercial basis," he said.
"We ought to be aiming for a refinery-scale operation within the next 15 years. The issue is making sure the UK is in a good place to be able to set up and establish all the manufacturing processes that this technology requires. You have the potential to change the economics of a country if you can make your own fuel," he said.
The initial plan is to produce petrol that can be blended with conventional fuel, which would suit the high-performance fuels needed in motor sports. The technology is also ideal for remote communities that have abundant sources of renewable electricity, such solar energy, wind turbines or wave energy, but little in the way of storing it, Mr Harrison said.
"We're talking to a number of island communities around the world and other niche markets to help solve their energy problems.
"You're in a market place where the only way is up for the price of fossil oil and at some point there will be a crossover where our fuel becomes cheaper," he said.
Although the prototype system is designed to extract carbon dioxide from the air, this part of the process is still too inefficient to allow a commercial-scale operation.
The company can and has used carbon dioxide extracted from air to make petrol, but it is also using industrial sources of carbon dioxide until it is able to improve the performance of "carbon capture".
Other companies are working on ways of improving the technology of carbon capture, which is considered far too costly to be commercially viable as it costs up to £400 for capturing one ton of carbon dioxide.
However, Professor Klaus Lackner of Columbia University in New York said that the high costs of any new technology always fall dramatically.
"I bought my first CD in the 1980s and it cost $20 but now you can make one for less than 10 cents. The cost of a light bulb has fallen 7,000-fold during the past century," Professor Lackner said.
   

A takođe:

Society of Automotive Engineers announces electric car charging plug standard (http://www.gizmag.com/sae-j1772-combo-plug-standard/24607/)

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The electric and plug-in hybrid car industry is learning the lesson of the mobile phone makers. Instead of allowing a plethora of incompatible charging plugs to sprout up, the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) International hopes to forestall confusion by settling on one charging plug design for North America. SAE has selected the J1772 combo plug as the standard, which uses paired couplers to allow for both AC and DC charging using the same plug.

   
• (https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.gizmag.com%2Fgallery_tn%2Fcombo-plug-1.jpg&hash=0847c69f6149b259ea3784250b26f8f2d965dcab) (http://www.gizmag.com/sae-j1772-combo-plug-standard/24607/pictures#1)
• (https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.gizmag.com%2Fgallery_tn%2Fcombo-plug-2.jpg&hash=49609e3d9ac222549be847484ee4dcdf5f2c6dd4) (http://www.gizmag.com/sae-j1772-combo-plug-standard/24607/pictures#2)
• (https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.gizmag.com%2Fgallery_tn%2Fcombo-plug-3.jpg&hash=80d6e27d804d5620d0b02b113bbabdfe082ade2e) (http://www.gizmag.com/sae-j1772-combo-plug-standard/24607/pictures#3)
• (https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.gizmag.com%2Fgallery_tn%2Fcombo-plug-4.png&hash=8a7465ebb654381bf9efb462fa4b62c49b6d235f) (http://www.gizmag.com/sae-j1772-combo-plug-standard/24607/pictures#4)
• View all
  (http://www.gizmag.com/sae-j1772-combo-plug-standard/24607/pictures)

Published this week, the SAE International decision marks the first official charging standard for North American cars. According to SAE, it was the result of consultation with 190 "global experts" from the automotive, charging equipment, utilities industries and national laboratories.
(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.gizmag.com%2Finline%2Fcombo-plug-2.jpg&hash=629e91ce07a136f6be0d6861afa1cc519e119c1e) (http://www.gizmag.com/sae-j1772-combo-plug-standard/24607/pictures#3) The J1772 has two charging plugs incorporated into a single design and is said to reduce charging times from as long as eight hours to as little as 20 minutes. It's based on the 2009 J1772, which had only an AC charging plug. The current version includes a DC plug underneath the AC plug, which means that not only are both options available, but cars with the older J1772 couplings, such as the 2012 Nissan Leaf and 2013 Chevrolet Volt, can still use the new plug.
The dual capability is because AC and DC each have their strengths and weaknesses. AC is easier to access, since it's mains current and the car's on-board system can rectify it into DC to charge the battery. The problem is that beyond a certain point AC has heating problems for the car, so charging is inherently slow. DC is much faster – theoretically limitless, but it requires an external charging station. The choice of currents means that car makers don't need to choose between plentiful but slow, and fast but scarce.
(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.gizmag.com%2Finline%2Fcombo-plug-3.jpg&hash=4821427f244c81cc2fd6bef42f1f8c4e88458026) (http://www.gizmag.com/sae-j1772-combo-plug-standard/24607/pictures#4)  The J1772 combo plug pushed out its rival, the pictured CHAdeMO plug (Photo: C-CarTom)  The new standard also sets charging levels and safety features for the plug – those features include its ability to be safely used in all weather conditions, and the fact that its connections are never live unless commanded by the car during charging.
J1772 beat out its main rival, the Japanese CHAdeMO (http://www.gizmag.com/chademo-standard-electric-vehicle-charging/14557/) plug (which is also available as an option for the Nissan Leaf and is used in over a thousand chargers installed in Japan), along with Tesla's proprietary Supercharger (http://www.gizmag.com/tesla-supercharger-network/24293/) system. Whether the SAE standard will see an end to these rival plugs or the beginning of an automotive version of VHS versus Betamax remains to be seen.
Source: SAE International (http://www.sae.org/servlets/pressRoom?OBJECT_TYPE=PressReleases&PAGE=showRelease&RELEASE_ID=1897)

Universe, human brain and Internet have similar structures (http://www.dnaindia.com/scitech/report_universe-human-brain-and-internet-have-similar-structures_1769254) 

Quote
The structure of the universe and the laws that govern its growth may be more similar than previously thought to the structure and growth of the human brain and other complex networks, such as the Internet or a social network of trust relationships between people, according to a new study.
"By no means do we claim that the universe is a global brain or a computer," said Dmitri Krioukov, co-author of the paper, published by the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA), based at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego.
"But the discovered equivalence between the growth of the universe and complex networks strongly suggests that unexpectedly similar laws govern the dynamics of these very different complex systems," Krioukov noted
Having the ability to predict – let alone trying to control – the dynamics of complex networks remains a central challenge throughout network science. Structural and dynamical similarities among different real networks suggest that some universal laws might be in action, although the nature and common origin of such laws remain elusive
By performing complex supercomputer simulations of the universe and using a variety of other calculations, researchers have now proven that the causal network representing the large-scale structure of space and time in our accelerating universe is a graph that shows remarkable similarity to many complex networks such as the Internet, social, or even biological networks
"These findings have key implications for both network science and cosmology," said Krioukov.
"We discovered that the large-scale growth dynamics of complex networks and causal networks are asymptotically (at large times) the same, explaining the structural similarity between these networks," the researcher asserted
SDSC Director Michael Norman added, "This is a perfect example of interdisciplinary research combining math, physics, and computer science in totally unexpected ways."
"Who would have guessed that the emergence of our universe's four-dimensional spacetime from the quantum vacuum would have anything to do with the growth of the Internet? Causality is at the heart of both, so perhaps the similarity Krioukov and his collaborators found is to be expected.
Of course the network representing the structure of the universe is astronomically huge – in fact it can be infinite. But even if it is finite, researchers' best guess is that it is no smaller than 10250 atoms of space and time. (That's the digit 1 followed by 250 zeros.) For comparison, the number of water molecules in all the oceans in the world has been estimated to be 4.4 x 1046
Yet the researchers found a way to downscale this humongous network while preserving its vital properties, by proving mathematically that these properties do not depend on the network size in a certain range of parameters, such as the curvature and age of our universe
After the downscaling, the research team turned to Trestles, one of SDSC's data-intensive supercomputers, to perform simulations of the universe's growing causal network. By parallelizing and optimizing the application, Robert Sinkovits, a computational scientist with SDSC, was able to complete in just over one day a computation that was originally projected to require three to four years
"In addition to being able to complete these simulations much faster than previously ever imagined, the results perfectly matched the theoretical predictions of the researchers," said Sinkovits
"The most frequent question that people may ask is whether the discovered asymptotic equivalence between complex networks and the universe could be a coincidence. Of course it could be, but the probability of such a coincidence is extremely low. Coincidences in physics are extremely rare, and almost never happen. There is always an explanation, which may be not immediately obvious," said Krioukov.
"Such an explanation could one day lead to a discovery of common fundamental laws whose two different consequences or limiting regimes are the laws of gravity (Einstein's equations in general relativity) describing the dynamics of the universe, and some yet-unknown equations describing the dynamics of complex networks," added Marian Boguna, a member of the research team from the Departament de Física Fonamental at the Universitat de Barcelona, Spain.

Matriks!!!!!!

Human body could power smartphones, pacemakers and other devices (http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/human-body-could-power-smartphones-pacemakers-other-devices-010733594.html) 

Quote
Imagine a world with no wall chargers. People power might just make that world a reality.
That's because our own bodies just might be the sustainable energy sources of the near future, generating electricity from our own body heat, physical movement and vibrations.
Roger Highfield (http://us.lrd.yahoo.com/_ylt=Ah_GlrWcknpj7BQBpHPde1rEeOd_;_ylu=X3oDMTFkZWgzYnZwBG1pdANCbG9nIEJvZHkEcG9zAzIEc2VjA01lZGlhQmxvZ0JvZHlBc3NlbWJseQ--;_ylg=X3oDMTM0c2pjOXQxBGludGwDdXMEbGFuZwNlbi11cwRwc3RhaWQDMzlmOWVlNDAtNWQ2OC0zYjBlLThjNjctYzEyNjc2MzViYTBlBHBzdGNhdANibG9nc3x0aGVzaWRlc2hvdwRwdANzdG9yeXBhZ2U-;_ylv=0/SIG=11nu9bdl7/EXP=1355300619/**http%3A//www.rogerhighfield.com/about) of the Science Museum Group (http://us.lrd.yahoo.com/_ylt=Alzv7y72MT0Du6fiMXVecNLEeOd_;_ylu=X3oDMTFkNWJ1MDBuBG1pdANCbG9nIEJvZHkEcG9zAzMEc2VjA01lZGlhQmxvZ0JvZHlBc3NlbWJseQ--;_ylg=X3oDMTM0c2pjOXQxBGludGwDdXMEbGFuZwNlbi11cwRwc3RhaWQDMzlmOWVlNDAtNWQ2OC0zYjBlLThjNjctYzEyNjc2MzViYTBlBHBzdGNhdANibG9nc3x0aGVzaWRlc2hvdwRwdANzdG9yeXBhZ2U-;_ylv=0/SIG=125b6nhvp/EXP=1355300619/**http%3A//www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/about_us/smg.aspx) writes that scientists are already at work on a number of such devices, with the first wave of human-powered generators hitting the market in the next two years.
The applications would range from personal health to entertainment. For example, pacemaker batteries must be replaced every few years. But a pacemaker running off a piezoelectric current could provide a permanent energy source, reducing the need for risky and expensive operations.
The word piezoelectricity means to generate energy from pressure and can be derived from a number of sources, including ceramics, crystals and even biological material, such as DNA and bone (http://us.lrd.yahoo.com/_ylt=Ap4bbnPVaax6z7dFHWXAygvEeOd_;_ylu=X3oDMTFkMmFzbGIwBG1pdANCbG9nIEJvZHkEcG9zAzQEc2VjA01lZGlhQmxvZ0JvZHlBc3NlbWJseQ--;_ylg=X3oDMTM0c2pjOXQxBGludGwDdXMEbGFuZwNlbi11cwRwc3RhaWQDMzlmOWVlNDAtNWQ2OC0zYjBlLThjNjctYzEyNjc2MzViYTBlBHBzdGNhdANibG9nc3x0aGVzaWRlc2hvdwRwdANzdG9yeXBhZ2U-;_ylv=0/SIG=1268t840j/EXP=1355300619/**http%3A//silver.neep.wisc.edu/~lakes/BoneElectr.html).
Researchers have spent years attempting to derive energy from nontraditional sources. For example, the East Japan Railway Company has experimented with using train gates to generate electricity (http://us.lrd.yahoo.com/_ylt=Aqcl__9BYTzHGyzl.vH7RLrEeOd_;_ylu=X3oDMTFkcWhpdTZuBG1pdANCbG9nIEJvZHkEcG9zAzUEc2VjA01lZGlhQmxvZ0JvZHlBc3NlbWJseQ--;_ylg=X3oDMTM0c2pjOXQxBGludGwDdXMEbGFuZwNlbi11cwRwc3RhaWQDMzlmOWVlNDAtNWQ2OC0zYjBlLThjNjctYzEyNjc2MzViYTBlBHBzdGNhdANibG9nc3x0aGVzaWRlc2hvdwRwdANzdG9yeXBhZ2U-;_ylv=0/SIG=13vp2ik49/EXP=1355300619/**http%3A//www.treehugger.com/renewable-energy/japan-producing-electricity-from-train-station-ticket-gates.html) as commuters pass through them.
And researchers at MIT have been working on creating a "crowd farm" that would generate electricity from human movement (http://us.lrd.yahoo.com/_ylt=Ald9Ka19nBWmCMR35Owu15jEeOd_;_ylu=X3oDMTFkbmlnNzJjBG1pdANCbG9nIEJvZHkEcG9zAzYEc2VjA01lZGlhQmxvZ0JvZHlBc3NlbWJseQ--;_ylg=X3oDMTM0c2pjOXQxBGludGwDdXMEbGFuZwNlbi11cwRwc3RhaWQDMzlmOWVlNDAtNWQ2OC0zYjBlLThjNjctYzEyNjc2MzViYTBlBHBzdGNhdANibG9nc3x0aGVzaWRlc2hvdwRwdANzdG9yeXBhZ2U-;_ylv=0/SIG=12a3r1q6u/EXP=1355300619/**http%3A//web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/crowdfarm-0725.html) in public spaces.
University of Wisconsin-Madison associate professor Tom Krupenkin (http://us.lrd.yahoo.com/_ylt=AtxfZuF0PEXrKuq1R_bLXivEeOd_;_ylu=X3oDMTFkYTlrYnI4BG1pdANCbG9nIEJvZHkEcG9zAzcEc2VjA01lZGlhQmxvZ0JvZHlBc3NlbWJseQ--;_ylg=X3oDMTM0c2pjOXQxBGludGwDdXMEbGFuZwNlbi11cwRwc3RhaWQDMzlmOWVlNDAtNWQ2OC0zYjBlLThjNjctYzEyNjc2MzViYTBlBHBzdGNhdANibG9nc3x0aGVzaWRlc2hvdwRwdANzdG9yeXBhZ2U-;_ylv=0/SIG=12a9dns0s/EXP=1355300619/**http%3A//www.engr.wisc.edu/me/faculty/krupenkin_tom.html) told Highfield that placing a salty liquid within the soles of shoes could generate enough electricity to power many of the devices used by millions of consumers around the world.
"This is more than sufficient to power such common devices as smartphones and tablets," he said. "We expect the first product prototype to be available in one to two years."
However, don't start planning to charge your Kindle with an after-dinner walk around the block just yet. Laurie Winkless of the U.K.'s National Physical Laboratory says that piezoelectric devices could prove to be more trouble than they are worth, unless used properly. For example, "thermoelectric" clothing may be able to draw energy from the body but could leave the wearer feeling uncomfortably cold. And those saltwater shoe batteries may prove to be painful for people walking long-distances.
Still, even skeptics like Winkless see a promising future around the corner for these alternative energy generators.
"Energy harvesting pots could mean that boiling your pasta charges your mobile phone," she said. "The vibrations of your washing machine could power wireless sensors—or your TV remote could be powered just by you pressing the buttons."
   

Izgleda da su svi oni koji su tvrdili da nas video igre pripremaju za ratovanje bili u pravu:

  What's it like to pilot a drone? A lot like 'Call of Duty' (http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2012/11/26/whats-it-like-to-pilot-drone-lot-like-call-duty/) 

Quote
Teenagers raised on "Call of Duty" and "Halo" might relish flying a massive Predator drone -- a surprisingly similar activity.
Pilots of unmanned military aircraft use a joystick to swoop down into the battlefield, spot enemy troop movements, and snap photos of terror suspects, explained John Hamby, a former military commander who led surveillance missions during the Iraq War.
"You're always maneuvering the airplane to get a closer look," Hamby told FoxNews.com. "You're constantly searching for the bad guys and targets of interest. When you do find something that is actionable, you're a hero."
Yet a new study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) found real-life drone operators can become easily bored. Only one participant paid attention during an entire test session, while even top performers spent a third of the time checking a cellphone or catching up on the latest novel.       That's a problem, said Mary Cummings, an associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT. Not being cognizant of the battlefield means drone operators could miss important mission objectives.
Fortunately, there's an answer: making the actual drone mission even more like a video game.
"When there was a lot going on, people did very well," she told FoxNews.com. "When there was nothing going on they did much worse. When it's boring most of the time, most do not pay attention."
Cummings -- who goes by the name Missy -- is a former F-18 pilot herself, and was surprised by the results of the drone study, which was sponsored by the U.S. Navy. She pointed out that the FAA insists all aircraft personnel doing monitor and surveillance work should be in a sterile environment, without any distractions. Yet, drone reconnaissance mission can last up to 24 hours, and a sterile environment could be making things worse.
She says those who had more to do during the study performed better. Interestingly, she also found operators who had more experience playing video games did worse -- they could not deal with the boredom as easily, particularly during long missions.
And a drone pilot clearly has to pay attention. There are long periods when an operator might not see anything, and those types of missions could become dull. "Someone has to watch that camera or you won't catch the bad guys before they catch us," Hamby told FoxNews.com.
Cummings says the secret could be to make drone missions work more like a video game. That's the opposite of the trend in the automotive industry, where distracted driving can lead to more frequent accidents and higher fatalities.
"We need to rethink this, because some level of distraction actually helps," she said. The lessons about providing more to do when flying a drone can also translate to other fields, she said. For example, those in charge of nuclear safety at power plants might be better off not staring at a bland screen all day. Even those in the medical field could benefit from having objectives akin to a video game.
Hamby said the younger generation of video gamers is well-suited for real military combat. In fact, the controller for some surveillance drones is modeled after a video game controller. He also says many of the objectives look and function the same. The real military use a touchscreen notebook to control drones; you can land one by touching an airstrip, and the drones essentially fly on their own.
Travis Getz, a spokesperson for Tom Clancy Games and the company's liaison with the U.S. military, said games like "Ghost Recon: Future Soldier" are not designed to simulate real drone missions. But they do have the same ambiance as a theater of war: finding the enemy, relaying strategic initiatives.
"The result of interacting with drones for gamers and trained military operators is the same – they get more ways to view and interact with an area or situation from multiple angles or with vision enhancements like thermal or infrared," he told FoxNews.com. The benefit might not be more busy work for an operator, but would increase the thoroughness of the surveillance and the results.
For now, the MIT findings are too new for any immediate action – there are no plans to start porting the military's drone control screens to the Nintendo Wii. But Cummings says we know more about how to make sure people are paying attention, and not just visiting the snack room.   

Donald Sherman orders a pizza using a talking computer, Dec 4, 1974 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94d_h_t2QAA#)

Tedd Roberts - On the Road to the Brainships: A look at the Current Science of Interfacing the Brain (http://www.baen.com/brainships.asp)

(via Baen)


tl;dr:

QuoteScience fiction is around us every day. Neuroscientists are probably halfway to the technology required for BrainShips and Cyborgs. Fortunately for those of us in the field, we have both the optimistic and cautionary tales of SF to guide us. Once we accomplish these goals, we'll just have to rely on SF to establish the next set of goals – a bit further out!

http://www.vesti-online.com/Vesti/Svet/306339/Guglov-satelit-iz-svemira-snimio-ubistvo (http://www.vesti-online.com/Vesti/Svet/306339/Guglov-satelit-iz-svemira-snimio-ubistvo)

да не бих сад отварао нову тему, ово је блиско у будућности па може и бити део теме:

Deep Space Industries to begin asteroid prospecting by 2015, mining by 2020 (http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/146366-deep-space-industries-to-begin-asteroid-prospecting-by-2015-mining-by-2020)


у другом пасусу још и каже:

QuoteThe news brief will be broadcast from the Santa Monica Museum of Flying via Spacevidcast and will detail DSI's plan for a two-pronged approach. Initially, 55-pound (25kg) "FireFly" cubesats will be launched on journeys lasting from two to six months

:lol:

A jesam li pomenuo da je prva žena kojoj je uspešno presađena materica... možda već i trudna? (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/13/first-woman-with-womb-transplant-pregnant_n_3076684.html)

via Huffington Post


iliti


Woman Is Pregnant Following First Womb Transplant (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZfNvc2Z8a8#ws)

A šta reći na ovo:

A Boy And His Atom: The World's Smallest Movie (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSCX78-8-q0#ws)



i kako je napravljen:

Moving Atoms: Making The World's Smallest Movie (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xA4QWwaweWA#ws)


+ ekstra

IBM Atomic Shorts: Ripples on the surface (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZ6Hv_du2Zo#ws)




(ako sam dobro shvatio, koristili su molekule ugljen-monoksida (možda i grešim), a svugde pominju atome. To na stranu, i dalje je kul)

The effects of DBS on the motor symptoms of Parkinson's Disease (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBh2LxTW0s0#)

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-204_162-57590253/deaf-boy-with-auditory-brain-stem-implant-stunned-after-hearing-dad-for-first-time/ (http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-204_162-57590253/deaf-boy-with-auditory-brain-stem-implant-stunned-after-hearing-dad-for-first-time/)

3-year-old boy is hearing the world for the first time, thanks to an auditory brain stem implant. "He likes sound," young Grayson's mom Nicole Clamp, said to CBS affiliate WBTV in Charlotte, N.C. (http://www.wbtv.com/story/22626059/three-year-old-charlotte-boy-hears-for-the-first-time) "He enjoys the stimulus, the input. He's curious, and he definitely enjoys it."
Grayson Clamp was born without his cochlear nerves, or the auditory nerve that carries the sound signal from the cochlea in the inner ear to the brain. His parents tried giving him a cochlear implant, but it did not work.
They then enrolled Grayson in a research trial at University of North Carolina Hospitals in Chapel Hill, N.C. Three weeks ago, he became the first child in the U.S. to receive an auditory brain stem implant.
The procedure involves placing a microchip on the brain stem to bypass the cochlear nerves altogether. The person perceives and processes sound, which travel through tubes in his ear.
  (https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.i.com.com%2Fcnwk.1d%2Fi%2Ftim2%2F2013%2F06%2F20%2FGRAYSON_220x157.jpg&hash=f4016466579e6df5afd44fd97014a4c7cb498810) Grayson Clamp after his procedure at the University of North Carolina Hospitals in Chapel Hill, N.C. Grayson was the first child in the U.S. to receive anauditory brain stem implant.
/  Len Clamp/UNC School of Medicine   Dr. Craig Buchman, Grayson's head and neck surgeon at UNC, explained to CBSNews.com that the devices were made several years ago for adults who have tumors in their cochlear nerves, but it has never been approved for use in children in the United States.. While the implants were able to give back some hearing to the adults that received them, they were not as effective as cochlear implants.
However, Buchman's team's theory was that if the auditory brain stem implant was put in a young child, they may be better at processing the sounds.
"One of the reasons we really were interested in this study, children have enormous potential because of their brain plasticity," he said. "They have enormous potential to interpret sounds.... I don't know what he hears and how he's going to use it, but only time will tell."
Grayson was the first chosen because he had high cognitive abilities and used cued speech, a visual system based on phonetics used to communicate. That way, doctors could see if he was hearing anything and responding to sound stimuli.
When he heard his father calling him for the first time, his face lit up with shock. Buchman said he was pleased with Grayson's responses.
The child still has to go in for frequent checkups to fine tune the device in order to give him the best hearing possible.
"We don't know exactly what it's like for him," Nicole explained. "We don't know exactly what he hears. His brain is still trying organize itself to use sound."
In total, Buchman's team has evaluated 10 children who all have similar problems with missing nerves. Right now, they're limiting the study to younger children who don't have that many additional health or cognitive issues to see what the potential of the device is. If they are successful, they are hoping that older children who haven't learned how to speak because of their hearing problems may be given a chance to finally hear and talk.
As for Grayson, he's already benefiting from his new hearing abilities.
"It's been phenomenal for us," his father Len Clamp said to WBTV.

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-05/these-self-assembling-nanoflowers-are-as-beautiful-as-they-are-tiny (http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-05/these-self-assembling-nanoflowers-are-as-beautiful-as-they-are-tiny)

(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.popsci.com%2Ffiles%2Fimagecache%2Fphotogallery_image%2Farticles%2Fnanocarnation.jpg&hash=9564323cf616870771f4a74e78b4035e5fbf4f78)


A nanorose may not smell as sweet as an organic one, but the red petals on this micron-scale flower are unquestionably just as beautiful. At Harvard University (https://www.seas.harvard.edu/news-events/press-releases/beautiful-flowers-self-assemble-in-a-beaker), materials scientists have perfected an underwater chemical reaction that results in these gorgeous, self-assembling nanoflowers.
The microscopic structures are crystals that build themselves, one molecule at a time, on a glass surface submerged in a beaker of water, barium chloride, and sodium silicate. When carbon dioxide from the air naturally dissolves in the water, it sets off the chemical reaction that causes the crystals to form.
Though the colors in these images are artificial, the intricate shapes of the nanoflowers are very real. The twists, curves, and ruffles are created when the scientists shift the components of the chemical reaction; the crystals naturally "grow" toward or away from various chemical gradients. For example, the broad-leaf shapes you'll see in the gallery formed in solutions with extra carbon dioxide.
"When you look through the electron microscope, it really feels a bit like you're diving in the ocean, seeing huge fields of coral and sponges," says Wim L. Noorduin, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard and lead author of the paper in Science. "Sometimes I forget to take images because it's so nice to explore."
Click here (http://www.popsci.com/science/gallery/2013-05/these-self-assembling-nanoflowers-are-most-beautiful-nanostructures-ever) to see more of these amazing creations.

Pokojni Steva se prevrce u grobu  xwink2

http://localflux.net/PostView.aspx?id=365 (http://localflux.net/PostView.aspx?id=365)

SPACEY MUSIC

Astrophysics graduate student Wanda Diaz-Merced has been converting x-rays from a distant star into blues, jazz and classical music, with the work of her 'Star Music' project.


Wanda grew up with an enthusiasm for science and space, but in her early 20s, as a physics student at the University of Puerto Rico, her vision swiftly deteriorated due to diabetes. When she spent time in an astrophysical observatory, though, and inadvertently heard the hiss and pops of the signals collected by a radio telescope, she realized that there might be a way she could rely solely on her hearing to interpret data.

Since, she's teamed with computer scientists to use NASA-developed software called xSonify—which converts scientific data of all kinds into synthesized musical sounds, a process called sonification (PDF)—to analyze solar flares on the sun, as well as X-rays coming from the EX Hydrae star system. This software allows users to customize how the data are represented, using pitch, volume, rhythm and even different types of instruments to distinguish between different values and intensities in the electromagnetic spectrum detected by spacecraft over time.

Diaz-Merced listens to these data streams to pick out irregularities and changes in the sounds, and has even convinced some colleagues to adopt the software, because listening while watching data in chart form can help them become more attuned to subtle patterns in the data. "I can listen for harmonics, melodies, relative high- and low-frequency ranges," she told Physics Today last year. In one case, she said, "I was able to hear [previously overlooked] very low frequencies from gamma-ray bursts. I had been listening to the time series and said to the physicists in charge, 'Let's listen to the power spectra.'"

In its raw form, the sounds she listens to seem more like noise than music:

Blues - Project X-Ray Hydra (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVQsj-pESTE#ws)

However, check out the textured completed blues track:

Komposition Blues - Project X-Ray Hydra (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGul8wym_jw#ws)

Of course, there's an element of abstraction in all these tracks, and with even the raw sounds produced by xSonify that Diaz-Merced uses to conduct her research. But that doesn't mean that her research—or Studtrucker's music—is any less representitive of phenomena in space than the work of conventional astronomers.

As Ari Epstein put it in a terrific Studio 360 segment on Diaz-Merced's research, "Stars and planets don't give off sounds as they move through the sky. But they don't draw lines on graphs either. All of these things—graphs, numbers, music—they're all just tools we can use to understand a complicated universe."

Source: blogs.smithsonianmag.com

www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZrjXSsfxMQ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZrjXSsfxMQ#ws)

Uzgred, meni nije najjasnije zašto i kuda je Gaff nestanuo, ali ako ovo čita, ja ću ceniti da se vrati na forum i nastavi da nas snabdeva korisnim linkovima.

Živi bili pa videli.


Nego, kako vam se čini ovo sa NeverWet-om. Ludačka stvar. Naprskaš nešto, i voda ne prilazi. A izgleda ni uljaste stvari.


Zbogom brisači, zamagljene naočari, i ko zna šta sve još...

'I will always remember the exact spot I sprayed my boots with NeverWet'

(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FMIF8XXu.jpg&hash=3993bdd8be0dfe40deed5daed94d94a8ada208b1)

 August 16, 1964 (http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/23/lifetimes/asi-v-fair.html)Visit to the World's Fair of 2014 (http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/23/lifetimes/asi-v-fair.html)By  ISAAC ASIMOV (http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/23/lifetimes/asi-v-fair.html)

QuoteThe New York World's Fair of 1964 is dedicated to "Peace Through Understanding."  Its glimpses of the world of tomorrow rule out thermonuclear warfare.  And why not?  If a thermonuclear war takes place, the future will not be worth discussing.  So let the missiles slumber eternally on their pads and let us observe what may come in the nonatomized world of the future.
What is to come, through the fair's eyes at least, is wonderful.  The direction in which man is traveling is viewed with buoyant hope, nowhere more so than at the General Electric pavilion. There the audience whirls through four scenes, each populated by cheerful, lifelike dummies that move and talk with a facility that, inside of a minute and a half, convinces you they are alive.
The scenes, set in or about 1900, 1920, 1940 and 1960, show the advances of electrical appliances and the changes they are bringing to living.  I enjoyed it hugely and only regretted that they had not carried the scenes into the future.  What will life be like, say, in 2014 A.D., 50 years from now? What will the World's Fair of 2014 be like?
I don't know, but I can guess.
One thought that occurs to me is that men will continue to withdraw from nature in order to create an environment that will suit them better.  By 2014, electroluminescent panels will be in common use.  Ceilings and walls will glow softly, and in a variety of colors that will change at the touch of a push button.
Windows need be no more than an archaic touch, and even when present will be polarized to block out the harsh sunlight.  The degree of opacity of the glass may even be made to alter automatically in accordance with the intensity of the light falling upon it.
There is an underground house at the fair which is a sign of the future.  if its windows are not polarized, they can nevertheless alter the "scenery" by changes in lighting.  Suburban houses underground, with easily controlled temperature, free from the vicissitudes of weather, with air cleaned and light controlled, should be fairly common.  At the New York World's Fair of 2014, General Motors' "Futurama" may well display vistas of underground cities complete with light- forced vegetable gardens.  The surface, G.M. will argue, will be given over to large-scale agriculture, grazing and parklands, with less space wasted on actual human occupancy.
Gadgetry will continue to relieve mankind of tedious jobs.  Kitchen units will be devised that will prepare "automeals," heating water and converting it to coffee; toasting bread; frying, poaching or scrambling eggs, grilling bacon, and so on.  Breakfasts will be "ordered" the night before to be ready by a specified hour the next morning.  Complete lunches and dinners, with the food semiprepared, will be stored in the freezer until ready for processing.  I suspect, though, that even in 2014 it will still be advisable to have a small corner in the kitchen unit where the more individual meals can be prepared by hand, especially when company is coming.
Robots will neither be common nor very good in 2014, but they will be in existence.  The I.B.M. exhibit at the present fair has no robots but it is dedicated to computers, which are shown in all their amazing complexity, notably in the task of translating Russian into English.  If machines are that smart today, what may not be in the works 50 years hence?  It will be such computers, much miniaturized, that will serve as the "brains" of robots.  In fact, the I.B.M. building at the 2014 World's Fair may have, as one of its prime exhibits, a robot housemaid*large, clumsy, slow- moving but capable of general picking-up, arranging, cleaning and manipulation of various appliances.  It will undoubtedly amuse the fairgoers to scatter debris over the floor in order to see the robot lumberingly remove it and classify it into "throw away" and "set aside."  (Robots for gardening work will also have made their appearance.)
General Electric at the 2014 World's Fair will be showing 3-D movies of its "Robot of the Future," neat and streamlined, its cleaning appliances built in and performing all tasks briskly.  (There will be a three-hour wait in line to see the film, for some things never change.)
The appliances of 2014 will have no electric cords, of course, for they will be powered by long- lived batteries running on radioisotopes.  The isotopes will not be expensive for they will be by- products of the fission-power plants which, by 2014, will be supplying well over half the power needs of humanity.  But once the isotype batteries are used up they will be disposed of only through authorized agents of the manufacturer.
And experimental fusion-power plant or two will already exist in 2014.  (Even today, a small but genuine fusion explosion is demonstrated at frequent intervals in the G.E. exhibit at the 1964 fair.) Large solar-power stations will also be in operation in a number of desert and semi-desert areas -- Arizona, the Negev, Kazakhstan.  In the more crowded, but cloudy and smoggy areas, solar power will be less practical.  An exhibit at the 2014 fair will show models of power stations in space, collecting sunlight by means of huge parabolic focusing devices and radiating the energy thus collected down to earth.
The world of 50 years hence will have shrunk further.  At the 1964 fair, the G.M. exhibit depicts, among other things, "road-building factories" in the tropics and, closer to home, crowded highways along which long buses move on special central lanes.  There is every likelihood that highways at least in the more advanced sections of the world*will have passed their peak in 2014; there will be increasing emphasis on transportation  that makes the least possible contact with the surface.  There will be aircraft, of course, but even ground travel will increasingly take to the air*a foot or two off the ground.  Visitors to the 1964 fair can travel there in an "aquafoil," which lifts itself on four stilts and skims over the water with a minimum of friction.  This is surely a stop-gap.  By 2014 the four stilts will have been replaced by four jets of compressed air so that the vehicle will make no contact with either liquid or solid surfaces.
Jets of compressed air will also lift land vehicles off the highways, which, among other things, will minimize paving problems.  Smooth earth or level lawns will do as well as pavements.  Bridges will also be of less importance, since cars will be capable of crossing water on their jets, though local ordinances will discourage the practice.
Much effort will be put into the designing of vehicles with "Robot-brains"*vehicles that can be set for particular destinations and that will then proceed there without interference by the slow reflexes of a human driver.  I suspect one of the major attractions of the 2014 fair will be rides on small roboticized cars which will maneuver in crowds at the two-foot level, neatly and automatically avoiding each other.
For short-range travel, moving sidewalks (with benches on either side, standing room in the center) will be making their appearance in downtown sections.  They will be raised above the traffic. Traffic will continue (on several levels in some places) only because all parking will be off-street and because at least 80 per cent of truck deliveries will be to certain fixed centers at the city's rim. Compressed air tubes will carry goods and materials over local stretches, and the switching devices that will place specific shipments in specific destinations will be one of the city's marvels.
Communications will become sight-sound and you will see as well as hear the person you telephone.  The screen can be used not only to see the people you call but also for studying documents and photographs and reading passages from books.  Synchronous satellites, hovering in space will make it possible for you to direct-dial any spot on earth, including the weather stations in Antarctica (shown in chill splendor as part of the '64 General Motors exhibit).
For that matter, you will be able to reach someone at the moon colonies, concerning which General Motors puts on a display of impressive vehicles (in model form) with large soft tires*intended to negotiate the uneven terrain that may exist on our natural satellite.
Any number of simultaneous conversations between earth and moon can be handled by modulated laser beams, which are easy to manipulate in space.  On earth, however, laser beams will have to be led through plastic pipes, to avoid material and atmospheric interference.  Engineers will still be playing with that problem in 2014.
Conversations with the moon will be a trifle uncomfortable, but the way, in that 2.5 seconds must elapse between statement and answer (it takes light that long to make the round trip).  Similar conversations with Mars will experience a 3.5-minute delay even when Mars is at its closest. However, by 2014, only unmanned ships will have landed on Mars, though a manned expedition will be in the works and in the 2014 Futurama will show a model of an elaborate Martian colony.
As for television, wall screens will have replaced the ordinary set; but transparent cubes will be making their appearance in which three-dimensional viewing will be possible.  In fact, one popular exhibit at the 2014 World's Fair will be such a 3-D TV, built life-size, in which ballet performances will be seen.  The cube will slowly revolve for viewing from all angles.
One can go on indefinitely in this happy extrapolation, but all is not rosy.
As I stood in line waiting to get into the General Electric exhibit at the 1964 fair, I found myself staring at Equitable Life's grim sign blinking out the population of the United States, with the number (over 191,000,000) increasing by 1 every 11 seconds.  During the interval which I spent inside the G.E. pavilion, the American population had increased by nearly 300 and the world's population by 6,000.
In 2014, there is every likelihood that the world population will be 6,500,000,000 and the population of the United States will be 350,000,000.  Boston-to-Washington, the most crowded area of its size on the earth, will have become a single city with a population of over 40,000,000.
Population pressure will force increasing penetration of desert and polar areas.  Most surprising and, in some ways, heartening, 2014 will see a good beginning made in the colonization of the continental shelves.  Underwater housing will have its attractions to those who like water sports, and will undoubtedly encourage the more efficient exploitation of ocean resources, both food and mineral.  General Motors shows, in its 1964 exhibit, the model of an underwater hotel of what might be called mouth-watering luxury.  The 2014 World's Fair will have exhibits showing cities in the deep sea with bathyscaphe liners carrying men and supplies across and into the abyss.
Ordinary agriculture will keep up with great difficulty and there will be "farms" turning to the more efficient micro-organisms.  Processed yeast and algae products will be available in a variety of flavors.  The 2014 fair will feature an Algae Bar at which "mock-turkey" and "pseudosteak" will be served.  It won't be bad at all (if you can dig up those premium prices), but there will be considerable psychological resistance to such an innovation.
Although technology will still keep up with population through 2014, it will be only through a supreme effort and with but partial success.  Not all the world's population will enjoy the gadgety world of the future to the full.  A larger portion than today will be deprived and although they may be better off, materially, than today, they will be further behind when compared with the advanced portions of the world. They will have moved backward, relatively.
Nor can technology continue to match population growth if that remains unchecked.  Consider Manhattan of 1964, which has a population density of 80,000 per square mile at night and of over 100,000 per square mile during the working day.  If the whole earth, including the Sahara, the Himalayan Mountain peaks, Greenland, Antarctica and every square mile of the ocean bottom, to the deepest abyss, were as packed as Manhattan at noon, surely you would agree that no way to support such a population (let alone make it comfortable) was conceivable.  In fact, support would fail long before the World-Manhattan was reached.
Well, the earth's population is now about 3,000,000,000 and is doubling every 40 years.  If this rate of doubling goes unchecked, then a World-Manhattan is coming in just 500 years.  All earth will be a single choked Manhattan by A.D. 2450 and society will collapse long before that!
There are only two general ways of preventing this:  (1) raise the death rate; (2) lower the birth rate. Undoubtedly, the world of A>D. 2014 will have agreed on the latter method.  Indeed, the increasing use of mechanical devices to replace failing hearts and kidneys, and repair stiffening arteries and breaking nerves will have cut the death rate still further and have lifted the life expectancy in some parts of the world to age 85.
There will, therefore, be a worldwide propaganda drive in favor of birth control by rational and humane methods and, by 2014, it will undoubtedly have taken serious effect.  The rate of increase of population will have slackened*but, I suspect, not sufficiently.
One of the more serious exhibits at the 2014 World's Fair, accordingly, will be a series of lectures, movies and documentary material at the World Population Control Center (adults only; special showings for teen-agers).
The situation will have been made the more serious by the advances of automation.  The world of A.D. 2014 will have few routine jobs that cannot be done better by some machine than by any human being.  Mankind will therefore have become largely a race of machine tenders.  Schools will have to be oriented in this direction.  Part of the General Electric exhibit today consists of a school of the future in which such present realities as closed-circuit TV and programmed tapes aid the teaching process.  It is not only the techniques of teaching that will advance, however, but also the subject matter that will change.  All the high-school students will be taught the fundamentals of computer technology will become proficient in binary arithmetic and will be trained to perfection in the use of the computer languages that will have developed out of those like the contemporary "Fortran" (from "formula translation").
Even so, mankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom, a disease spreading more widely each year and growing in intensity.  This will have serious mental, emotional and sociological consequences, and I dare say that psychiatry will be far and away the most important medical specialty in 2014.  The lucky few who can be involved in creative work of any sort will be the true elite of mankind, for they alone will do more than serve a machine.
Indeed, the most somber speculation I can make about A.D. 2014 is that in a society of enforced leisure, the most glorious single word in the vocabulary will have become work!

Lol, fail.

Videli ste kako Elon Musk korača u budućnost juzer interfejsa?

The Future of Design (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNqs_S-zEBY#)

Doduše, možda je trebalo da reč budućnost stavim pod navodnike. Ipak je jasno da bi čovek koji bi da osam sati radi ovo na poslu morao da ima proporcionalnu snagu king konga na steroidima...

Hmmm, deluje kao da smo potrošili skoro sve rezerve Plutonijuma 238 a bez njega, uz sadašnju tehnologiju, možemo da se pozdravimo sa daljim istraživanjem kosmosa...
NASA's Plutonium Problem Could End Deep-Space Exploration (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/09/plutonium-238-problem/)

Quote
In 1977, the Voyager 1 spacecraft left Earth on a five-year mission to explore Jupiter and Saturn. Thirty-six years later, the car-size probe is still exploring, still sending its findings home. It has now put more than 19 billion kilometers between itself and the sun. Last week NASA announced that Voyager 1 had become the first man-made object to reach interstellar space.

The distance this craft has covered is almost incomprehensible. It's so far away that it takes more than 17 hours for its signals to reach Earth. Along the way, Voyager 1 gave scientists their first close-up looks at Saturn, took the first images of Jupiter's rings, discovered many of the moons circling those planets and revealed that Jupiter's moon Io has active volcanoes. Now the spacecraft is discovering what the edge of the solar system is like, piercing the heliosheath where the last vestiges of the sun's influence are felt and traversing the heliopause where cosmic currents overcome the solar wind. Voyager 1 is expected to keep working until 2025 when it will finally run out of power.

None of this would be possible without the spacecraft's three batteries filled with plutonium-238. In fact, Most of what humanity knows about the outer planets came back to Earth on plutonium power. Cassini's ongoing exploration of Saturn, Galileo's trip to Jupiter, Curiosity's exploration of the surface of Mars, and the 2015 flyby of Pluto by the New Horizons spacecraft are all fueled by the stuff. The characteristics of this metal's radioactive decay make it a super-fuel. More importantly, there is no other viable option. Solar power is too weak, chemical batteries don't last, nuclear fission systems are too heavy. So, we depend on plutonium-238, a fuel largely acquired as by-product of making nuclear weapons.

But there's a problem: We've almost run out.

"We've got enough to last to the end of this decade. That's it," said Steve Johnson, a nuclear chemist at Idaho National Laboratory. And it's not just the U.S. reserves that are in jeopardy. The entire planet's stores are nearly depleted.

The country's scientific stockpile has dwindled to around 36 pounds. To put that in perspective, the battery that powers NASA's Curiosity rover, which is currently studying the surface of Mars, contains roughly 10 pounds of plutonium, and what's left has already been spoken for and then some. The implications for space exploration are dire: No more plutonium-238 means not exploring perhaps 99 percent of the solar system. In effect, much of NASA's $1.5 billion-a-year (and shrinking (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/02/presidents-2013-budget/)) planetary science program is running out of time. The nuclear crisis is so bad that affected researchers know it simply as "The Problem."

But it doesn't have to be that way. The required materials, reactors, and infrastructure are all in place to create plutonium-238 (which, unlike plutonium-239, is practically impossible to use for a nuclear bomb). In fact, the U.S. government recently approved spending about $10 million a year (http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-03/first-time-cold-war-us-making-plutonium-238) to reconstitute production capabilities the nation shuttered almost two decades ago. In March, the DOE even produced a tiny amount (http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-03/first-time-cold-war-us-making-plutonium-238) of fresh plutonium inside a nuclear reactor in Tennessee.

It's a good start, but the crisis is far from solved. Political ignorance and shortsighted squabbling, along with false promises from Russia, and penny-wise management of NASA's ever-thinning budget still stand in the way of a robust plutonium-238 production system. The result: Meaningful exploration of the solar system has been pushed to a cliff's edge. One ambitious space mission could deplete remaining plutonium stockpiles, and any hiccup in a future supply chain could undermine future missions.

**********

The only natural supplies of plutonium-238 vanished eons before the Earth formed some 4.6 billion years ago. Exploding stars forge the silvery metal, but its half-life, or time required for 50 percent to disappear through decay, is just under 88 years.

Fortunately, we figured out how to produce it ourselves — and to harness it to create a remarkably persistent source of energy. Like other radioactive materials, plutonium-238 decays because its atomic structure is unstable. When an atom's nucleus spontaneously decays, it fires off a helium core at high speed while leaving behind a uranium atom. These helium bullets, called alpha radiation, collide en masse with nearby atoms within a lump of plutonium — a material twice as dense as lead. The energy can cook a puck of plutonium-238 to nearly 1,260 degrees Celsius. To turn that into usable power, you wrap the puck with thermoelectrics that convert heat to electricity. Voila: You've got a battery that can power a spacecraft for decades.

"It's like a magic isotope. It's just right," said Jim Adams, (http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/people/profile.cfm?Code=AdamsJ) NASA's deputy chief technologist and former deputy director of the space agency's planetary science division.

U.S. production came primarily from two nuclear laboratories that created plutonium-238 as a byproduct of making bomb-grade plutonium-239. The Hanford Site in Washington state left the plutonium-238 mixed into a cocktail of nuclear wastes. The Savannah River Site in South Carolina, however, extracted and refined more than 360 pounds during the Cold War to power espionage tools (http://vimeo.com/8681589), spy satellites, and dozens of NASA's pluckiest spacecraft.

By 1988, with the Iron Curtain full of holes, the U.S. and Russia began to dismantle wartime nuclear facilities. Hanford and Savannah River no longer produced any plutonium-238. But Russia continued to harvest the material by processing nuclear reactor fuel at a nuclear industrial complex called Mayak (http://goo.gl/maps/dQEd). The Russians sold their first batch, weighing 36 pounds, to the U.S. in 1993 for more than $45,000 per ounce. Russia had become the planet's sole supplier, but it soon fell behind on orders. In 2009, it reneged on a deal to sell 22 pounds (http://www.spacenews.com/civil/091211-russia-withholding-plutonium-needed-nasa.html) to the U.S.

Whether or not Russia has any material left or can still create some is uncertain. "What we do know is that they're not willing to sell it anymore," said Alan Newhouse (http://www.arnewhouse.com/), a retired nuclear space consultant who spearheaded the first purchase of Russian plutonium-238. "One story I've heard ... is that they don't have anything left to sell."

By 2005, according a Department of Energy report (http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2013/09/final72005faqs.pdf) (.pdf), the U.S. government owned 87 pounds, of which roughly two-thirds was designated for national security projects, likely to power deep-sea espionage hardware. The DOE would not disclose to WIRED what is left today, but scientists close to the issue say just 36 pounds remain earmarked for NASA.

That's enough for the space agency to launch a few small deep-space missions (http://discovery.nasa.gov/program.cfml) before 2020. A twin of the Curiosity rover is planned to lift off for Mars in 2020 and will require nearly a third of the stockpile. After that, NASA's interstellar exploration program is left staring into a void — especially for high-profile, plutonium-hungry missions, like the proposed Jupiter Europa Orbiter (http://opfm.jpl.nasa.gov/europajupitersystemmissionejsm/jupitereuropaorbiterconcept/). To seek signs of life around Jupiter's icy moon Europa, such a spacecraft could require more than 47 pounds of plutonium.

"The supply situation is already impacting mission planning," said Alice Caponiti, a nuclear engineer who leads the DOE's efforts to restart plutonium-238 production. "If you're planning a mission that's going to take eight years to plan, the first thing you're going to want to know is if you have power."

Many of the eight deep-space robotic missions that NASA had envisioned over the next 15 years have already been delayed or canceled. Even more missions — some not yet even formally proposed — are silent casualties of NASA's plutonium poverty. Since 1994, scientists have pleaded with lawmakers for the money to restart production. The DOE believes a relatively modest $10 to 20 million in funding each year through 2020 could yield an operation capable of making between 3.3 and 11 pounds of plutonium-238 annually — plenty to keep a steady stream of spacecraft in business.

**********

In 2012, a line item in NASA's $17-billion budget fed $10 million in funding toward an experiment to create a tiny amount of plutonium-238. The goals: gauge how much could be made, estimate full-scale production costs, and simply prove the U.S. could pull it off again. It was half of the money requested by NASA and the DOE, the space agency's partner in the endeavor (the Atomic Energy Act forbids NASA to manufacture plutonium-238). The experiment may last seven more years and cost between $85 and $125 million.

At Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, nuclear scientists have used the High Flux Isotope Reactor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Flux_Isotope_Reactor) to produce a few micrograms of plutonium-238. A fully reconstituted plutonium program described in the DOE's latest plan (http://energy.gov/nepa/downloads/eis-0310-sa-02-supplement-analysis), released this week, would also utilize a second reactor west of Idaho Falls, called the Advanced Test Reactor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Test_Reactor).

That facility is located on the 890-square-mile nuclear ranch of Idaho National Laboratory. The scrub of the high desert rolls past early morning visitors as the sun crests the Teton Range. Armed guards stop and inspect vehicles at a roadside outpost, waving those with the proper credentials toward a reactor complex fringed with barbed wire and electrified fences.

Beyond the last security checkpoint is a warehouse-sized, concrete-floored room. Yellow lines painted on the floor cordon off what resembles an aboveground swimming pool capped with a metal lid. A bird's-eye view reveals four huge, retractable metal slabs; jump through one and you'd plunge into 36 feet of water that absorbs radiation. Halfway to the bottom is the reactor's 4-foot-tall core, its four-leaf clover shape dictated by slender, wedge-shaped bars of uranium. "That's where you'd stick your neptunium," nuclear chemist Steve Johnson said, pointing to a diagram of the radioactive clover.

Neptunium, a direct neighbor to plutonium on the periodic table and a stable byproduct of Cold War-era nuclear reactors, is the material from which plutonium-238 is most easily made. In Johnson's arrangement, engineers pack tubes with neptunium-237 and slip them into the reactor core. Every so often an atom of neptunium-237 absorbs a neutron emitted by the core's decaying uranium, later shedding an electron to become plutonium-238. A year or two later — after harmful isotopes vanish — technicians could dissolve the tubes in acid, remove the plutonium, and recycle the neptunium into new targets.

The inescapable pace of radioactive decay and limited reactor space mean it may take five to seven years to create 3.3 pounds of battery-ready plutonium. Even if full production reaches that rate, NASA needs to squeeze every last watt out of what will inevitably always be a rather small stockpile.

The standard-issue power source, called a multi-mission thermoelectric generator — the kind that now powers the Curiosity rover — won't cut it for space exploration's future. "They're trustworthy, but they use a heck of a lot of plutonium," Johnson said.

In other words, NASA doesn't just need new plutonium. It needs a new battery.

**********

In a cluttered basement at NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, metal cages and transparent plastic boxes house a menagerie of humming devices. Many look like stainless-steel barbells about a meter long and riddled with wires; others resemble white crates the size of two-drawer filing cabinets.

The unpretentious machines are prototypes of NASA's next-generation nuclear power system, called the Advanced Stirling Radioisotope Generator (http://microgravity.grc.nasa.gov/SSPO/ASRG/). It's shaping up to be a radically different, more efficient nuclear battery than any before it.

On the outside, the machines are motionless. Inside is a flurry of heat-powered motion (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dizf5OanlzY) driven by the Stirling cycle, developed in 1816 by the Scottish clergyman Robert Stirling. Gasoline engines burn fuel to rapidly expand air that pushes pistons, but Stirling converters need only a heat gradient. The greater the difference between a Stirling engine's hot and cold parts, the faster its pistons hum. When heat warms one end of a sealed chamber containing helium, the gas expands, pushing a magnet-laden piston through a tube of coiled wire to generate electricity. The displaced, cooling gas then moves back to the hot side, sucking the piston backward to restart the cycle.

"Nothing is touching anything. That's the whole beauty of the converter," said Lee Mason, one of several NASA engineers crowded into the basement. Their pistons float like air hockey pucks on the cycling helium gas.

For every 100 watts of heat generated, the Stirling generator converts more than 30 watts into electricity. That's nearly five times better than the nuclear battery powering Curiosity. In effect, the generator can use one-fourth of the plutonium while boosting electrical output by at least 25 percent. Less plutonium also means these motors weigh two-thirds less than Curiosity's 99-pound battery — a big difference for spacecraft on 100 million-mile-or-more journeys. Curiosity was the biggest, heaviest spacecraft NASA could send to Mars at the time, with a vast majority of its mass dedicated to a safe landing — not science. Reducing weight expands the possibilities for advanced instruments on future missions.

But the Stirling generator's relatively complicated technology, while crucial to the design, worries some space scientists. "There are people who are very concerned that this unit has moving parts," said John Hamley (http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/about/bios/hamley_bio.html), manager of NASA Glenn's nuclear battery program. The concern is that the motion might interfere with spacecraft instruments that must be sensitive enough to map gravity fields, electromagnetism, and other subtle phenomena in space.

As a workaround, each generator uses two Stirling converters sitting opposite each other. An onboard computer constantly synchronizes their movements to cancel out troublesome vibrations. To detect and correct design flaws, engineers have abused their generator prototypes in vacuum chambers, assaulted them on shaking tables, and barraged them with powerful blasts of radiation and magnetism.

But NASA typically requires new technologies to be tested for one and a half expected lifetimes before flying them in space. For the Stirling generator, that would take 25 years. Earnest testing began in 2001, cutting the delay to 13 years– but that's longer than NASA can wait: In 2008, only one of 10 nuclear-powered missions called for the device. By 2010, seven of eight deep-space missions planned through 2027 required them.

To speed things up, Hamley and his team run a dozen different units at a time. The oldest device has operated almost continuously for nearly 10 years while the newest design has churned since 2009. The combined data on the Stirling generators totals more than 50 years, enough for simulations to reliably fast-forward a model's wear-and-tear. So far, so good. "Nothing right now is a show-stopper," Hamley said. His team is currently building two flight-worthy units, plus a third for testing on the ground (Hamley expects Johnson's team in Idaho to fuel it sometime next year).

For all of the technology's promise, however, it "won't solve this problem," Johnson said. Even if the Stirling generator is used, plutonium-238 supplies will only stretch through 2022.

Any hiccups in funding for plutonium-238 production could put planetary science into a tailspin and delay, strip down, or smother nuclear-powered missions. The outlook among scientists is simultaneously optimistic and rattled.

The reason: It took countless scientists and their lobbyists more than 15 years just to get lawmakers' attention. A dire 2009 report (http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12653) about "The Problem," authored by more than five dozen researchers, ultimately helped slip the first earnest funding request into the national budget in 2009. Congressional committees (http://www.appropriations.senate.gov/sc-commerce.cfm) squabbled over if and how to spend $20 million of taxpayers' money — it took them three years to make up their minds.

**********

"There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about plutonium-238," said Jim Adams, the former deputy boss of NASA's planetary science division.

At the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., Adams stares through the glass at the nuclear wonder that powered his generation's space exploration. Amid the fake moon dust sits a model of SNAP-27 (http://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/attm/la.s27.1.html), a plutonium-238-fueled battery that every lunar landing after Apollo 11 to power its science experiments. "My father worked on the Lunar Excursion Model, which that thing was stored on, and it's still up there making power," Adams said.

Just a few steps away is a model of the first Viking Lander, which touched down on Mars in 1976 and began digging for water and life. It found neither. "We didn't dig deep enough (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/martian-ice/)," Adams said. "Just 4 centimeters below the depth that Viking dug was a layer of pristine ice."

One floor up, a model of a Voyager spacecraft (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_program) hangs from the ceiling. The three nuclear power supplies aboard the real spacecraft are what allow Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, to contact the Earth after 36 years. Any other type of power system would have expired decades ago.

The same technology fuels the Cassini spacecraft, which continues to survey Saturn, sending a priceless stream of data and almost-too-fantastic-to believe images of that planet and its many moons. New Horizons' upcoming flyby of Pluto — nine and a half years in the making — wouldn't be possible without a reliable source of nuclear fuel.

The Viking lander needed to dig deeper. Now we do, too.

I Antrfile:

Quote
Is It Safe to Launch Nuclear Batteries?
Anti-nuclear activists often state that just one microscopic particle of plutonium-238 inhaled into the lungs can lead to fatal cancer. There's something to the claim, as pure plutonium-238 — ounce-for-ounce — is 270 times more radioactive than the plutonium-239 inside nuclear warheads. But the real risks to anyone of launching a nuclear battery are frequently mis-represented or misunderstood.
Statisticians compare apples to apples by looking at a threat's severity, likelihood and affected population. An asteroid able to wipe out 1.5 billion people, for example, hits Earth about once about every 500,000 years — so the risk is high-severity, yet low-probability. Nuclear battery disasters, meanwhile, exist as low-severity and low-probability events, even near the launch pad.
Cassini, for example, left Earth with the most plutonium of any spacecraft at 72 pounds . Late in that probe's launch there was about a 1 in 476 chance of plutonium release. If that had happened, fatalities over 50 years from that release would have numbered an estimated 1/25th of a person per the safety design of its nuclear batteries (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/09/nuclear-battery-tests/). The overall risk of cancer to a person near the launch pad during an accident was estimated at 7 in 100,000. Beyond that zone, risk was even lower.
Statisticians also considered a second hypothetical and potentially dangerous event with Cassini. To get to Saturn, the spacecraft swung back toward and flew within 600 miles of Earth, zooming by at tens of thousands of miles per hour. The chance of releasing plutonium then was less than 1 in a million. If a release of plutonium occurred, statisticians estimated it might cause 120 cancer fatalities — for the whole planet — over 50 years. By contrast, natural background radiation likely claims a million lives a year, and lightning strikes about 10,000 lives.
A launch accident with NASA's Curiosity rover had a roughly 1 in 250 chance of releasing plutonium. But the low chance of cancer fatalities brought individual risk down to about 1 in 5.8 million. "I feel that they're completely safe," said Ryan Bechtel, DOE's nuclear battery safety manager. "My entire family was there at Curiosity's launch site."
 

Wired ima tekst o beskućniku koji živi od gledanja reklama po Internetu a zaradu uzima u bitcoinima.

Homeless, Unemployed, and Surviving on Bitcoins (http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/09/bitcoin-homeless/all/)

Quote

Jesse Angle is homeless, living on the streets of Pensacola, Florida. Sometimes he spends the night at a local church. Other nights, he sleeps behind a building in the heart of the city, underneath a carport that protects him from the rain.

Each morning, he wakes up, grabs some food, and makes his way to Martin Luther King Plaza, a downtown park built where the trolley tracks used to run. He likes this park because his friends hang out there too, and it's a good place to pick up some spending money. But he doesn't panhandle. He uses the internet.

The park offers free wireless access, and with his laptop, Angle watches YouTube videos in exchange for bitcoins, the world's most popular digital currency.

For every video he watches, Angle gets 0.00004 bitcoins, or about half a cent, thanks to a service, called BitcoinGet (http://www.bitcoinget.com/), that shamelessly drives artificial traffic to certain online clips. He can watch up to 12 videos a day, which gets him to about six cents.* And he can beef up this daily take with Bitcoin Tapper (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bitcointapper&hl=en), a mobile app that doles out about 0.000133 bitcoins a day — a couple of pennies — if he just taps on a digital icon over and over again. Like the YouTube service, this app isn't exactly the height of internet sophistication — it seeks to capture your attention so it can show you ads — but for Angle, it's a good way to keep himself fed.

Angle, 42, is on food stamps, but that never quite gets him through the month. The internet provides the extra money he needs to buy a meal each and every day. Since setting up a bitcoin wallet about three or four months ago, he has earned somewhere between four or five bitcoins — about $500 to $630 today — through YouTube videos, Bitcoin Tapper, and the occasional donation. And when he does odd jobs for people around Pensacola — here in the physical world — he still gets paid in bitcoin, just because it's easier and safer. He doesn't have to worry as much about getting robbed.

Jesse Angle isn't your average homeless person. But he shows that bitcoin is changing the world in more ways than you might imagine (http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/?p=47251). Some believe it could provide a major boost to the country's 640,000 homeless (http://www.endhomelessness.org/pages/snapshot_of_homelessness), not only in providing extra pocket change for those on the street, but by helping urban homeless shelters more quickly secure donations for hot meals, beds, and blankets.

Angle learned about bitcoin through Sean's Outpost (https://www.smore.com/feux-sean-s-outpost), a Pensacola charity that has raised about $32,000 through a program that solicits donations in bitcoins rather than American dollars. So far, it has received donations from 25 different countries, and this has bought almost 16,000 meals for Pensacola homeless.

"Bitcoin beats the shit out of regular money," says Jason King, the founder of Sean's Outpost. "We've resonated so well with people because it's direct action. There's no chaff between donation and helping people." That could change, as regulators in the U.S. put the clamps on the use of bitcoin (http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/09/ebay_bitcoins/). But for now, in the world of the homeless, it reduces chaff in more ways than one.

Jesse Angle says bitcoins are harder to come by than spare change shared by people walking down the streets. But there are other reasons for him to go digital.

"It's a lot less embarrassing," he says. "You don't have to put yourself out there." And unlike panhandling in Pensacola, using an app like Bitcoin Tapper won't put him on the wrong side of the law. This past May, Pensacola — where Angle has lived since April — passed an ordinance that bans not only panhandling (http://www.cityofpensacola.com/sites/cityofpensacola.com/files/meeting_agenda/061313_ccmtg.pdf) but camping on city property (http://www.pnj.com/article/20130524/news01/305240023/Camping%20ban%20passes%20despite%20opposition).

Yes, you need a smartphone to earn bitcoins — or some other device that gets you onto the internet. But the homeless carry mobile devices more often than you might expect. Angle's homeless friends Chris Kantola and Paul Harrison also have phones, and they aren't unlike people living on the streets in other parts of the country. At San Francisco's Tenderloin Technology Lab — a nonprofit that provides the city's poor and homeless access to computers — organizers say that many of its clients use personal phones to connect to the net. Android is the mobile platform of choice.

You also need power, but that's not that hard to come by. When Angle and his pals run out of juice for their phones, they walk from Martin Luther King Plaza to the local Pensacola library, where they can plug into outdoor outlets on the side of the wall.

The bitcoin system could become an equalizer for the country's homeless, a place where the stigma of living on the streets isn't as pronounced. "Homeless people don't like to raise their hands and say they're different," says Mark Horvath, an advocate for using the internet and social media to help end homelessness. "Nobody does." In the bitcoin world, they don't have to.

If you're homeless, the great thing about bitcoin is that you can set up a wallet without an ID or a street address. And once you start filling this wallet, there are plenty of ways of converting bitcoins into cash (http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/?p=47251) and food and other goods, all without identification.

After earning his money with apps like Bitcoin Tapper, Angle turns to another tool called Gyft (http://www.gyft.com/), an Android app that converts his bitcoin reserves into gift cards for places like Papa John's pizza. He can then buy a pie online, have it delivered, and share it with Kantola and Harrison.

The next day, his friends might return the favor. They too have their own bitcoin wallets. "We're kind of the homeless geeks," Angle says. "We all got laptops and smartphones."

Angle used to work as a network engineer and a computer repair technician — as well as a carpenter and a pool cleaning guy, among other jobs — but the work eventually petered out, and he wound up homeless when his roommates moved out of his apartment and he couldn't afford the rent on his own.

After a few months, he got back under a roof, but that didn't last, so he decided to live on the street for a while, rather than yo-yoing between home and homelessness.

He was the first of his group to start using bitcoin. He became a regular at Sean's Outpost, and one day, after Jason King, the organization's founder, mentioned the digital currency, Angle pulled out his Android phone and asked King to help him set up a digital wallet. "When he left," Angle remembers. "I showed my friends which app to get."

King is a longtime fan of bitcoin and its mission to create an online peer-to-peer network for transactions. When he started Sean's Outpost, he didn't set out to help the homeless through the digital currency, but that's what happened. As the value of a bitcoin topped $50, he saw the milestone as an opportunity to prove the nay-sayers wrong, to show them that bitcoin wasn't just the latest geek fad, but something of real value.

In addition to helping people like Angle make their own money through bitcoin, King began soliciting bitcoin donations to Sean's Outpost. "If you give me one bitcoin," he'd say, "I can feed 40 homeless people in Pensacola. That's proof that it has real value."

He took to reddit to advertise this new model, promising to put donor names on each bagged lunch made possible through bitcoin donations. Within 12 hours of launching, he had given out 80 meals — something he couldn't have done so quickly if he'd raised money through more traditional means. Even Paypal, he says, is a dinosaur compared to Bitcoin because it can take days to set up an account, and it saddles people with fees and restrictions. More recently, he started taking donations in Litecoin (http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/08/litecoin/), a digital currency not unlike bitcoin.

Using these new-age money systems, King is also tapping into what you might call the digital nouveau riche — all those people that jumped on digital currency early, when it was dirt cheap, and quickly amassed fortunes. "Some tech guys and nerds like myself who got into it early now have millions," King says. "For that group, it's a very tangible concept to take virtual currencies and help people with it."

Other charity organizations are working along similar lines. Bitcoin100 was started with the sole purpose of encouraging charities to accept bitcoins, and it now counts the Khan Academy (http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/07/ff_khan/) and the Virtual Doctor Project (http://www.virtualdoctors.org/the-vdp-now-accepts-donations-in-internet-currency-bitcoin-2/) among its success stories (http://bitcoin100.org/charities/). A woman named Connie Gallippi has launched the first bitcoin-only charity (http://bitcoinmagazine.com/6011/bitgive-foundation-first-bitcoin-charity-launched/) — the BitGive Foundation — hoping to build a multi-million dollar fund for environmental and health-related causes. And in San Francisco, Project FEED is using bitcoin to accept donations for hoodies (http://bitcoinexaminer.org/you-can-use-bitcoin-to-help-the-san-francisco-homeless-stay-warm-this-winter/) that can clothe the homeless this winter.

Meanwhile, Sean's Outpost has opened something it calls BitHOC (https://www.smore.com/fpa7-sean-s-outpost), the Bitcoin Homeless Outreach Center, a 1200-square-foot facility that doubles as a storage space and homeless shelter. The lease – and some of the food it houses — is paid in bitcoins through a service called Coinbase (https://coinbase.com/about). For gas and other supplies, Sean's Outpost taps Gyft, the giftcard app Jesse Angle and his friends use to purchase pizza.

King has also started recruiting the homeless to build houses for other homeless people to live in, and whenever possible, he's paying them in bitcoin. Just this month, Sean's Outpost announced (http://bitcoinmagazine.com/6939/seans-outpost-announces-satoshi-forest/) Satoshi Forest, which King calls a "sanctuary for the homeless." The $90,000 nine-acre plot will contain multiple homes for the homeless, dubbed BitHouses.

In the first 18 hours after the announcement, redditors (http://www.reddit.com/) donated roughly 10 bitcoins, or two months (http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1m4n2q/another_600_in_tips_raised_for_satoshi_forest_you/)' worth of mortgage payments, and King managed to convince Bob Dale, the property holder, to take the $600 mortgage in bitcoin. This is the only property for which Dale is currently accepting digital currency, but so far, he says, "it's been a good experience because bitcoins have gone up in value, so it's more than I would have gotten in regular dollars."

In the long-term, King wants to morph this into a business in the "buy-one-get-one-free" spirit of Tom's Shoes, Warby Parker, and rubberit (http://www.wired.com/business/2013/08/rubberit/). Jesse Angle and his friends Kantola and Harrison want to help with this new endeavor, but they may have trouble getting to the BitHouse location because they don't own cars. Watching videos on YouTube earns you only so many bitcoins.

But it's better than nothing. Much better than nothing.

Zaista, živimo SF.

Eh...

NASA gives up on Deep Impact comet probe (http://www.torontosun.com/2013/09/20/nasa-gives-up-on-deep-impact-comet-probe)

Quote

CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA. - NASA is calling off attempts to find its Deep Impact comet probe after a suspected software glitch shut down radio communications in August, officials said on Friday.
The spacecraft was launched in January 2005 for a close-up study of Comet Tempel-1.
It was not just a passive experiment. The probe released an 820-pound (372-kg) metal slug that crashed into the comet's nucleus, triggering a shower of particles for analysis by the mother spacecraft and remote observatories.
Deep Impact continued its comet quest with a flyby of Hartley 2 in November 2010 and long-distance studies of other bodies, including the approaching Comet ISON. The spacecraft was also used to look for planets beyond the solar system.
NASA last heard from Deep Impact on Aug. 8. Engineers suspect a software problem caused the spacecraft to lose its orientation system, cutting off radio contact with Earth in the process.
After a month of fruitless attempts to find the probe, NASA on Friday announced it was formally ending the mission.
"Despite this unexpected final curtain call, Deep Impact already achieved much more than ever was envisioned," Lindley Johnson, who oversees the program at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said in a statement.
University of Maryland astronomer Michael A'Hearn, who led the Deep Impact science team, said in a separate statement: "I'm saddened by its functional loss. But, I am very proud of the many contributions to our evolving understanding of comets that it has made possible."
"These small, icy remnants of the formation of our solar system are much more varied, both one from another and even from one part to another of a single comet, than we had ever anticipated," A'Hearn said.
NASA had hoped Deep Impact would play a key role in observations of the approaching Comet ISON, a suspected first-time visitor to the inner solar system that was discovered in September 2012 by two Russian astronomers.
The comet is heading toward a close encounter with the sun in November, a brush that it may not survive.
Later this month, NASA's Mars Curiosity rover and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will attempt to catch a glimpse of the comet as it flies by Mars.

Woo hoo!!!! Na korak smo od lightsaber tehnologije!!!!!!!!

Scientists create never-before-seen form of matter (http://phys.org/news/2013-09-scientists-never-before-seen.html)

Quote
Working with colleagues at the Harvard-MIT Center for Ultracold Atoms, a group led by Harvard Professor of Physics Mikhail Lukin and MIT Professor of Physics Vladan Vuletic have managed to coax photons into binding together to form molecules – a state of matter that, until recently, had been purely theoretical. The work is described in a September 25 paper in Nature.
The discovery, Lukin said, runs contrary to decades of accepted wisdom about the nature of light. Photons have long been described as massless particles which don't interact with each other – shine two laser beams at each other, he said, and they simply pass through one another.
"Photonic molecules," however, behave less like traditional lasers and more like something you might find in science fiction – the light saber.
"Most of the properties of light we know about originate from the fact that photons are massless, and that they do not interact with each other," Lukin said. "What we have done is create a special type of medium in which photons interact with each other so strongly that they begin to act as though they have mass, and they bind together to form molecules. This type of photonic bound state has been discussed theoretically for quite a while, but until now it hadn't been observed.
"It's not an in-apt analogy to compare this to light sabers," Lukin added. "When these photons interact with each other, they're pushing against and deflect each other. The physics of what's happening in these molecules is similar to what we see in the movies."
To get the normally-massless photons to bind to each other, Lukin and colleagues, including Harvard post-doctoral fellow Ofer Fisterberg, former Harvard doctoral student Alexey Gorshkov and MIT graduate students Thibault Peyronel and Qiu Liang couldn't rely on something like the Force – they instead turned to a set of more extreme conditions.

Researchers began by pumped rubidium atoms into a vacuum chamber, then used lasers to cool the cloud of atoms to just a few degrees above absolute zero. Using extremely weak laser pulses, they then fired single photons into the cloud of atoms.
As the photons enter the cloud of cold atoms, Lukin said, its energy excites atoms along its path, causing the photon to slow dramatically. As the photon moves through the cloud, that energy is handed off from atom to atom, and eventually exits the cloud with the photon.
"When the photon exits the medium, its identity is preserved," Lukin said. "It's the same effect we see with refraction of light in a water glass. The light enters the water, it hands off part of its energy to the medium, and inside it exists as light and matter coupled together, but when it exits, it's still light. The process that takes place is the same it's just a bit more extreme – the light is slowed considerably, and a lot more energy is given away than during refraction."
When Lukin and colleagues fired two photons into the cloud, they were surprised to see them exit together, as a single molecule.
The reason they form the never-before-seen molecules?
An effect called a Rydberg blockade, Lukin said, which states that when an atom is excited, nearby atoms cannot be excited to the same degree. In practice, the effect means that as two photons enter the atomic cloud, the first excites an atom, but must move forward before the second photon can excite nearby atoms.
The result, he said, is that the two photons push and pull each other through the cloud as their energy is handed off from one atom to the next.
"It's a photonic interaction that's mediated by the atomic interaction," Lukin said. "That makes these two photons behave like a molecule, and when they exit the medium they're much more likely to do so together than as single photons."
While the effect is unusual, it does have some practical applications as well.
"We do this for fun, and because we're pushing the frontiers of science," Lukin said. "But it feeds into the bigger picture of what we're doing because photons remain the best possible means to carry quantum information. The handicap, though, has been that photons don't interact with each other."
To build a quantum computer, he explained, researchers need to build a system that can preserve quantum information, and process it using quantum logic operations. The challenge, however, is that quantum logic requires interactions between individual quanta so that quantum systems can be switched to perform information processing.
"What we demonstrate with this process allows us to do that," Lukin said. "Before we make a useful, practical quantum switch or photonic logic gate we have to improve the performance, so it's still at the proof-of-concept level, but this is an important step. The physical principles we've established here are important."
The system could even be useful in classical computing, Lukin said, considering the power-dissipation challenges chip-makers now face. A number of companies – including IBM – have worked to develop systems that rely on optical routers that convert light signals into electrical signals, but those systems face their own hurdles.
Lukin also suggested that the system might one day even be used to create complex three-dimensional structures – such as crystals – wholly out of light.
"What it will be useful for we don't know yet, but it's a new state of matter, so we are hopeful that new applications may emerge as we continue to investigate these photonic molecules' properties," he said.

Za godinu dve, dakle:

gangster kills a guy in a fight caught on camera (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNdQGZBN44g#)

Počeću da sumnjam da pratiš LK na fb/tw ;)

Ne, ne, većinu ovoga kupim preko Slešdota. Ipak sam ja star čovek okoštalih navika.

Ha, neretko smo brži od slešdota  :!:

Oh, nije to iznenađujuće, pošto slešdot ima celu proceduru oko toga da se nešto prvo podnese kao predlog pa se glasa, pa ako se izglasa onda bude fičrovano a ja ga tek onda vidim u njuzleteru, pošto nemam vremena da tamo visim ceo dan i čitam sve u realnom vremenu.

Gah! Ovi iz krekda su uspeli da nam ogade i putovanje u svemir!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.cracked.com/article_20644_6-reasons-life-in-space-sucks-that-sci-fi-doesnt-show-you.html (http://www.cracked.com/article_20644_6-reasons-life-in-space-sucks-that-sci-fi-doesnt-show-you.html)

Au.. za pola nisam ni čuo... oO

A u današnjem izdanju rubrike "Živimo SF": kiborške bubašvabe!!!


Cyborg Cockroach Sparks Ethics Debate    (http://news.sciencemag.org/brain-behavior/2013/10/cyborg-cockroach-sparks-education-and-ethics-debate)

Quote
At the TEDx conference in Detroit last week, RoboRoach #12 scuttled across the exhibition floor, pursued not by an exterminator but by a gaggle of fascinated onlookers. Wearing a tiny backpack of microelectronics on its shell, the cockroach—a member of the Blaptica dubia species—zigzagged along the corridor in a twitchy fashion, its direction controlled by the brush of a finger against an iPhone touch screen (as seen in video above).
RoboRoach #12 and its brethren are billed as a do-it-yourself neuroscience experiment that allows students to create their own "cyborg" insects. The roach was the main feature of the TEDx talk by Greg Gage and Tim Marzullo, co-founders of an educational company called Backyard Brains (http://www.backyardbrains.com/). After a summer Kickstarter campaign raised enough money to let them hone their insect creation, the pair used the Detroit presentation to show it off and announce that starting in November, the company will, for $99, begin shipping live cockroaches across the nation, accompanied by a microelectronic hardware and surgical kits geared toward students as young as 10 years old.
That news, however, hasn't been greeted warmly by everyone. Gage and Marzullo, both trained as neuroscientists and engineers, say that the purpose of the project is to spur a "neuro-revolution" by inspiring more kids to join the fields when they grow up, but some critics say the project is sending the wrong message. "They encourage amateurs to operate invasively on living organisms" and "encourage thinking of complex living organisms as mere machines or tools," says Michael Allen Fox, a professor of philosophy at Queen's University in Kingston, Canada.
"It's kind of weird to control via your smartphone a living organism," says William Newman, a presenter at TEDx and managing principal at the Newport Consulting Group, who got to play with a RoboRoach at the conference. At the same time, he says, he is pleased that the project will teach students about the neuroscience behind brain stimulation treatments that are being used to treat two of his friends with Parkinson's disease.
The roaches' movements to the right or left are controlled by electrodes that feed into their antennae and receive signals by remote control—via the Bluetooth signals emitted by smartphones. To attach the device to the insect, students are instructed to douse the insect in ice water to "anesthetize" it, sand a patch of shell on its head so that the superglue and electrodes will stick, and then insert a groundwire into the insect's thorax. Next, they must carefully trim the insect's antennae, and insert silver electrodes into them. Ultimately, these wires receive electrical impulses from a circuit affixed to the insect's back.
Gage says the roaches feel little pain from the stimulation, to which they quickly adapt. But the notion that the insects aren't seriously harmed by having body parts cut off is "disingenuous," says animal behavior scientist Jonathan Balcombe of the Humane Society University in Washington, D.C. "If it was discovered that a teacher was having students use magnifying glasses to burn ants and then look at their tissue, how would people react?"
Gage says that in his experience, working carefully and closely with insects and other animals in experiments can sensitize students to the fact that roaches "are actually similar to us and have the same neurons that we have." He also notes that the company doesn't kill their own roaches after the experiments, but sends them to a "retirement" tank that the team calls Shady Acres. Although they may be missing legs or antennae, the insects tend to get on with their lives after the experiments, he says. "They do what they like to do: make babies, eat, and poop."
"I try not to downplay the fact that in science we use animal models and a lot of times they are killed," Gage says. "As scientists, we do this all the time, but it happens behind closed doors." By following the surgical instructions, he says, all students learn that they have to care for the roaches—treating wounds by "putting a little Vaseline" on them, and minimizing suffering whenever possible. Still, Gage acknowledges, "we get a lot of e-mails telling us we're teaching kids to be psychopaths."
The RoboRoach "gives you a way of playing with living things," like a short-lived version of the forbidden "Imperius Curse" in the Harry Potter novels, says bioethicist Gregory Kaebnick of the Hastings Center in Garrison, New York. He finds the product "unpleasant," but adds that he won't be calling for a boycott, either. "I'll just be happy that I found a cleverly marketed consumer item that I am very happy not to own."

Policija u Britaniji izvršila raciju na organizovanu kriminalnu grupu koja je koristila 3D printere da proizvodi vatreno oružje. (http://uk.news.yahoo.com/police-first-3d-gun-printing-factory-010626400.html#1p0vAUd)  Naravno, ovo je Sky News pa treba očekivati ovakvo tabloidno izveštavanje. Jasno je da u ovom trenutku kvalitet 3D-štampanog oružja nije na nivou gde bi takvo oružje bilo iole pouzdano u realističnoj situaciji, da ne pominjemo da je još uvek nebezbedno i da cena produkcije jednog komada koji je neupotrebljiv posle desetak hitaca sve čini ekonomski prilično neisplativim za bilo kog ozbiljnog kriminalca. Ali opet, ovo je kao nešto iz Robokapa pa je adekvatno za ovaj topik.  :lol:

Mislim da je veća fora to što može plastika da se razbaca po ličnom prtljagu i da se sastavi u avionu/gdeveć, a da na proverama ne zaliči na oružje.

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/10/25/1154237/uk-police-seize-3d-printed-gun-parts-which-are-actually-spare-printer-parts (http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/10/25/1154237/uk-police-seize-3d-printed-gun-parts-which-are-actually-spare-printer-parts)

No batteries needed! Future robots may run on urine  (http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9243916/No_batteries_needed_Future_robots_may_run_on_urine_)

Quote

Scientists have found a way to power future robots using an unusual source -- urine.
Researchers at the University of the West of England, Bristol and the University of Bristol worked together to build a system that will enable robots to function without batteries or being plugged into an electrical outlet.
Based on the functioning of the human heart, the system is designed to pump urine into the robot's "engine room," converting the waste into electricity and enabling the robot to function completely on its own.
Scientists are hoping the system, which can hold 24.5 ml of urine, could be used to power future generations of robots, or what they're calling EcoBots.
"In the city environment, they could re-charge using urine from urinals in public lavatories," said Peter Walters, a researcher with the University of the West of England. "In rural environments, liquid waste effluent could be collected from farms."
In the past 10 years, researchers have built four generations of EcoBots, each able to use microorganisms to digest the waste material and generate electricity from it, the university said.
Along with using human and animal urine, the robotic system (http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9242509/Mars_rover_could_have_its_own_robotic_snake) also can create power by using rotten fruit and vegetables, dead flies, waste water and sludge.
Ioannis Ieropoulos, a scientist with the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, explained that the microorganisms work inside microbial fuel cells where they metabolize the organics, converting them into carbon dioxide and electricity.
Like the human heart, the robotic system works by using artificial muscles that compress a soft area in the center of the device, forcing fluid to be expelled through an outlet and delivered to the fuel cells. The artificial muscles then relax and go through the process again for the next cycle.
"The artificial heartbeat is mechanically simpler than a conventional electric motor-driven pump by virtue of the fact that it employs artificial muscle fibers to create the pumping action, rather than an electric motor, which is by comparison a more complex mechanical assembly,"  Walter said.

I mi trčimo kad nas potera.

 :lol: :lol: :lol: Valja.

Ali uzgred, ovaj tekst je takoreći satira sam za sebe. Mislim, roboti koji ulaze u javne vecee da se natankuju. Kao neki skeč Montija Pajtona ili Top Liste Nadrealista.

hvala alahu autor napusta termin 'robot' i dalje rabi 'robotic system'. mnogo toga razvije se iz potpuno apstraktnih ideja, ali ovi, ne znam kako ih nazvati u skladu noje sagita vele, a ne biti prost, ocigledno uspjesno jasu na eko-struji. zasto se spominje robotika, ideje namam. marketing, sta li vec.

potpuno pogresan akcenat clanka.

Quote... smart shape-changing materials.

...

Bioinspired Control of Electro-Active Polymers for Next Generation Soft Robotics. EPSRC joint project with University of Sheffield, University of Bristol and Bristol Robotics Laboratory ...

Dr Peter Walters Research Fellow (http://www.uwe.ac.uk/sca/research/cfpr/staff/peter_walters/)

autonomne komponente. steta sto jedan ovako bzvzni novinar proda senzacionisticko lose stivo usmjereno na sliku robotike malog ivice.

Kad smo već kod senzacionalizma: Internacionalna Svemirska Stanica je zaražena kompjuterskim virusom koga su na nju doneli ruski astronauti na USB stiku  :lol: :lol: :lol:

International Space Station Infected With USB Stick Malware Carried on Board by Russian Astronauts                 (http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/521246/20131111/international-space-station-infected-malware-russian-astronaut.htm)

Quote

Renowned security expert Eugene Kaspersky reveals that the International Space Station was infected by a USB stick carried into space by a Russian astronaut.




Russian security expert Eugene Kaspersky has also told journalists that the infamous Stuxnet had infected an unnamed Russian nuclear plant and that in terms of cyber-espionage "all the data is stolen globally... at least twice."
Kaspersky revealed that Russian astronauts carried a removable device into space which infected systems on the space station. He did not elaborate on the impact of the infection on operations of the International Space Station (ISS).
Kaspersky said he had been told that from time to time there were "virus epidemics" on the station.
Kaspersky doesn't give any details about when the infection he was told about took place, but it appears as if it was prior to May of this year when the United Space Alliance, the group which oversees the operaiton of the ISS, moved all systems entirely to Linux to make them more "stable and reliable."
Windows XP
Prior to this move the "dozens of laptops" used on board the space station had been using Windows XP, which is inherently more vulnerable to infection from malware than Linux.
According to Kaspersky the infections occurred on laptops used by scientists who used Windows as their main platform and carried USB sticks into space when visiting the ISS.
The ISS's control systems (known generally as SCADA systems) were already running various flavours of Linux prior to this switch for laptops last May.
According to a report on ExtremeTech (http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/155392-international-space-station-switches-from-windows-to-linux-for-improved-reliability), as far back as 2008 a Windows XP laptop was brought onto the ISS by a Russian astronaut infected with the W32.Gammima.AG worm, which quickly spread to other laptops on the station - all of which were running Windows XP.
Stuxnet
The Russian said this example shows that not being connected to the internet does not prevent you from being infected. In another example, Kaspersky revealed that an unnamed Russian nuclear facility, which is also cut off from the public internet, was infected with the infamous Stuxnet malware.


Quoting an employee of the plant, Kaspersky said:
"[The staffer said] their nuclear plant network which was disconnected from the internet ... was badly infected by Stuxnet. So unfortunately these people who were responsible for offensive technologies, they recognise cyber weapons as an opportunity."
Infamous
Stuxnet is one of the most infamous pieces of malware ever created, though it was never designed to come to the attention of the public.
Never officially confirmed by either government, the widely-held belief is that Stuxnet was created jointly by the US and Israeli governments to target and disable the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility in Iran, in a bid to disrupt the country's development of nuclear weapons.
The malware was introduced to the Natanz facility, which is also disconnected from the internet, through a USB stick and went on to force centrifuges to spin out of control and cause physcial damage to the plant.
Stuxnet only became known to the public when an employee of the Natanz facility took an infected work laptop home and connected to the internet, with the malware quickly spreading around the globe infecting millions of PCs.
Expensive
Kaspersky told the Press Club that creating malware like Stuxnet, Gauss, Flame and Red October is a highly complex process which would cost up to $10 million to develop.
Speaking about cyber-crime, Kaspersky said that half of all criminal malware was written in Chinese, with a third written in Spanish or Portuguese. Kaspersky added that Russian-based malware was the next most prevalent threat, but that it was also the most sophisticated.
He also added that Chinese malware authors were not very interested in security with some adding social media accounts and personal photos on servers hosting the malware.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tlUvb26DzI&feature=player_embedded (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tlUvb26DzI&feature=player_embedded)

Meho, priča o pogonu na urin i nije tako blesava, kao što na prvi pogled izgleda. Postoji priča o jednom našem, ne znam dal' je bio Hrvat ili Srbin, to je tako teško razlikovati kad je na daljinu, koji je od gradonačelnika jednog SAD grada tražio ovlašćenje da bez naknade uklanja urin iz javnih toaleta. Dobio ga je i posao oko jeftine nabavke sjajne sirovine za proizvodnju veštačkih đubriva je mogao da počne. Išlo je sjajno, pa je proširivao posao, od grada do grada, sve dok jedan gradonačelnik nije shvatio da svaka sirovina ima svoju cenu, pa je čitav posao crk'o. Ko zna, kako će biti u budućnosti, život je SF, moguće je da se i NASA programi delom finansiraju iz prečišćavanja urina svojih posada. :lol:
Ta priča je bila aktuelna i kod nas kad smo razvili sjajnu tehnologiju proizvodnje aktivnog uglja od šljivovih koštica. Svet priznao da je taj ugalj kvalitetniji od istog prerađenog iu ljuski kokosovih oraha. Međutim, prelazak na masovnu proizvodnju je bio katastrofalan. Naš partner, "Voćar", imao je ponudu da sakupi oko 3000 tona godišnje na moravskom kompleksu proizvođača i prerađivača šljiva. Međutim, čim su isti proizvođači saznali za organizovano prikupljanje tog otpadnog materijal, on je dobio cenu koja je sve planove učinila besmislenim. Moguće je da na istom principu propadne i ideja o pogonu robota na urin. Jebiga. xcheers

Da, jasno, kao što je nafta do momenta kada je shvaćeno da može da se preradi i koristi kao gorivo bila ne samo jeftina sirovina nego i nepoželjan zagađivač zemlje koja je korišćena u druge svrhe.

Mnogo si mi ozbiljan. Baš ne znaš da uživaš.

Pa... volim čokoladu. U njoj uživam.  :lol:

Ali ovde sam pokušao da budem ozbiljan, to je istina.

Multikompanije će po gradu postaviti gomilu kioska u kojima će otkupljivati naš urin. Posle će to već da uznapreduje, pa će nam u kupatilima postviti wc šolje koje automatski mere kolićinu ispišanog i odmah isplaćuju. Pišanje će postati smisao života. Biće, ko može više urina da proizvede, a ne ko ima veći. I žene će tako birati frajere. Ako se nekoj ipak desi da se zaljubi u lepotana koji ne može puno da piša, moraće da piša za njega. Jbg. Ništa nije idealno.

Nije urin jedini resurs koji proizvodmo. Tu je i metan...

Ovo je već bolje. Song koji slušamo do besvesti biće "Pišonja i Žuga". Mac će biti probni pilot za metan, pa će da mu implantiraju kolektor sa apsorberom koji će metan direktno da ubacuje u sistem unutrašnjeg sagorevanja njegovih kola. U kamionskom transportu će da koriste krave. Naravno, depo za krave će imati naviljke sena i priključak za mužu sa automatskim bućkalom za puter. Nafta će se koristiti isključivo u proizvodnji aspirina i vijagre. Za pre i posle.

Pasulju će da skoči cena. Ko vozi brza kola moraće da ga jede u velikim količinama. Ali to će mu biti kao da ima nitro. Sve će to biti lepo vakumski povezano sa vozačevim sedištem tako da se nikakav miris neće osećati.

Pa, Synthetic, na sajtu fantastike moraćeš da se baviš i pripremom. Pasulj će se više koristiti ta atomsku fisiju. Bombardovanje atoma i tako to. Za solidnju vožnju kupusi su bez premca. Futoški za limuzine. Za malolitražne - briselski kupus. Kelj za džipove.

Ali da prostite, biće super fazon. Prdiš i juriš. Kad god vozač prdne ubrzanje ga zalepi za sedište.  Plastični hirurzi će im ugrađivati ojačane čmarove da ih ne bi pocepali.   

Quote from: SuperSynthetic on 13-11-2013, 13:14:22

Multikompanije će po gradu postaviti gomilu kioska u kojima će otkupljivati naš urin. Posle će to već da uznapreduje, pa će nam u kupatilima postviti wc šolje koje automatski mere kolićinu ispišanog i odmah isplaćuju. Pišanje će postati smisao života. Biće, ko može više urina da proizvede, a ne ko ima veći. I žene će tako birati frajere. Ako se nekoj ipak desi da se zaljubi u lepotana koji ne može puno da piša, moraće da piša za njega. Jbg. Ništa nije idealno.

Nije to što će žena morati pišati za oboje, kao da je problem ispiškiti se, već zamisli samo koliko bi ta žena morala piti da bi u ispišavanju pronašla smisao života udvoje?

:)

Sve za ljubav.

Quote from: SuperSynthetic on 13-11-2013, 14:39:18

Sve za ljubav.

Pusti ti ljubav, što li muškarci sve neće ljubavlju zvati. Već vidim budući scenarij, doći će neka, ne mlađa kao danas, već neka koja može još jače potegnuti iz boce... i tako...:)

Ali što bi se ta što bolje poteže zadovoljila nekim ko je ispod njenog nivoa potezanja?

Quote from: mac on 13-11-2013, 14:55:10
Ali što bi se ta što bolje poteže zadovoljila nekim ko je ispod njenog nivoa potezanja?

Pa vjerojatno ne bi, to bi tek kasnije shvatila, al moguće je da bi početno nasjela na riječ ljubav!

Čuj, nasjela. Ti baš nešto i ne vjeruješ u ljubav?

Quote from: SuperSynthetic on 13-11-2013, 15:09:09

Čuj, nasjela. Ti baš nešto i ne vjeruješ u ljubav?

Ne brzaj u zaključcima.

Dobro, neću.

Quote from: Meho Krljic on 12-11-2013, 10:48:26
No batteries needed! Future robots may run on urine  (http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9243916/No_batteries_needed_Future_robots_may_run_on_urine_)

Srećom je barem Alah dobrostiv, pa možda i neće dozvoliti da nam se ama baš sve svede na prdenje i pišanje:

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20131112-potato-power-to-light-the-world/all (http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20131112-potato-power-to-light-the-world/all)


(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fichef.bbci.co.uk%2Fwwfuture%2F624_351%2Fimages%2Flive%2Fp0%2F1l%2Ffn%2Fp01lfnn2.jpg&hash=0b7051d9f488ef2d74597db9b08bca75448251ee)

Uvek me obraduješ. I meni je bilo dosta isticanja prednosti autogenih humanih resursa. Imamo mi još konja za trku, mada, da se figurativno izrazim to nisu konji za kafileriju ili pet food proizvodnju, nego konji u punom trku. Naime, posle kukuruza koga već abnormalno koristimo za proizvodnju goriva za naše ljubljene automobile umesto da ga stoka i mi pojedemo, krompir je novi hit kao low voltage resurs. Jest da je još Aleklsandar Volta pokazao kako da se mrtva žaba batrga, kao što je Kepler napisao sve moje knjige, prilično je zgodno što svaka drljava zemlja na svetu ima svoju potencijalnu krtolu. Što bismo jeli, ako možemo da osvetlimo stranicu knjige koju čitamo?
Da ovo ne bi izgledalo kao kritika, neka moj doprinos bude kiseli kupus. Naravno, to ne bi bio ovaj naš koga ovih dana pakujemo u kace i buriće, nego GMO verzija. Ona bi bila podešena da se između listova generišu metalni slojevi za galvanski spreg, a u korenu utičnica. Pa u kacu red običan, pa red GMO kupus. Kad se sve ukiseli kako treba i dolikuje, jedna glavica za sarmu, a jedna za osvetljenje.

Da notiramo da su Kinezi lansirali svoju prvu letelicu koja treba da na Mesec spusti istraživačko vozilo.

China launches first moon mission  (http://edition.cnn.com/2013/12/01/world/asia/china-lunar-probe/)

Quote

(CNN) -- China launched its first lunar probe early Monday, which, if all goes well, will make it only the third nation -- after the United States and the Soviet Union -- to soft-land on the moon.
The launch of the unmanned probe took place at 1:30 a.m. Monday (12:30 p.m. ET Sunday), state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
The Chang'e-3 blasted off from a Long March 3B rocket in Sichuan province located in southwest China and is expected to land on the moon's surface in mid-December.
The new space effort comes just over a decade after the country first sent an astronaut into space.
Unlike the soft-landing of the U.S. and the Soviet Union's unmanned spacecraft, Chang'e-3 will be able to survey the landscape first and determine the safest spot.
Researchers say an impact crater named Sinus Iridum, or Bay of Rainbows, is its likely destination. In 2010, China's previous lunar mission captured images of the crater while scouting potential landing sites for the 2013 probe.
China sets course for lunar landing this year (http://edition.cnn.com/2013/08/29/world/asia/china-space/)


On landing, the spacecraft will release Jade Rabbit (called Yutu in Chinese) -- a six-wheeled lunar rover equipped with four cameras and two mechanical legs that can dig up soil samples, a designer for the rover told (http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/sci/2013-11/02/c_132853309.htm) Xinhua last month. A public poll determined the the solar-powered robot's name, which comes from the white pet rabbit of the Chinese moon godess Chang'e. The slow-moving rover will patrol the moon's surface for at least three months, according (http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/sci/2013-11/02/c_132853309.htm) to Xinhua.
Timeline: China's race into space (http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/10/world/asia/timeline-china-race-into-space/index.html)
In the United States, scientists are concerned the Chinese mission could interfere with a NASA study of the moon's dust environment. Chang'e-3's descent is likely to create a noticeable plume on the moon's surface that could skew the results of research already being carried out by NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE), Jeff Plescia, chair of NASA's Lunar Exploration Analysis Group told (http://www.space.com/23675-china-moon-lander-trouble-nasa-ladee.html) Space.com,a space news site.

A Indusi su šibnuli raketu na Mars pa nek ide život:

India's Mars mission enters second stage; outpaces space rival China (http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/01/us-india-mars-idUSBRE9B000S20131201)

Quote
(Reuters) - India's first mission to Mars left Earth's orbit early on Sunday, clearing a critical hurdle in its journey to the red planet and overtaking the efforts in space of rival Asian giant China (http://www.reuters.com/places/china).
The success of the spacecraft, scheduled to orbit Mars by next September, would carry India into a small club, which includes the United States, Europe and Russia (http://www.reuters.com/places/russia), whose probes have orbited or landed on Mars.India's venture, called Mangalyaan, faces more hurdles on its journey to Mars. Fewer than half of missions to the planet are successful."While Mangalyaan takes 1.2 billion dreams to Mars, we wish you sweet dreams!" India's space agency said in a tweet soon after the event, referring to the citizens of the world's second-most populous country.China (http://www.reuters.com/places/china?lc=int_mb_1001), a keen competitor in the space race, has considered the possibility of putting a man on the moon sometime after 2020 and aims to land its first probe on the moon on Monday.It will deploy a buggy called the "Jade Rabbit" to explore the lunar surface in a mission that will also test its deep space communication technologies.China's Mars probe rode piggyback on a Russian spacecraft that failed to leave Earth's orbit in November 2011. The spacecraft crumbled in the atmosphere and its fragments fell into the Pacific Ocean.India's mission showcases the country's cheap technology, encouraging hopes it could capture more of the $304-billion global space market, which includes launching satellites for other countries, analysts say."Given its cost-effective technology, India is attractive," said Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan, an expert on space security at the Observer Research Foundation think-tank in Delhi.India's low-cost Mars mission has a price tag of 4.5 billion rupees ($73 million), just over one-tenth of the cost of NASA's latest mission there, which launched on November 18."BIG ACHIEVEMENT"Homegrown companies - including India's largest infrastructure group Larsen & Toubro, one of its biggest conglomerates, Godrej & Boyce, state-owned aircraft maker Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd and Walchand Nagar Industries - made more than two-thirds of the parts for both the probe and the rocket that launched it on November 5.India's probe completed six orbits around Earth before Sunday's "slingshot," which set it on a path around the sun to carry it toward Mars. The slingshot requires precise calculations to eliminate the risk of missing the new orbit."Getting to Mars is a big achievement," said Mayank Vahia, a professor in the astronomy and astrophysics department of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai.India's space agency will have to make a few mid-course corrections to keep the probe on track. Its next big challenge will be to enter an orbit around Mars next year, a test failed in 2003 by Japan's probe, which suffered electrical faults as it neared the planet."You have to slow the spacecraft down once it gets close to Mars, to catch the orbit, but you can't wait until Mars is in the field of view to do it - that's too late," Vahia said.India launched its space program 50 years ago and developed its own rocket technology after Western powers levied sanctions for a 1974 nuclear weapons test. Five years ago, its Chandrayaan satellite found evidence of water on the moon.By contrast, India has had mixed results in the aerospace industry. Hindustan Aeronautics has been developing a light combat aircraft since the early 1980s, with no success.The Mars probe will study the planet's surface and mineral composition, besides sniffing the atmosphere for methane, a chemical strongly tied to life on Earth. NASA mission Curiosity did not find significant amounts of the gas in recent tests.China (http://www.reuters.com/places/china?lc=int_mb_1001) is still far from catching up with the established space superpowers, the United States and Russia (http://www.reuters.com/places/russia?lc=int_mb_1001), which decades ago learned the docking techniques China is only now mastering.Beijing says its space program is for peaceful purposes, but the U.S. Defense Department has highlighted China's increasing space capabilities, saying it was pursuing ways to keep adversaries from using space-based assets during a crisis.(Additional reporting by Krishna N Das (http://blogs.reuters.com/search/journalist.php?edition=us&n=krishna.das&) in NEW DELHI and Sumeet Chatterjee (http://blogs.reuters.com/search/journalist.php?edition=us&n=sumeet.chatterjee&) in MUMBAI; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

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Tiny kidneys are world's first 3D printed living organs (http://www.dvice.com/2013-9-9/tiny-kidneys-are-worlds-first-3d-printed-living-organs)

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The most absolutely awful thing about the story of Nick Starr is not that he exists, but that there are surely more people like him: the Seattle IT drone threw a Facebook fit when he was asked to take off his face-camera at a cafe. "I would love an explanation, apology, clarification...or her termination." (http://valleywag.gawker.com/seattle-asshole-demands-employee-firing-over-bars-goog-1474155862)

Quote from: Meho Krljic on 02-12-2013, 10:47:04
Da notiramo da su Kinezi lansirali svoju prvu letelicu koja treba da na Mesec spusti istraživačko vozilo.

Fotografije!!!!!!!! Sa Mjeseca!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25393826 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25393826)

Još kao dijete pitao sam se kada ćemo šećer početi da koristimo kao energetski izvor za druge stvari sem sopstvenih tijela. I evo:



Powering Phones, PCs Using Sugar (http://slashdot.org/topic/datacenter/powering-phones-pcs-using-sugar/)

Quote
Sugar-powered enzymatic fuel cell design produces power an order of magnitude greater than the lithium-ion equivalent.

A team of researchers at Virginia Tech University have developed a battery with energy density an order of magnitude higher than lithium-ion batteries, while being almost endlessly rechargeable and biodegradable as well – because it's made of sugar.
The battery is an enzymatic biofuel fuel cell – a type of fuel cell that uses a catalyst to strip molecules from molecules of a fuel material. Instead of using platinum or nickel for catalysts, however, biofuel cells use the catalysts made from enzymes similar to those used to break down and digest food in the body.
Sugar is a good fuel material because it is energy dense, easy to obtain and transport, and so simple to biodegrade that almost anything biological can eat it.
Sugar-based fuel cells aren't new, but existing designs use only a small number of enzymes that don't oxidize the sugar completely, meaning the resulting battery can hold only small amounts of energy that it releases slowly.
A new design that uses 13 enzymes that can circulate freely to get better access to sugar molecules, however, is able to store energy at a density of 596 amp-hours per kilogram – an order of magnitude higher than lithium-ion batteries, according to Y.H. Percival Zhang, who studies biological systems engineering at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and College of Engineering at Virginia Tech.
"Sugar is a perfect energy storage compound in nature," Zhang said in a statement announcing publication in Nature Communications of his paper describing the battery (http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140121/ncomms4026/full/ncomms4026.html). "So it's only logical that we try to harness this natural power in an environmentally friendly way to produce a battery."
The team Zhang leads developed a synthetic enzymatic pathway to expose the enzymes to maltodextrin, a sugar derived from starch, in an air-rich environment that allows the sugar to be oxidized more completely.
The primary byproducts of the process are water and electricity. "We are releasing all electron charges stored in the sugar solution slowly step-by-step by using an enzyme cascade," Zhang said.
The design is simple and stable enough, Zhang added, to be developed within about three years into a commercially manufacturable product that could replace batteries in laptops and mobile phones.
The sugar battery is rechargeable, but also refillable. Sugar can be added to it in the same way toner can be added to a printer.

Već je pominjano da ljudsko telo zapravo nije baš prilagođeno odlasku u svemir:



Beings Not Made for Space (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/28/science/bodies-not-made-for-space.html?_r=1)

Quote

HOUSTON — In space, heads swell.
A typical human being is about 60 percent water, and in the free fall of space, the body's fluids float upward, into the chest and the head. Legs atrophy, faces puff, and pressure inside the skull rises.
"Your head actually feels bloated," said Mark E. Kelly, a retired NASA (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/national_aeronautics_and_space_administration/index.html?inline=nyt-org) astronaut who flew on four space shuttle (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/space_shuttle/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier) missions. "It kind of feels like you would feel if you hung upside down for a couple of minutes."
The human body did not evolve to live in space. And how that alien environment changes the body is not a simple problem, nor is it easily solved.
Some problems, like the brittling of bone, may have been overcome already. Others have been identified — for example, astronauts have trouble eating and sleeping enough — and NASA is working to understand and solve them.
Then there are the health problems that still elude doctors more than 50 years after the first spaceflight. In a finding just five years ago, the eyeballs of at least some astronauts became somewhat squashed.


The biggest hurdle remains radiation. Without the protective cocoon of Earth (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/earth_planet/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier)'s magnetic field and atmosphere, astronauts receive substantially higher doses of radiation, heightening the chances that they will die of cancer. How much of a cancer risk later in life is acceptable?
At the Johnson Space Center here, the home base for NASA's human spaceflight program, scientists probably have until the 2030s to dissect these problems before the agency sends astronauts to Mars (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/mars_planet/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier) — a mission that would take about 2.5 years, or nearly six times the current standard tour of duty on the space station.
The longest any human has been off Earth is almost 438 days, by Dr. Valery Polyakov on the Russian space station Mir in 1994 and 1995. (Two private organizations, Inspiration Mars (http://www.inspirationmars.org/) and Mars One (http://www.mars-one.com/), have announced plans to launch a manned interplanetary flight sooner and have had no problem attracting people despite the risks, known and unknown.)
NASA recently announced that it would continue operating the space station (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/09/science/space/nasa-extends-the-life-of-the-international-space-station.html) until at least 2024, in part for additional medical research.
NASA officials often talk about the "unknown unknowns" — the unforeseen problems that catch them by surprise. The eye issue caught them by surprise, and they are happy it did not happen in the middle of a mission to Mars.
In 2009, during his six-month stay on the International Space Station, Dr. Michael R. Barratt, a NASA astronaut who is also a physician, noticed he was having some trouble seeing things close up, as did another member of the six-member crew, Dr. Robert B. Thirsk, a Canadian astronaut who is also a doctor. So the two performed eye exams on each other, confirming the vision shift toward farsightedness.
They also saw hints of swelling in their optic nerves and blemishes on their retinas. On the next cargo ship, NASA sent up a high-resolution camera so that they could take clearer images of their eyes, which confirmed the suspicions. Ultrasound images showed that their eyes had become somewhat squeezed.
NASA is now checking astronauts' eyesight before, during and after trips to the space station.
The issue turns out not to be new. Many space shuttle astronauts had complained of changes in eyesight, but no one had studied the matter.
"It is now a recognized occupational hazard of spaceflight," Dr. Barratt said. "We uncovered something that has been right under our noses forever."
Dr. Barratt said the vision shift had no effect on his ability to work in space. The concern, however, is that the farsightedness may be just a symptom of more serious changes in the astronauts' health. "What are the long-term implications?" he said. "That's the $64 million question."


It is one of the many things NASA will be monitoring in the health of Scott J. Kelly (http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/kellysj.html), who will spend one year on the space station beginning in spring 2015: twice as long as his stay there in 2010 and 2011 and the longest for an American. A Russian astronaut, Mikhail Kornienko (http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/kornienko.html), will also make a yearlong trip to orbit then. Dr. Polyakov and three other Russian astronauts have already had orbital stays longer than that and returned seemingly not much the worse for wear.
John B. Charles, chief of the international science office of NASA's human research program, is setting up the medical experiments, designed to figure out whether there are differences between a six-month stay and a 12-month stay. "Logically, you might say, how can there not be?" Dr. Charles said.
But it is also possible that the body becomes acclimated to weightlessness after only a few months, and that the changes in vision and bones level off.
The doctors will also compare Scott Kelly's health with that of Mark Kelly, his twin brother. "I imagine I'll be giving blood and urine samples," said Mark Kelly, who is married to Gabrielle Giffords, the former Arizona congresswoman. "My attitude is, I worked at NASA for 16 years and whatever I can do to help, I will."
A decade ago, NASA scientists worried that astronauts were returning to Earth with weaker bones, their density draining away by 1 to 2 percent per month. In space, the body does not need to support its weight, and it responds by dismantling bone tissue much faster than on Earth.
NASA turned to osteoporosis drugs and improved exercises, like having the astronauts run while strapped to a treadmill. The up-and-down pounding set off signals to the body to build new bone, and NASA scientists reported that astronauts then came back with almost as much bone as when they had left.
"That was huge," said Scott M. Smith (http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/stseducation/stories/Scott_Smith_Profile.html), a NASA nutritionist.
Because both the formation and destruction occur at accelerated rates, "we don't know if that bone is as strong as when you left," Dr. Smith said. But the scientists now feel that bone loss is not a showstopper for a long-duration mission.
For the eyesight issues, scientists have more questions than answers. They suspect that the adverse effects result largely from the fluid shift, the higher pressure of the cerebrospinal fluid in the skull pushing on the back of the eyeballs, but that has not been proved. And that theory does not explain why it usually affects the right eye more than the left, and men far more than women.
Dr. Smith has also found that the astronauts who experienced a shift in vision had increased levels of the amino acid homocysteine, often a marker for cardiovascular disease. That may suggest that a zero-gravity environment sets some biochemical process in motion.
Artificial gravity could be generated by spinning the spacecraft like a merry-go-round, alleviating both the bone loss and the fluid shift. But that would also add complexity to a mission and raise the potential for a catastrophic accident.



But the eye issue "could be something that drives us back to artificial gravity," Dr. Barratt said.
The lack of gravity also jumbles the body's neurovestibular system (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/175622/human-ear/65037/Vestibular-system?anchor=ref531802) that tells people which way is up. When returning to the pull of gravity, astronauts can become dizzy, something that Mark Kelly took note of as he piloted the space shuttle to a landing. "If you tilt your head a little left or right," he said, "it feels like you're going end over end."
That may not be as big an issue for a Mars spacecraft that lands autonomously, and in which the astronauts have time to rest before getting out of their seats.
Regarding radiation, NASA operates under a restriction that astronauts should not have their lifetime cancer risk raised by more than three percentage points, but that is an arbitrary limit. Mark Kelly, for one, said he would be willing to accept twice that if he had a chance to go to Mars.
There may be other complications, though. At Brookhaven National Laboratory (http://www.bnl.gov/world/) on Long Island, scientists are bombarding mice with radiation that mimics high-energy cosmic rays that zip through outer space. Those mice take longer to navigate a maze, suggesting that the radiation may be damaging their brains. Scientists say it may damage other organs, including the heart, nervous system and digestive system. "Those could be acute effects," said William H. Paloski, the head of NASA's human research program. "We just don't know. It's one we're looking at."
Beyond the body, there is also the mind. The first six months of Scott Kelly's one-year mission are expected to be no different from his first trip to the space station.
But Dr. Gary E. Beven, a NASA psychiatrist, said he was interested in whether anything changed in the next six months. "We're going to be looking for any significant changes in mood, in sleep, in irritability, in cognition," he said.
For trips beyond Earth orbit, astronauts will be isolated from the rest of humanity. During the Apollo missions, there was a lag time of 1.3 seconds between a command from mission control and an astronaut's hearing it, the time for a radio signal to travel the 240,000 miles from Houston to the moon. At Mars, the lags would stretch minutes, and real-time conversation with someone on Earth would be impossible.
The crew of a Mars mission — four or six astronauts in NASA's current thinking — would have to be more self-reliant to solve any personality conflicts. Dr. Beven envisioned computer systems that could detect subtle changes in facial expressions or tone of voice, perhaps offering some suggestions for defusing tensions.
In a Russian experiment in 2010 and 2011, six men agreed to be sealed up in a mock spaceship simulating a 17-month Mars mission. Four of the six developed disorders, and the crew became less active as the experiment progressed.
"I think that's just an example of what could potentially happen during a Mars mission, but with much greater consequence," Dr. Beven said. "Those subtle changes in group cohesion could cause major problems."
Dr. Charles said he thought NASA could already send astronauts to Mars and bring them back alive. But given the huge expense of such a mission, he said it was crucial that the astronauts arrived productive and in great health.
"My goal," he said, "is to see a program that doesn't deliver an astronaut limping to Mars."

Quote from: Meho Krljic on 17-12-2013, 11:27:06

Quote from: Meho Krljic on 02-12-2013, 10:47:04
Da notiramo da su Kinezi lansirali svoju prvu letelicu koja treba da na Mesec spusti istraživačko vozilo.

Fotografije!!!!!!!! Sa Mjeseca!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25393826 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25393826)

Avaj, Žadni kunić je izgubljen   :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry:



China's Jade Rabbit lunar rover dies on moon (http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/china-s-jade-rabbit-lunar-rover-dies-on-moon-1.2533780)

Quote
Yutu moon buggy had been experiencing problems since Jan. 25



China's first lunar rover, Yutu, has officially been declared lost.
The English-language website of the state-owned China News Service reported Wednesday that Yutu "could not be restored to full function (http://www.ecns.cn/2014/02-12/100479.shtml) Monday as expected and netizens mourned it on Weibo, China's Twitter-like service."




The six-wheeled, solar-powered moon buggy, whose name translates to "Jade Rabbit" in Chinese, hasn't been working since Jan. 25, when it experienced mechanical problems. The problems appeared to be related to the probe's process for shutting down for the lunar night, which lasts more than two weeks and brings the surface temperature down to –180 C.
The 140-kilogram rover arrived on the moon in December aboard the stationary Chang'e 3 lander, which became the first man-made vehicle to land on the moon in 37 years. It was designed to spend three months exploring for natural resources on the moon.
Chang'e 3 was named after a mythical Chinese goddess of the moon. It is designed to take scientific measurements for a year.

OR IS IT???



China's Jade Rabbit rover comes 'back to life' (http://news.yahoo.com/china-39-39-jade-rabbit-39-lunar-rover-175625972.html)

Quote
Beijing (AFP) - China's troubled Jade Rabbit lunar rover has survived a bitterly cold 14-day lunar night, officials said on Thursday, prompting hopes it can be repaired after suffering a malfunction last month. The problem was a setback for Beijing's ambitious military-run space programme, which includes plans for a permanent orbiting station by 2020 and eventually sending a human to the moon.
"The rover stands a chance of being saved as it is still alive," Pei Zhaoyu, spokesman for China's lunar probe programme told the official news agency Xinhua.
An earlier report by the semi-official China News Service said an attempt to restore the vehicle to full functionality on Monday had been unsuccessful.
The rover, named Yutu or Jade Rabbit after the pet of Chang'e, the goddess of the moon in Chinese mythology, experienced a "mechanical control abnormality" as the lunar night fell on January 25, provoking an outpouring of sympathy from Chinese Internet users.
Scientists had been concerned it might not be able to survive the extremely low temperatures of the lunar night, when it was supposed to remain dormant, but it was now receiving signals normally, Xinhua cited Pei as saying.


"Yutu has come back to life!", he said, adding that the rover "went into sleep under an abnormal status".
Experts were still working to establish the causes of its mechanical control abnormality, the agency reported, without giving details.
Australia-based independent space expert Morris Jones told AFP that the problem involved a solar panel on the rover failing to close.
"This allowed heat to escape from the rover in the cold lunar night. The cold has probably damaged some parts of the rover permanently, but it seems that some parts are still working," he said.
Beijing sees the space programme as a symbol of China's rising global stature and technological advancement, as well as the Communist Party's success in reversing the fortunes of the once-impoverished nation.


The Jade Rabbit was deployed on the moon's surface on December 15, several hours after the Chang'e-3 probe landed.
The landing -- the third such soft-landing in history, and the first of its kind since the Soviet Union's mission nearly four decades ago -- was a huge source of pride in China, where millions across the country charted the rover's accomplishments.
An unverified Weibo user "Jade Rabbit Lunar Rover", which has posted first-person accounts in the voice of the probe, on Thursday made its first update since January.
"Hi, anybody there?" it said, prompting thousands of comments within minutes.
"I have missed you rabbit! Glad you are back!" said one poster, with another adding: "Yutu - you have finally woken. This is great!"


Xinhua has said the account is "believed to belong to space enthusiasts who have been following Yutu's journey to the moon".
In a previous online posting following the "abnormality", it said: "The sun here has fallen, and the temperature is dropping fast. I've said a lot today, but I still feel it's not enough.
"I'll tell everyone a little secret. I'm actually not that sad. I'm just in my own adventure story, and like any protagonist, I encountered a bit of a problem. Goodnight, Earth. Goodnight, humans."
More than 6,000 Internet users wrote messages in response, many of them expressing hope that the rover had not seen its last day.
"We'll always remember that you're watching us on the moon," wrote one poster. "One day, we'll bring you home."
China first sent an astronaut into space a decade ago and is the third country to carry out a lunar rover mission after the United States and the former Soviet Union.
The central government has said the latest mission was "a milestone in the development of China's aerospace industry under the leadership of... Comrade Xi Jinping".

Konačno možemo da odahnemo. Zračenje koje produkuju mobilni telefoni nije štetno po zdravlje (u primetnoj meri)
11 Year MTHR Study Finds No Danger from Wireless Mobile Phone Radiation (http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2014/02/11-year-mthr-study-finds-danger-wireless-mobile-phone-radiation.html)

Japanese company proposes to build solar power cells on the Moon to provide clean energy to Earth.  (http://spaceindustrynews.com/japanese-company-proposes-to-build-solar-power-cells-on-the-moon-to-provide-clean-energy-to-earth/4187/)

Izvodljivo je to, ali biće isplativo možda tek za stotinak godina. U međuvremenu možda ćemo naći i neko bolje rešenje ovde, na Zemlji.

Ili nam neće trebati.

Svemirski lift je opisan u Klarkovom romanu Rajski vodoskoci (čini mi se) i u još gomili drugih naučnofantastičnih dela. Ovo istraživanje (od skoro 350 strana) objašnjava da je ovaj koncept ne samo dostižan nego i isplativ:

http://www.virginiaedition.com/media/spaceelevators.pdf (http://www.virginiaedition.com/media/spaceelevators.pdf)

Kad Klark postavi koncept sve ostalo su potrebne pare i vreme.

Monolit to potvrđuje...

Puj pike ne važi. Kjubrik&Klark janije se ne računaju.

Mislio sam na Bobanov Monolit...  :(

Zašto se na ovom ZS svi vade na Bobana? Die hard!

Dobra duša... Trpeljiv... Ne bije...

Најхладније, најтоплије и најпразније место на планети (http://www.politika.rs/rubrike/Drustvo/285774.sr.html)

Quote

Тридесетак наших научника учествује у највећим експериментима данашњице, али и бију битку са финансијским проблемима и покушајима да наговоре наше фирме да почну да послују са ЦЕРН-ом


Швајцарско-француска граница – Овде је откривена ,,божија честица" у чије стварање су и српски научници умешали прсте, што је на крају довело и до Нобелове награде за физику 2013. године. Овде је пре 25 година настала и светска мрежа – ,,www" и први сајт. Овде се налази Велики сударач хадрона (LHC), највећи инструмент који је човек до сада направио, пречника 27 километара –најхладније, најтоплије и најпразније место на планети, које се простире на 100 метара дубине, испод границе Швајцарске и Француске. Овде ради више од 15.000 најумнијих глава на свету, говори се више од 50 језика.
Један од њих јесте и српски, како смо могли да се уверимо током обиласка Европске организације за нуклеарна истраживања (ЦЕРН), у организацији Центра за промоцију науке, иначе првог за српске штампане медије, уочи прославе 60 година од оснивања ЦЕРН-а.
Српска заједница у ЦЕРН-у није велика, али јесте утицајна, што смо могли видети на сваком кораку, од петог спрата и канцеларије генералног директора, па до обезбеђења 100 метара испод земље, где се обављају експерименти. У овом тренутку 30 наших људи учествује у шест експеримената и пројеката преко Института за нуклеарне науке ,,Винча", Института за физику београдског Факултета за физику и новосадског Природно-математичког факултета. Међутим, имамо и још око 20 научника и инжењера који раде преко других институција, углавном америчких универзитета.
Наши научници сарађују са ЦЕРН-омод почетка, јер је Југославија била једна од 12 земаља оснивача 1954. године. Србија се званично вратила 2001. године, а од 15. марта 2012. придружени је члан. Сада је у току прелазна фаза до уласка у пуноправно чланство, која траје пет година.
На наше питање да ли нешто може да нас омете на том путу, професор Др Петар Аџић, председник Комисије за сарадњу са ЦЕРН-ом и шеф тима наших научника који раде на ЦМС експерименту, одговара да је прва препрека то што Србија не плаћа редовно чланарину, 800.000 евра, а друга је та што српска привреда не користи довољно предности ЦЕРН-а и трећа – недостатак озбиљне државне финансијске подршке нашим научницима.
На коментар да се и у Србији често може чути да је чланство у ЦЕРН-у прескупо и да наша држава нема ништа од тога, др Аџић нам одговара да то није никакав поклон ЦЕРН-у и да Србија може сто одсто тог новца да добије назад кроз уговоре са српском индустријом.
–Овде се све набавља на тендеру, од сапуна у купатилу до кафе у ресторану. Зашто не би извозили тоалет папир ЦЕРН-у? Морамо да користимо ову прилику која нам се сада нуди, јер ако би се нека фирма из Србије пријавила за посао, имала би предност. Међутим, наша држава ову погодност не користи, наше фирме не учествују на тендерима, а све ће се то гледати када се за три године буде одлучивало о статусу Србије – објашњава професор Аџић који је и представник Србије у овом телу.
Аџић је на ове проблеме указао и у разговору са председником Томиславом Николићем, који је обећао да ће Србија платити чланарину за прошлу годину, али што се осталих ствари тиче, све иде споро.Иако у Србији постоји фама о томе како држава прескупо плаћа учешће наших научника на експериментима у ЦЕРН-у, наши саговорници одговарају да то није тачно, јер од новца за чланарину и за учешће у експериментима, истраживачи не виде ни франка.
–Трећа врста финансирања који никада нисмо добили и бојим се да нећу ни доживети јесте да држава плаћа трошкове боравка својих истраживача овде – каже др Аџић.
Да исто размишљају и челни људи ЦЕРН-а имали смо прилике да се уверимо чак и током неформалног ручка у ресторану ЦЕРН-а.
–Није проблем плаћање чланарине, тај новац ће бити бачен уколико Србија не подржи научнике у земљи. Ви имате сјајне умове – рекао је за ,,Политику" РидигерФос, директор Одељења за за интернационалне односе.
Док смо били у ЦЕРН-у, потписана су и два уговора о сарадњи између Института за физику и ЦЕРН-а, као и Физичког факултета и ЦЕРН-а. На питање ,,Политике" шта ови споразуми практично значе за нашу земљу, генерални директор ЦЕРН-а професор Ролф Хојерје одговорио:
–Ови потписи значе више посла за Србију. Ово је основа за даљи рад, за учешће ваших научника, физичара, компјутерских стручњака, наставника и студенатау експериментима и пројектима у ЦЕРН-у, јер оно што нам је потребно јесу мозгови, али и да ваша индустрија користи могућности које им се овде нуде.
Хојер каже да је стрпљив као и сви физичари, да се труди да држи све под контролом и објашњава да ЦЕРН није оно што гледамо у холивудским филмовима, иако је екипа ,,Анђела и демона"била овде пре него што је почело снимање филма.
–Трудимо се да будемо потпуно отворени за све и да свет види да овде немамо шта да кријемо – каже и са осмехом додаје да су потребни милиони година да би се створила она количина антиматерије која је приказана у чувеном холивудском хиту.
Сандра Гуцијан
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Како да се фирме пријаве за тендере
Све српске државне и приватне фирме које желе да конкуришу за неки од послова у ЦЕРН-у, могу на управо креираној страници http://serbia.web.cern.ch (http://serbia.web.cern.ch) да погледају листу тренутно планираних тендерских понуда, са детаљним упутствима и особама за контакт. Могућности које пружа ЦЕРН за сада су искористиле само три компаније из Србије.
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Граница се прелази сваки час
Овде је запослено око 4.000 истраживача и техничког особља, а на пројектима је ангажовано и око 10.000 научника са 608 универзитета из више од 100 држава. Зграде су разбацане у круг, па се граница прелази сваки час. Будући да су експерименти удаљени и по двадесетак минута вожње колима, до којих се долази проласком кроз мирна села и тракторе на њивама, централно место окупљања у току дана јесте ресторан у управној згради, у којем једно до другог имају прилике да седе и студенти и нобеловци. Како су нам рекли, иако може да изгледа као да неко друштванце ћаска уз кафу, то је тако само на први поглед: овде се ретко разговара о обичним стварима, а сваки разговор може да буде повод за неко научно откриће.објављено: 01.03.2014

Jebemti... Italijanski kosmonat se zamalo udavio tokom šetnje po svemiru zbog pokvarenog sistema za ekstrakciju vlage iz odela koji je trebalo da je ubacuje u sistem za hlađenje. A nije:


http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2014/0227/Near-drowning-of-astronaut-tied-to-wrong-diagnosis-slow-response-video (http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2014/0227/Near-drowning-of-astronaut-tied-to-wrong-diagnosis-slow-response-video)

Quote

Willingness to accept as routine minor amounts of water in a space-walking astronaut's helmet and a misdiagnosis of a previous water leak helped set the stage for an incident last summer that could have cost an International Space Station crew member his life, according to an analysis of the event.

In a 122-page report released Wednesday, a mishap investigation board identified a range of causes for the near-tragedy, including organizational causes that carried echoes of accident reports that followed the loss of the shuttles Challenger and Columbia and their crews in 1986 and 2003.
About 44 minutes into a 6.5-hour spacewalk last July, Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano (http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Luca+Parmitano) noted that water was building up inside his helmet – the second consecutive spacewalk during which he reported the problem. Twenty-three minutes later, he and partner Chris Cassidy were ordered to end the spacewalk.
"The good news was that Luca was very close to the air lock when this happened," said Chris Hansen, space-station chief engineer and head of the board, during a briefing Wednesday that outlined the findings. "When we terminated the EVA, Luca had a pretty close path to
"The good news was that Luca was very close to the air lock when this happened," said Chris Hansen, space-station chief engineer and head of the board, during a briefing Wednesday that outlined the findings. "When we terminated the EVA, Luca had a pretty close path to the air lock."


Still, as Parmitano worked his way back to the air lock, water covered his eyes, filled his ears, disrupted communications, and eventually began to enter his nose, making it difficult for him to breathe. Later, when crew mates removed his helmet, they found that it contained at least 1.5 quarts of water.
NASA (http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/NASA) officials immediately set up the five-member mishap investigation board to uncover the broader causes behind the incident, even as a team of engineers at the Johnson Space Center worked to find the precise mechanical cause for the buildup of water.
Engineers traced the leak to a fan-and-pump assembly that is part of a system that extracts moisture from the air inside the suit and returns it to the suit's water-based cooling system. Contaminants clogged holes that would have carried the water to the cooling system after it was extracted from the air. The water backed up and flowed into the suit's air-circulation system, which sent it into Parmitano's helmet. The specific cause of the contamination is still under investigation.
Investigators noted that the ground team was slow to respond to Parmitano's initial report of water collecting in his helmet. Because the team wasn't aware that the water-separation system could fail in the way that it did, they didn't recognize how serious the situation was at that early stage.
That lack of awareness in turn stemmed from a misdiagnosis of a similar leak in the same suit when Parmitano used it during a spacewalk about a week earlier, according to the report.
At the time, the ground team concluded that the water came from a leaky drinking bag the astronauts wear inside the suits on their chests – although the investigators noted that no one could explain the basis for that conclusion. And at the time, no one challenged the leaky-bag hypothesis.
Investigators insisted they found no evidence of intimidation or an unwillingness to raise safety concerns. But tight schedules and a desire to ensure that crew members spent the maximum amount of time tending science experiments did play a role, the investigators found.
For instance, a detailed probe of the first major leak would have derailed preparations for the second spacewalk. Because a consensus had emerged that a leaky drinking bag was at fault, several members of the ground team told the panel that a more-detailed investigation was unlikely to yield results that would justify the time and expense of conducting it, and so none was conducted.
Investigators also identified deeper causes, one of which involved what some accident-investigation specialists have dubbed the "normalization of deviance" – small malfunctions that appear so often that eventually they are accepted as normal.
In this case, small water leaks had been observed in space-suit helmets for years, despite the knowledge that the water could form a film on the inside of a helmet, fogging the visor or reacting with antifogging chemicals on the visor in ways that irritate eyes.
When Parmitano first reported that water was gathering in his helmet during the second July spacewalk, the ground team discussed these effects, the investigators found. But because these conditions had come to be accepted as normal, no one expected a more-hazardous condition to emerge.
Investigators offered a broad range of recommendations to improve the way the ISS program handles this and similar issues in the future, many of which already are being implemented, NASA officials say.
While the ISS team performs at a very high level day in and day out, the report is sobering, they add.
"The station has been operating for 15 years, and the suit has been around for 35 years. We have quite a bit of experience with the suit and the station," said Michael Suffredini, NASA's space-station program manager.
In its broadest sense the mishap investigation board's report is saying "that we always have to be very, very vigilant," he said. The ISS team needs to remember "to think twice about something that we think we understand."

Bill Gates je možda napravio revoluciju u IT sektoru, ali to ne znači da sledeća revolucija neće da se desi u toaletu:

This Solar-Powered Toilet Torches Poop for Public Health (http://motherboard.vice.com/read/this-fiber-optic-toilet-burns-poop-with-the-power-of-the-sun)

Quote
For all the admirable efforts to solve the world's problems—beating malaria, improving education access, closing the digital divide—one simple need tends to fall by the wayside: We humans have to poop, and some 2.5 billion of us don't have the proper facilities to do so.
Think about what that means for a second: Beyond the commodes themselves, roughly a third of the planet's population lacks sanitation, leaving communities susceptible to disease and filth. As Jack Sim, the founder of the World Toilet Organization, told me a couple years ago (http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/jack-sim-and-the-world-toilet-organization-dream-of-a-gleaming-porcelain-future-q-a), a major part of the problem is that sanitation isn't a particularly glamorous cause, which has limited its exposure and support. It's telling that more people globally have cell phones than have proper toilets.
"Why is a cell phone something someone will pay for when they won't pay for it in their house?" Karl Linden, a University of Colorado, Boulder environmental engineering professor, told me. "We need to think of sanitation as a business opportunity, and turn the toilet into a status symbol."
Linden's team of engineers hopes to do just that. With funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's Reinvent the Toilet challenge, the team has developed a toilet that uses concentrated solar power to scorch and disinfect human waste, turning feces into a useful byproduct called biochar.


The goal is to build a self-contained block of toilets, similar to Coca-Cola's community blocks (http://gizmodo.com/cokes-downtown-in-a-box-delivers-clean-water-and-wi-1443039556), that can also provide clean water and power for phone charging—to essentially turn toilets into a community center.
"I think it's hard to make sanitation as sexy as a cell phone, but by integrating into the community and making it a hub, it can be something more popular," Linden said.
The toilet itself, called the Sol-Char, is a fascinating bit of engineering. In order to sanitize waste without the help of massive treatment facilities, Linden's team instead designed the toilet to scorch waste in a chamber heated by fiber optic cables that pipe in heat from solar collectors on the toilet's roof.
"A solar concentrator has all this light focused in on one centimeter. It'd be fine if we could bring everyone's fecal waste up to that one point, like burning it with a magnifying glass," Linden said. "But that's not practical, so we were thinking of other ways to concentrate that light."


According to Linden, the key was figuring out how to get light to enter the fiber optic cables, which are currently about four meters long, at the right angle so it propagates evenly. Linden said that producing heat with the eight fiber optic bundles isn't hard, but packing them tightly without melting was a challenge that required a lot of direct work with materials manufacturers. The result is a high-efficiency feces-burning machine.
"The transmission efficiency is really high, it's like 90 percent as you don't have many losses," Linden said.
The end product is biochar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar), a sanitary charcoal material that is good for soils and agriculture. By converting solid waste to biochar (liquid waste is diverted elsewhere, as it's easier to deal with), the toilet thus allows for sanitary waste disposal without huge infrastructure investments.
The project received $777,000 in initial funding from the Gates Foundation, with another $1 million in a second round. Currently, the team is in New Delhi (https://www.facebook.com/SolarBiochar/posts/10102156457109563?stream_ref=10) for the second-annual Reinvent the Toilet Fair (http://www.susana.org/lang-en/news/events?view=ccbktypeitem&type=1&id=226), an event hosted by the Gates Foundation and featuring the 16 teams in the toilet development challenge. Linden's team will present their working prototype, which has been in development for 18 months.


The next step is to build a system that's ready for plug-and-play use in the field, as well as decreasing costs. Linden said that they've already cut costs by 90 percent, and are looking to increase efficiency and decrease the length of their fiber bundles, which are a major cost in the design.
"Our system right now is not field ready. It can operate, and all our technology can work in an integrated fashion, but we have to be there," he said. "The next phase of the research is to take what we're doing now and make it ready for the field."
With continued development, Linden hopes his teams toilet can be delivered to communities to kickstart the conversation around sanitation investment. On its own, the community center model could provide a source of revenue to help maintain the system, while the end result is to increase awareness and demand for improved sanitation infrastructure.
"You have to have a government that's interested in investing in the health of its people, and you have to have a community that's willing to invest not just their sweat equity, but their cash," Linden said.

Insepšn!!!!!!!!
Prisoners 'could serve 1,000 year sentence in eight hours' (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10697529/Prisoners-could-serve-1000-year-sentence-in-eight-hours.html)

Quote
Future biotechnology could be used to trick a prisoner's mind into thinking they have served a 1,000 year sentence, a group of scientists have claimed.   Philosopher Rebecca Roache is in charge of a team of scholars focused upon the ways futuristic technologies might transform punishment. Dr Roache claims the prison sentence of serious criminals could be made worse by extending their lives.   Speaking to Aeon (http://aeon.co/magazine/living-together/should-biotech-make-life-hellish-for-criminals/) magazine, Dr Roache said drugs could be developed to distort prisoners' minds into thinking time was passing more slowly.   "There are a number of psychoactive drugs that distort people's sense of time, so you could imagine developing a pill or a liquid that made someone feel like they were serving a 1,000-year sentence," she said.   A second scenario would be to upload human minds to computers to speed up the rate at which the mind works, she wrote on her blog (http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2013/08/enhanced-punishment-can-technology-make-life-sentences-longer/).    "If the speed-up were a factor of a million, a millennium of thinking would be accomplished in eight and a half hours... Uploading the mind of a convicted criminal and running it a million times faster than normal would enable the uploaded criminal to serve a 1,000 year sentence in eight-and-a-half hours. This would, obviously, be much cheaper for the taxpayer than extending criminals' lifespans to enable them to serve 1,000 years in real time."
Thirty years in prison is currently the most severe punishment available in the UK legal system.
"To me, these questions about technology are interesting because they force us to rethink the truisms we currently hold about punishment. When we ask ourselves whether it's inhumane to inflict a certain technology on someone, we have to make sure it's not just the unfamiliarity that spooks us," Dr Roache said.
"Is it really OK to lock someone up for the best part of the only life they will ever have, or might it be more humane to tinker with their brains and set them free? When we ask that question, the goal isn't simply to imagine a bunch of futuristic punishments – the goal is to look at today's punishments through the lens of the future."

Pretpostavljam da ne moram posebno da obrazlažem koliko je ovo kretenska ideja i da je sledeći korak naravno odsecanje (virtuelne) ruke džeparošima jer zašto da ne, simulacija trpi sve.

Ne bi bilo kretenski kad bi ta vremenska pilula uzrokovala ubrzane fiziološke promene. Kriminalci bi se sigurno užasavili kriminala. Moraću da napišem kratku priču na tu temu.

A mogli bismo da napravimo pilulu kojom bi kažnjenik izgubio sposobnost korišćenja ruku na određeno vreme. Ispalo bi jeftinije, jer ne mora ni da ide u zatvor.

Takvi bi otišli u Kumove. Rukama se bave samo mali kriminalci.

A, da ostanem u temi sa originalnim postom,  mogli bismo da napravimo pilulu koja čoveku daje da proživi simulirani životni vek od 80 (100... 200...) godina u sreći i berićetu pa se onda niko ne bi ni bavio kriminalom.

Naravno, ne moram da obrazlažem ni zašto je i ovo užasna ideja.

Civilizacija je zasnovana na loše implementiranim užasnim idejama.

Ne, ne, zasnovana je na najmanje lošim od trenutno dostupnih užasnih ideja. Ove ideje svakako ne spadaju u tu klasu.

To ne znamo dok ne probamo...

Ne preterujmo, ta logika kaže da nam možda ništa neće biti ako skočimo sa pedesetog sprata na beton - nismo probali.

Garant neće, ako do 20-og sprata naučimo da letimo. Ili ako imamo padobran.

Posle hrišćanske inkvizicije, staljinovog komunizma i hladnog rata nema tog socijalnog betona koji bi mogao civilizaciji da dođe glave. Ako nestanemo s lica zemlje to neće biti zbog nečeg što smo uradili, već zbog nečeg što nismo.

Nisi pomenuo nacizam i holokaust. I, pozdravio te Fukujama.

ako nam Fukujama ne dođe glave, niko neće! 8-)

Naciste sam namerno izostavio da izbegnem prizivanje Godvinovog pravila, ali evo upravo sam ga prizvao. Irony's a bitch...

Edit: mada ovo je situacija u kojoj nacistički holokaust zaista ima smisla spomenuti. Iako milioni to nisu preživeli, sama civilizacija jeste.

I misliš da je šteta manja?

Ne bih znao kako da procenim šta je gore, a naročito šta bi bilo bolje. Takođe, moguće je da ne razumem tačno pitanje. Šta je pitanje?

Pa, živimo u nekom čudnom vremenu u kome su neke štete veće, a neke manje. Kao da svako sranje nije civilizacijski poraz. Recimo, udaviše me sa seljenjem Tatara, a niko ne pominje da su isti Tatari, nešto ranije, pokupili i prodali u roblje po islamskom svetu cca. tri miliona Rusa, Ukrajinaca, Belorusa i Poljaka. Ispada da je veće zlo ono koje ima jaču medijsku podršku. Pitanje je da li neko zlo može biti manje ili veće, svežije ili bajatije?

Zlo ne postoji u prirodi, i ne postoji samo po sebi (poslednji čovek na Zemlji nema protiv koga da bude zao). Zlo je reč kojom označavamo činove odstupanja od normi za nas korisnog ponašanja. Tatari nisu sebe doživljavali kao zle, nego su to bili Rusi. I tadašnji neprijatelji Rusa verovatno nisu imali ništa protiv Tatara i njihovog zla. Ne bih da filozofiram duže, nego samo da zaključim da "zla" vredi porediti samo ako se "zlo" aplicira na osobu koja poredi. Ako je "zlo" načinjeno nekom drugom onda kvantifikacija nema više smisla. Možemo staviti sebe u poziciju Rusa, ali isto tako možemo staviti sebe i u poziciju Tatara. Besmisleno je.

Onda udri ceo spisak da ne mislimo da jedno jeste, a drugo nije.

Postoji samo jedna pozicija iz koje se može vrednovati šta je dobro i loše po civilizaciju, a to je pozicija same civilizacije, to jest celokupnog ljudskog postojanja. Mi, jadni bedni pojedinci nemamo dovoljno perspektive da bi umešno pričali iz te pozicije. Eto, desi se drugi svetski rat, i nastrada 2,5% celokupne tadašnje populacije, 80 miliona ljudi. Ali, preživesmo da bismo pričali o tome. U svetlu toga pilula koja bi kriminalcima povratnicima na određeno vreme oduzela ruke meni ne izgleda tako strašno.

mac, ti si neki inženjer? Mnogo su ti tehničke definicije.

Quote from: mac on 23-03-2014, 01:10:01
Postoji samo jedna pozicija iz koje se može vrednovati šta je dobro i loše po civilizaciju, a to je pozicija same civilizacije

mnogi se ne bi složili sa tobom, da ih ne nabrajam, kod nas je Basara među njima

I, šta kaže Basara?

uglavnom reciklira Ničea i Špenglera

zašto misliš da nacizam i staljinizam nisu bili pozicije same civilizacije?

Mogli su biti, da su prevagnuli. Na našu sreću nisu. Staljinizam nije ni mogao da prevagne, bio je neodrživ na duže staze. Nacizam je bio samo tragična epizoda opijenosti vođom, i sada je civilizacijski primer kako ne treba raditi. To je sva korist od njih sada, da kažemo deci "čuvajte se velikih vođa, jer ćete ovako završiti".

terminološki gledano, evropska demokratija je tek epizoda, a apsolutistička država sa velikim vođom na čelu je pravilo i najzastupljenije uređenje u evropskoj istoriji

demokratija suštinski postoji tek nekoliko decenija, odatle i onaj scallopov fukujamski pozdrav

Kako je to nacizam "civilizacijski primer kako ne treba raditi"? Pa, na delu je iz sve snage. A demokratija je projekat, a ne stanje. Neoliberalizam je eksploatiše kao da je iz prodavnice "Hleb & kifle". Kad sam bio klinac moja majka je takve projekte trpala u okrilje pesme "Sanjaj, Marela, dva dinara".

Aiii... ostaviš dlaku (ili malo sperme, jelte) na mestu zločina a policija iz toga napravi fotorobot tvog lica  :-? :-? :-?


Genetic mugshot recreates faces from nothing but DNA (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129613.600-genetic-mugshot-recreates-faces-from-nothing-but-dna.html#.Uy0ggvldV8E)

Quote
A MURDER has been committed, and all the cops have to go on is a trace of DNA left at the scene. It doesn't match any profile in databases of known criminals, and the trail goes cold. But what if the police could issue a wanted poster based on a realistic "photofit" likeness built from that DNA?
Not if, but when, claim researchers who have developed a method for determining how our genes influence facial shape. One day, the technique may even allow us to gaze into the faces of extinct human-like species that interbred with our own ancestors.
It's already possible to make some inferences about the appearance of crime suspects from their DNA alone (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17630-dna-mugshots-narrow-search-for-madrid-bombers.html), including their racial ancestry and some shades of hair colour. And in 2012, a team led by Manfred Kayser (http://www.erasmusmc.nl/MScMM/faculty/CVs/kayser_cv?lang=en) of Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, identified five genetic variants with detectable effects on facial shape (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22271-police-could-create-image-of-suspects-face-from-dna.html). It was a start, but still a long way from reliable genetic photofits.
To take the idea a step further, a team led by population geneticist Mark Shriver (https://profiles.psu.edu/profiles/display/113643) of Pennsylvania State University and imaging specialist Peter Claes (http://www.kuleuven.be/wieiswie/en/person/00041773) of the Catholic University of Leuven (KUL) in Belgium used a stereoscopic camera to capture 3D images of almost 600 volunteers from populations with mixed European and West African ancestry. Because people from Europe and Africa tend to have differently shaped faces, studying people with mixed ancestry increased the chances of finding genetic variants (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_admixture) affecting facial structure.
Kayser's study had looked for genes that affected the relative positions of nine facial "landmarks", including the middle of each eyeball and the tip of the nose. By contrast, Claes and Shriver superimposed a mesh of more than 7000 points onto the scanned 3D images and recorded the precise location of each point. They also developed a statistical model to consider how genes, sex and racial ancestry affect the position of these points and therefore the overall shape of the face.
Next the researchers tested each of the volunteers for 76 genetic variants in genes that were already known to cause facial abnormalities when mutated. They reasoned that normal variation in genes that can cause such problems might have a subtle effect on the shape of the face. After using their model to control for the effects of sex and ancestry, they found 24 variants in 20 different genes that seemed to be useful predictors of facial shape (PLoS Genetics, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1004224 (http://www.plosgenetics.org/doi/pgen.1004224)).
Reconstructions based on these variants alone aren't yet ready for routine use by crime labs, the researchers admit. Still, Shriver is already working with police to see if the method can help find the perpetrator in two cases of serial rape in Pennsylvania, for which police are desperate for new clues.
To get a sense of the method's current power, New Scientist asked Claes and Shriver to predict the appearance of a young woman based on a scan of her DNA performed by the Californian company 23andMe (https://www.23andme.com/). You can judge for yourself how closely their prediction resembles former New Scientist reporter Sara Reardon in the photos below.


(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi62.tinypic.com%2F2eg8ihi.jpg&hash=3e5928b95cc7da2e288edf5cabd070c17f7e3fd6)



Narrow the search The next step is to run larger studies in different populations to confirm that the variants found so far are statistically reliable. The researchers also plan to use the method to discover further genetic variants that affect facial structure. "I believe that in five to 10 years' time, we will be able to computationally predict a face," says Claes.
Even if it becomes possible to produce accurately reconstructed faces, the photofits wouldn't be used as evidence in a criminal trial. Instead, any person identified via the images would have their DNA compared to the crime scene sample in the usual way. In that sense, the technique is more like psychological profiling, used to narrow the search for a suspect, than conventional forensic DNA testing.
Bruce Budowle (https://profile.hsc.unt.edu/profilesystem/viewprofile.php?pid=101856&onlyview=1) of the University of North Texas in Fort Worth, formerly the FBI's leading expert on forensic DNA analysis, hopes that the method will also lead to better facial reconstructions of people from skeletal remains. "It's an easier step, because the skull gives you an anchor," Budowle says. "If you have genetic information that could guide the artist, so that they're not just freewheeling it, that might help us identify the remains."
Then there is the intriguing possibility of producing facial reconstructions of extinct human relatives. Even for Neanderthals, where there are numerous fossil skulls, palaeoanthropologists have little idea about the soft tissues of the face. "We don't know how far out their noses extended," says Shriver. This means that artists' impressions of what the species looked like are partly guesswork. Shriver hopes that there will be enough overlap between the Neanderthal and modern human genomes for variants that influence face shape to start filling in such gaps.


For other ancient hominins, such as the Denisovans (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128323.200-the-vast-asian-realm-of-the-lost-humans.html) – who once occupied a vast expanse of Asia from Siberia to Indonesia – there are so far no confirmed skulls to go from, so reconstruction from DNA is the best hope of putting a face to the species name.
Both the Neanderthals and Denisovans interbred on occasion with our own ancestors, leaving telltale traces of their DNA in some modern human genomes. Indeed, evolutionary geneticists believe that early Homo sapiens hybridised with a variety of extinct hominins (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128231.500-patchwork-people-our-hybrid-origins.html), which means that the human genome should be littered with signatures of these ancient cross-species sexual encounters.
Joshua Akey (http://www.gs.washington.edu/faculty/akey.htm) of the University of Washington in Seattle, who is looking for such DNA "fossils", is excited about the possibility of using these to reconstruct what the extinct hominins may have looked like. "We're not quite there yet," he says. "But this ultimately might be a really profound tool."
This article appeared in print under the headline "DNA mugshot gives cops another lead"

Svaki pametan zločinac će se pre pohoda depilirati kao plivač, a kao oružje poneti samo kondom. Treba samo pratiti linkove i redom gledati sve forenzičare na TV kanalima.

Ili to, ili da pusti brkove pre zločina, da zavara genecki fotorobot.

Ako gledaju hromozome, onda sigurno znaju da sam osedeo i propisno progledao odozgo...  :cry:

Da je samo to. Znaju i koja ti je dioptrija. Da ne govorim o knjigama koje ti nedostaju u kolekciji. Da ti je frka zbog Kaurinove kletve. I da je Plato zatvoren.

QuoteDa ne govorim o knjigama koje ti nedostaju u kolekciji.

:cry: .


Pa ti pusti da te slikaju u radnoj sobi i šalju slike posvuda po svetu... Očito službe služe...

Tako ti i treba kad imaš radnu sobu.

Sobu? To je samo figurativno... :cry:

Ženi spasli život tako što su joj na 3D printeru odštampali najveći deo lobanje (od plastike, yes) i ugradili joj u glavu  :shock: :shock: :shock:
Medical First: 3-D Printed Skull Successfully Implanted in Woman (http://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/medical-first-3-d-printed-skull-successfully-implanted-woman-n65576)

Quote

Another day, another advance in 3-D printing technology.
Doctors in the Netherlands report that they have for the first time successfully replaced most of a human's skull with a 3-D printed plastic one — and likely saved a woman's life in the process.    The 23-hour surgery took place three months ago at University Medical Center Utrecht. The hospital announced details of the groundbreaking operation this week and said the patient, a 22-year-old woman, is doing just fine.
The woman, whose name wasn't released, suffered from severe headaches due to a thickening of her skull. She slowly lost her vision, her motor coordination was suffering and it was only a matter of time before other essential brain functions would have atrophied, Verweij said in a press release issued by UMC Utrecht.
Verweij noted that in some brain operations it's common for part of the skull to be temporarily removed to reduce pressure on the brain, then put back later or replaced by an artificial implant. In this case, doctors inserted nearly an entire plastic skull that was manufactured with the help of Anatomics (http://www.anatomics.com/), an Australian medical device company that specializes in 3-D printing,
"We used to create an implant by hand in the operating theater using a kind of cement, but those implants did not have a very good fit," Verweij said. "Now we can use 3-D printing to ensure that these components are an exact fit. This has major advantages, not only cosmetically but also because patients often have better brain function compared with the old method."
Three months after surgery, the woman's pain is gone and she can see again.    "The patient has fully regained her vision, she has no more complaints, she's gone back to work and there are almost no traces that she had any surgery at all," said Verweij.
In the video below, doctors describe the procedure in Dutch.

Volledige kunststof 3D-geprinte schedel geïmplanteerd (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXcz3OdHSHk#ws)

Još malo o 3D printanju i tome kako će promeniti ekonomiju i svijet:



The 3D Economy (http://reason.com/archives/2014/03/24/the-3d-economy)

QuoteForget guns, what happens when everyone prints their own shoes?



Last May, Cody Wilson produced an ingeniously brief but nuanced manifesto about individual liberty in the age of the ever-encroaching techno-state-a single shot fired by a plastic pistol fabricated on a leased 3D printer. While Wilson dubbed his gun The Liberator, his interests and concerns are broader than merely protecting the Second Amendment. As Senior Editor Brian Doherty documented in a  December reason profile (http://reason.com/archives/2013/11/12/the-unstoppable-plastic-gun), Wilson is ultimately aiming for the "transcendence of the state." And yet because of the nature of his invention, many observers reacted to his message as reductively as can be: "OMG, guns!"


Local legislators were especially prone to this response. In California, New York, and Washington, D.C., officials all floated proposals to regulate 3D printed guns. In Philadelphia, the city council successfully passed a measure prohibiting their unlicensed manufacture, with a maximum fine of $2,000.
But if armies of Davids really want to transcend the state, there are even stronger weapons at their disposal: toothbrush holders, wall vases, bottle openers, shower caddies, and tape dispensers. All these consumer goods and more you either can or will soon be able to produce using 3D printers.
Imagine what will happen when millions of people start using the tools that produced The Liberator to make, copy, swap, barter, buy, and sell all the quotidian stuff with which they furnish their lives. Rest in peace, Bed, Bath & Beyond. Thanks for all the stuff, Foxconn, but we get our gadgets from Pirate Bay and MEGA now.
Once the retail and manufacturing carnage starts to scale, the government carnage will soon follow. How can it not, when only old people pay sales tax, fewer citizens obtain their incomes from traditional easy-to-tax jobs, and large corporate taxpayers start folding like daily newspapers? Without big business, big government can't function.
3D printing is a painstaking process, with extruders or lasers methodically building up objects one layer at a time. Most consumer-level devices currently only print in plastic, and only in one color. At online platforms such as Thingiverse.com, where 3D printing enthusiasts share open-source design files and post photos of their wares, the final products often look a little rough around the edges, without the spectacular gloss and streamlining we've come to expect from, say, a Dollar General toilet bowl scrubber.
In many ways, 3D printing barely seems ready to disrupt the monochromatic knick-knacks industry, much less the world. When it takes hours to produce a pencil cup, transcending the state may prove to be a tall order.
And yet in the industrial realm, where 3D printing has been around for decades and goes by the name "additive manufacturing," companies such as Boeing and General Electric are using much more sophisticated machines to produce parts for jet engines. Medical device companies use them to custom-manufacture hearing aids, replacement knees, and designer prosthetics. In time, Cornell University professor Hod Lipson predicts in the 2013 book Fabricated: The New World of 3D Printing (Wiley), 3D printers will be capable of constructing houses with plumbing and wiring in place, and printing "vanity organs" for people who want new or improved athletic abilities.
Inevitably, such technologies and capabilities will trickle down, and probably faster and more radically than many people anticipate. While MakerBot Replicators may still look a little too DIY for those of us who have yet to fully exploit the capacities of our microwave ovens, ease of use is evolving rapidly.
In January, Adobe announced that it is adding 3D printing capabilities to Photoshop, giving users the ability to design three-dimensional objects and send them to their own printers or 3D printers in the cloud. A California startup called AIO Robotics is developing a machine that points the way toward a future where the goods in the picture frame aisle at Target become just as easy to duplicate and manipulate as Metallica's back catalog. It's called Zeus. It looks like an unusually stylish kitchen appliance, and its creators, who met as students at the University of Southern California, describe it as the "world's first 3D copy machine."
Place an object in its central chamber, then push a button. Zeus scans the object in 3D. Push another button, and Zeus uses the 3D file it has created to reproduce an exact plastic replica of your object. In essence, Zeus makes "making" even easier than consuming. If you decide you really, really like the pasta bowl your mom gave you for Christmas, you don't even have to go to the mall, or surf Amazon.com to get another. Just throw it in Zeus and push a button!
In almost all visions of the 3D printed future, manufacturing changes dramatically. If a high-end 3D printer can fabricate a pistol or a panini press on demand, why bother with huge production runs, global distribution networks, warehoused inventories, and the cheap human labor that only under-regulated developing nations can provide? While it will still make sense to produce some goods in large quantities using traditional methods, manufacturing is poised to become a far more local, just-in-time, customized endeavor.
But if the nature of manufacturing is poised to change dramatically, what about the nature of consumption? In many ways, it's even harder to imagine a city of, say, 50,000 without big-box retailers than it is to imagine it without a daily newspaper. So perhaps 3D printing won't alter our old habits that substantially. We'll demand locally made kitchen mops, but we'll still get them at Target. We'll acquire a taste for craft automobile tires, but we'll obtain them from some third party that specializes in their production. Commercial transactions will still occur.
But if history is any guide, more and more of us will soon be engaging in all sorts of other behaviors too. Making our own goods. Sharing, swapping, and engaging in peer-to-peer commerce. Appropriating the ideas and designs of others and applying them to our own ends. Combining resources and collaborating on extremely large and ambitious projects we couldn't hope to accomplish alone. And over time these new behaviors will have consequential impacts on scores of products, companies, and industries.
Already, according to a study authored by Michigan Technological University engineering professor Joshua Pearce and six others, there are significant economic incentives for consumers to pursue 3D printing. According to Pearce's calculations, a person who constructs an open-source 3D printer called the RepRap at a cost of around $575 for parts can theoretically avoid paying between $290 and $1,920 a year to retailers simply by using the device to print 20 common items (iPhone case, shower curtain rings, shoe orthotics, etc.).


If you are willing to invest some time in its construction-Pearce estimates that the RepRap takes around 24 hours to build-the printer can quickly pay for itself, even if you don't use it all that often. If you start making orthotics for your neighbors, who knows, it could even turn into a profit center.


Soon, we'll begin to see the rise of manufacturing Matt Drudges and printer-sharing Reddits. So many different producers will be producing so many different products that it will become harder and harder for even well-established and trusted brands to charge for anything but the scarcest and most coveted goods. In a bid to survive, places like Walmart and Best Buy will begin to offer stuff as a subscription-you'll get 200 lbs. of goods per year for a monthly fee of $19.99.
But maybe even that will seem too steep to you, or just not as autonomous as you'd like. Ultimately, 3D printers and the distributed manufacturing they enable will democratize and mainstream survivalism. You won't need five remote acres, heavy equipment, and a lot of practical know-how to live off the grid. In the realm of your commercial life, at least, you'll be able to DIY in New York City.
Be prepared, however, to expect some pushback from your local regulators. Over the past decade or so, as newer technologies and fewer opportunities for traditional employment have prompted more people to act in entrepreneurially innovative ways, government's response has been the same: Consumers must be protected against strawberry balsamic jam made in home kitchens. Tourists must be protected against immaculately maintained carriage houses that can be rented on a daily basis for below-hotel rates. Travelers must be protected from cheap rides from the airport.
When government realizes that self-produced plastic shower curtain rings are far more potentially disruptive than self-produced plastic pistols, it'll be more than libertarian entrepreneur-iconoclasts at risk.

Teši što će neko morati da nosi i džakove sirovine za 3D printing. Jel ista za tanjir i makarone sa sirom?

Da ne kopiram ceo članak: 13 Unexpected Sources of Energy that Could Save the World

http://io9.com/12-unexpected-sources-of-energy-that-could-save-the-wor-1555080352 (http://io9.com/12-unexpected-sources-of-energy-that-could-save-the-wor-1555080352)

Slatko, Mac. Ali, daj ti nama objasni kako to ispada da je sve usmereno na gorivo za automobile i baterije za mobilne telefone? Jednostavnije bi bilo da se odreknemo personalnih vozila i da radikalno smanjimo broj SMS poruka i drugih kuckanja. Drugo pitanje bi bilo saldiranje tih procesa. Nekako mi sve liči na pravljenje šnicli. Potrošiš vola za kilo mesa. Već vidim zelenu planetu koja proizvodi benzin, a sirote pčele ni sada ne mogu da prelete zasade na kojima nema polena za njih. Mogli bismo i od meda da pravimo benzin, a da pčelica Maja slobodno zuji.

Uvek treba još energije. Slana voda neće sama da se filteriše u pijaću. A i taj javni transport mora da radi na neki krompir.

Sve što u krajnjoj liniji troši resurse je gubljenje vremena.

No April Fools: Real-Life 'Invisibility Suit' Created (http://news.yahoo.com/no-april-fools-real-life-invisibility-suit-created-115921082.html)

Quote

   Harry Potter's invisibility cloak may be the stuff of fiction, but a real costume that claims to make its wearer invisible was released today (April 1).    Produced by the costume company Morphsuits and designed by former NASA scientist Mark Rober, the "Hollow Man Morphsuit" uses sophisticated image projection and "light-bending" technology to render its wearer invisible (http://www.livescience.com/20342-invisibility-cloak.html) to the naked eye, even while the person is moving, the company said.
"We were inspired by blockbuster movies and sci-fi enthusiasts that forever fantasized about the possibility of making someone invisible," Gregor Lawson, co-founder of Morphsuits, said in a statement. "We have created a range of costumes that inspire unrivalled shock and awe, and the Hollow Man Morphsuit is somewhat of a holy grail in that regard." [Photos: Best Science-Themed Halloween Costumes (http://www.livescience.com/40571-best-science-themed-halloween-costumes.html)]
Rober caught Morphsuit's attention when he created a Halloween outfit that sported two iPads linked by video chat, which appeared to create a hole through the wearer. This costume was a major inspiration for the invisibility morphsuit.
   Rober was part of a team of scientists and engineers who developed the patent-pending "MirrorMorph" technology to make the costume's wearer invisible. The scientists designed more than 200 concept suits using different technologies in an effort to find one that achieves complete invisibility.
   The final suit consists of spandex material embedded with thousands of micro-LEDs and mirrors and dozens of small cameras perched at just the right angle to project an image "through" the wearer, making people blend in with their surroundings. The cameras capture the images, and the LEDs act like pixels on a computer screen to display them.
A person wearing the invisibility suit will be completely invisible — even while moving — unless the cameras are obscured, the company said in a statement. The suits are available for pre-order from the company's website for roughly $1,660 (999.99 British pounds).
   Previously, scientists developed cloaking devices (http://www.livescience.com/4228-scientists-create-cloak-partial-invisibility.html) that reroute microwaves to make objects invisible at those wavelengths of light, but these cloaked objects remain visible to humans.
Morphsuits manufactures spandex suits that cover the body from head to toe, but allow the wearer to breathe, see and drink through them. The company now makes 200 different suit designs, including Halloween outfits with smartphones that display beating hearts or open flesh wounds filled with maggots.
   Maybe Harry Potter (http://www.livescience.com/11196-real-roots-7-magical-beasts-harry-potter.html) would have liked to have one of those costumes, too.

Ima vode u tečnom stanju na Enceladusu:


http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/04/science/space/a-moon-of-saturn-has-a-sea-scientists-say.html?rref=homepage&module=Ribbon&version=origin&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Home%20Page&pgtype=article (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/04/science/space/a-moon-of-saturn-has-a-sea-scientists-say.html?rref=homepage&module=Ribbon&version=origin&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Home%20Page&pgtype=article)

Eksperiment simulira život kolonista na Marsu da bi se videlo hoće li poludeti  :lol:

Will Living on Mars Drive Us Crazy? (http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/04/will-living-on-mars-drive-us-crazy/360034/)

Quote
Six humans are in Hawaii, testing the psychological effects of life on another planet.         

When human space travel made its transition from pipe dream to reality, one of the unknowns humans contended with concerned not just the physics of space, but the psychology of it. How would the human mind react to the final frontier? Would microgravity, combined with the isolation of a spaceship, cause a kind of claustrophobia? Would propulsion outside of Earth's bounds, in the end, cause astronauts to experience a psychic break? Was there such thing, as science fiction writers had long feared, as "space madness (http://news.discovery.com/adventure/activities/space-madness-120416.htm)"?

Space, fortunately, does not drive us crazy. But that doesn't mean we've stopped caring about the effects its new environments will have on our psychology. The new version of the old "space madness" question is how time away from our home planet will affect us—in the long term. What could life on Mars do to that that other cosmic mystery: the human emotional state?

NASA is hoping to find out. This week, in partnership with the University of Hawaii at Manoa, the agency launched the latest version of its Mars simulation experiment (http://hi-seas.org/), the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation mission. On Hawaii's Big Island, 8,200 feet above sea level, conditions are as Martian as they can be on Earth: Mauna Loa's volcanic soil is quite similar to the volcanic regolith that can be found on Mars. HI-SEAS in general aims to replicate, as closely as is possible on Earth, what life would be like on Mars (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/02/hi-seas-mars_n_5073209.html)—and its latest iteration will put human emotions to the test. 

There are three men and three women participating in this second HI-SEAS mission—a purposely tiny group selected out of a group of 700 applicants—and they include (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/02/hi-seas-mars_n_5073209.html), among others, a neuropsychologist, an aerospace engineer, and an Air Force veteran who is studying human factors in aviation. The team will share a 1,000-square-foot habitat that is shaped like a dome. They will do so ... for four months. (Consider that for a second: living with five other people—strangers. For four months. In what amounts to a high-tech yurt.)

"We're going to stress them," Kim Binsted, the project's principal investigator, told the Hawaii Tribune-Herald (http://hawaiitribune-herald.com/news/local-news/tight-quarters-latest-hi-seas-experiment-will-push-volunteers-limit#sthash.OBvORg0a.dpuf). "That's the nature of the study."

Indeed. That test involves isolating the crew in the same way they'd be isolated on Mars. The only communication they'll be allowed with the outside world—that is to say, with their family and friends—will be conducted through email. (And that will be given an artificial delay of 20 minutes to simulate the lag involved in Mars-to-Earth communications.) If that doesn't seem too stressful, here's another source of stress: Each mission member will get only eight minutes of shower time ... per week. The stressfulness of which will be compounded by the fact that the only time the crew will be able to leave their habitat-yurt is when they're wearing puffy, insulated uniforms that simulate space suits. In the Hawaiian heat.

Throughout the mission, researchers will be testing the subjects' moods and the changes they exhibit in their relationships with each other. They'll also be examining the crew members' cognitive skills, seeing whether—and how—they change as the experiment wears on.

The crew, at the same time, will be executing other projects that are relevant to life on Mars—including the testing of 3D-printed surgical tools, the growing of plants in Martian-like conditions, and, perhaps least stressfully, the repurposing of trash into tools that can be put to use in the Martian habitat. They'll also be doing projects outside of the habitat, in their "space suits"—like mapping nearby lava flows (http://hawaiitribune-herald.com/news/local-news/tight-quarters-latest-hi-seas-experiment-will-push-volunteers-limit)—to test their ability to work together under Martian conditions. (All this work, by the way, is a follow-up to HISEAS' previous experiment, from 2013, whose participants tried to make Martian meals that would be palatable to future colonists (http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/08/good-news-future-colonists-mars-meals-may-feature-nutella/278682/).)

So why does NASA care how these six humans react to an experience that amounts to pretty much the worst Hawaiian vacation ever? Because a manned mission to Mars is a priority for NASA; though funding for such a project remains in question post-sequestration, the agency still hopes to establish a Martian mission that would launch in the 2030s (http://www.space.com/24268-manned-mars-mission-nasa-feasibility.html). And it needs to make sure that the humans it sends on that mission are equipped for the many challenges it will present—not just technologically, but emotionally.

KAd bi Kim Dzong naredio nekolicini svojih da moraju da odu tamo i da ne polude, eksperiment bi uspeo,
a ako posalju par amera koji bi da su face , cim im se istrose baterije za skajp, sve ode u majcinu....

Još jednom, iako je retko, da se potpuno složim sa tobom. Dodao bih samo Batu i Hiddena, a ja da kuvam za njih.

Sta, expedicija od nekoliko Kimdzongovih fajnest sa Batom i Hiddenom, plus Scallop da im svima kuva?

Al da im kuva samo ono što sami ulove na simuliranom Marsu  :lol:

Jok. Iz sopstvenih resursa.

Nekako mislim da bi u misiji kolonizacije Marsa (ili makar samo privremene istraživačke stanice) namirnice bile one najekonomičnije za transport i dugo skladištenje i da bi tu stvarno morao da uložiš pun magijski potencijal svog kulinarskog umeća da od toga napraviš raznovrstan i konzistentno primamljiv meni...

Nekako sam bio uveren da projekat "Zemlja za poneti" odavno nije u opticaju, jer je preskup i da je to bar nama na ZS jasno. Ako bih ja sa ovo malo pameti kolonizaciju vodio parcijalno (parče po parče), sa adaptacijom, odnosno, konverzijom resursa in situ, a od "poneti" samo startere za produkciju vitalnih sirovina, siguran sam da nosioci projekta imaju još zanimljivih polazišta i ideja. To znači da bi početna faza, u kojoj bi nosioci bili KimDžonggovci i elitni predstavnici ZS, opstanak počivala na konzumaciji sopstvenih proizvoda za jelo i piće, obogaćenih energetskim dodacima kao u Red Bullu (zbog krilca). To bi trajalo dok se ne otvore burekdžinice, hamburgernice i Pica Hat.

Dakle, ti bi na Marsu gajio hranu umesto da svu nosiš sa Zemlje? Dobro, ima logike, naravno, hidroponici i sve to, pa i pilići možda. Al za hamburger bi se  verovatno načekali.

Jesi li negde video podatak da za kilo robe u svemiru treba potrošiti više od 500 kila goriva? Pa ti pakuj krofne za put. Jesi li primetio da se još jednom pokazalo da je SF podsticajan, jer je napravljena odeća koja reciklira sopstvene tečnosti? Naravno da kosmonauti već piju sopstvenu mokraću i znoj. Jesi li primetio da je Bata izvalio da su naši seljaci već rešili jedan od problema kolonizacione kosmonautike izlivanjem sopstvenih septičkih jama na zasade? E, pa, ima da ih jedemo u transplanetarnoj koloniji dok ne rešimo muku sa zasadima. Ko će da kopa septičke jame, pa da ih izliva? I, na kraju, jesi li zapazio, negde pre dvadesetak godina da jedan naš čovek (ko bi drugi) u SAD preuzimao na sebe sabiranje izlivnih kanala javnih WC-a? Kad su shvatili da proizvodi ureu (najznačajniju komponentu veštačkih đubriva), licenca je dobila cenu, a naš čovek digao ruke od biznisa. Najveća šteta je što ZS posada ima tako mizeran senzibilitet za nadolazeće, pa topik koji bi se tim problemima kreativno bavio ne postoji.

Goodbye, Oil: US Navy Cracks New Renewable Energy Technology To Turn Seawater Into Fuel, Allowing Ships To Stay At Sea Longer (http://www.ibtimes.com/goodbye-oil-us-navy-cracks-new-renewable-energy-technology-turn-seawater-fuel-allowing-1568455)

QuoteAfter decades of experiments, U.S. Navy scientists believe they may have solved one of the world's great challenges: how to turn seawater into fuel.

и везане информације:

Fueling the Fleet, Navy Looks to the Seas (http://www.nrl.navy.mil/media/news-releases/2012/fueling-the-fleet-navy-looks-to-the-seas)

Navy's future: Electric guns, lasers, water as fuel (http://edition.cnn.com/2014/04/10/tech/innovation/navy-new-technology/)

QuoteThe Navy thinks the other weapon prototype it discussed this week, the electromagnetic railgun, will save money while providing a more potent force.
The EM Railgun launches projectiles using electricity instead of chemical propellants.
The gun uses electromagnetic force to send a missile to a range of 125 miles at 7.5 times the speed of sound, according to the Navy. When it hits its target, the projectile does its damage with sheer speed. It does not have an explosive warhead.

Scale Model WWII Craft Takes Flight With Fuel From the Sea Concept (http://www.nrl.navy.mil/media/news-releases/2014/scale-model-wwii-craft-takes-flight-with-fuel-from-the-sea-concept)

QuoteFueled by a liquid hydrocarbon—a component of NRL's novel gas-to-liquid (GTL) process that uses CO2 and H2 as feedstock—the research team demonstrated sustained flight of a radio-controlled (RC) P-51 replica of the legendary Red Tail Squadron, powered by an off-the-shelf (OTS) and unmodified two-stroke internal combustion engine.

Da, ja sam to pominjao pre neki dan ovde (http://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/index.php/topic,9098.msg543285.html#msg543285).

Ima i video kako avion leti:


Creating Fuel from Seawater (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iavz7AnKI8I#ws)

e јбг, некако га нисам видео/приметио  :( (бар сам мало проширио инфо са чланком са цнна)

Opušteno, vredi dvaput da se ponovi, ipak je ovo motor na vodu  :lol:

Kakvi smo, potrošićemo i okeane.

Ali pre nego što ih potrošimo gadno ćemo ratovati oko njih.

U video igrama kad ste povređeni samo gutnete "paketić zdravlja" i odmah ste dobro. No, ovo je zapravo na korak od prakse. Pogledajte: NANOČESTICE!!!



Innovative strategy to facilitate organ repair (http://phys.org/news/2014-04-strategy.html)



Evo i celog rada:




http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/enhanced/doi/10.1002/anie.201401043/ (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/enhanced/doi/10.1002/anie.201401043/)

Nije baš tvrdi SF ali jeste neki mekši, sociološki itd. Dakle, ispostaviće se jednom da nam je Internet mnogo toga dao a mnogo i uzeo i da u krajnjem obračunu možda i gubimo - gomila stvari nam je postala dostupna putem interneta za male ili nikakve pare, ali je s druge strane efekat da smo urušili tržišta za te iste stvari i ljudima onemogućili da zarađuju na njima. Konvencionalna logika je da kad tehnologija određena zanimanja učini zastarelima, naredna generacija prelazi na nova zanimanja koja je ta tehnologija učinila dostupnim, ali utisak je da se danas tehnologija razvija brže od stope tranzicije populacija k novim poslovima, ako ih uopšte ima (u dovoljnoj meri). Ovo me podsetilo na Krugmanov tekst koji sam citirao pre neki dan u kome se priča o tome kako istorijski gledano produktivnost rada dovodi do povećanja društvenog bogatstva od čega svi profitiraju, uključujući one koji rade, ali da smo trenutno u fazi da produktivnost rada raste, društveno bogatstvo rade, ali njegova distribucija je takva da oni koji rade nemaju više nego često manje, a oni koji poseduju kapital imaju MNOGO više nego pre itd.

Uspon "share economije", dakle one gde obični ljudi jedni drugima ustupaju/ prodaju/ menjaju usluge koje izvode usputno dok rade neki svoj posao, koristeći internet kao medijum za komunikaciju je u tom svetlu jedna lepa stvar jer omogućava narodu da zaobiđe krupan biznis i iskoristi resurse zajednica a da ta zajednica više ne mora da bude samo naše neposredno okruženje. Wiredov članak opširno govori o ovome uzimajući za primer kompanije Airbnb i Lyft, insistirajući da je ovo pozitiva trend (http://www.wired.com/2014/04/trust-in-the-share-economy). Sa druge strane, odgovor na ovaj tekst u Nju Jork Magazinu  (http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/04/sharing-economy-is-about-desperation.html)ima malo manje optimističan ton, pokazujući da je porast share usluga pre svega produkt ekonomskog modela koji je pobrisao ogromnu količinu stalnih radnih mesta i "normalnih" zaposlenja, odnosno da ljudi pribegavaju prevoženju stranaca na aerodrom, onda kad i sami tamo idu i sličnim stvarima, zato što svoje profesionalne kapacitete zapravo više ne mogu da monetizuju (u dovoljnoj meri da od njih pristojno žive) u svetu u kome je gomila poslova otišla u Aziju, druga gomila poverena automatima, a treću gomilu izvode ljudi u svoje slobodno vreme...

zato što svoje profesionalne kapacitete zapravo više ne mogu da monetizuju (u dovoljnoj meri da od njih pristojno žive) u svetu u kome je gomila poslova otišla u Aziju, druga gomila poverena automatima, a treću gomilu izvode ljudi u svoje slobodno vreme...

Eto, trebalo je samo ovo napisati.

Nešto autentično odavde: Roditelji gube kontrolu nad decom, jer su razapeti između tri radna mesta.

 Čitao sam juče u Wiredu taj članak i baš razmišljao kao i tip iz New York Magazine. Nužda menja ekonomiju. U Ukrajini ako treba da se prevezeš sa jednog mesta na drugi samo podigneš ruku i dogovoriš se sa vlasnikom kola za koliko da te preveze. Kakva crna share economy... Sve više pucaju...

Quote from: Meho Krljic on 29-04-2014, 10:18:32
Konvencionalna logika je da kad tehnologija određena zanimanja učini zastarelima, naredna generacija prelazi na nova zanimanja koja je ta tehnologija učinila dostupnim, ali utisak je da se danas tehnologija razvija brže od stope tranzicije populacija k novim poslovima, ako ih uopšte ima (u dovoljnoj meri).

Ja sam naravno bijedni filolog a ne sociolog, ali znam da nas je istorija ranog industrijskog doba poučila upravo tome da će pre eventualnog prelaska na nova zanimanja nekoliko generacija radnika pomreti od gladi: videti npr. tkače koji su po celoj Evropi dizali ustanke - nikad uspešne - od kraja osamnaestog pa do sredine devetnaestog veka.

Izgleda da im nisu potrebni ni lektori, a mi možemo da dižemo ustanke. Sledećih sto godina.

Da, veliko je pitanje koliko je uopšte ikada tranzicija podstaknuta tehnološkim promenama bila glatka. Svakako je ovo što danas imamo manje uzbudljivo od industrijske revolucije u Evropi i ludističkog pokreta. Ali svakom je njegova muka najteža, cenim.

Znamo da živimo SF kad su krenule ozbiljne rasprave o etici korišćenja ubilačkih robota u ratovima...


http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/should-killer-robots-be-banned-policing-1448189 (http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/should-killer-robots-be-banned-policing-1448189)

http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/arms0514_ForUpload_0.pdf (http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/arms0514_ForUpload_0.pdf)

Logika ratovanja je poslednji put bila u etičkoj sferi u vreme Sparte:


"Majko, mač je kratak."
"A ti korak bliže."


i nešto kasnije, u Rimu, kada je gladius namerno bio kratak da bi borce uveo u bliski kontakt. U to vreme su varvari već radije kovali duže mačeve. To znači da je jedan od ciljeva ratovanja veoma dugo neizlaganje sopstvenih boraca smrtonosnom kontaktu. Istorija razvoja naoružanja će pokazati da je cilj dobaciti kamen, a ne izložiti sopstvenu guzicu. Tako, između drona i robota i luka i strele ne postoji logička razlika. Uvek je bilo zgodno pobiti neprijatelje, a ne ostaviti kafu da se oladi.

Mda, postavlja se pitanje zašto da ne zabrane i mine i ostale eksplozivne naprave koje se postave negde, a onda "same" rade ubijanje.

Mine i jesu "zabranjene" odnosno dobar deo država na svetu se otavskim sporazumom  (http://www.icbl.org/index.php/icbl/Treaty)složio da ne proizvodi i ne koristi mine.

A ova dva teksta koja sam linkovao pričaju o specifičnijoj vrsti etičke dileme vezanoj za autonomna oružja. Dakle ne samo o ubijanju na daljinu vezanom za korišćenje dronova ili mina. Drona pokreće čovek pa odluke o ubijanju donosi čovek, a mina nema moć odlučivanja, ona eksplodira ko god da je zgazi. Autonomno robotsko oružje, prezjumabli, razlikuje neprijatelja, prijatelja i neutralnu metu pa je etička rasprava tu fokusirana.

Quote from: Meho Krljic on 14-05-2014, 16:35:54
Autonomno robotsko oružje, prezjumabli, razlikuje neprijatelja, prijatelja i neutralnu metu pa je etička rasprava tu fokusirana.

Tu se, Meho, osoliti nećeš. Nikada u istoriji nismo uspeli da razlikujemo prijatelja od neprijatelja, pa je i ta rasprava - traćenje.

Pa, to je osnov ova dva teksta koja sam linkovao. Ko misli da je traćenje vremena slobodan je da ih, kako i ti radiš, kulturno izignoriše.

Voleo bih da nekad, jednom, braniš moje stavove onako kako braniš neke linkove. :shock:

Hoću, čim se ukaže potreba!!!!!!  :lol:

Ovo nije još zaživelo ali je intersantno promisliti: kada jednom kompjuteri steknu svest o sebi, da li će uopšte komunicirati sa nama uzevši u obzir koliko oni brže od nas procesuju informacije. Drugim rečima, da li će uopšte želeti da se uspore dovoljno da sa nama vode konverzaciju koja - iz njihove perspektive - može da traje hiljade godina? Napisao Jeff Atwood koga sam već po nekim drugim osnovama ovde citirao.


The Infinite Space Between Words (http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-infinite-space-between-words/)

Još malo o robotima koji treba da imaju mogućnost etičkog rasuđivaja:


 Now The Military Is Going To Build Robots That Have Morals  (http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2014/05/now-military-going-build-robots-have-morals/84325/)

QuoteAre robots capable of moral or ethical reasoning? It's no longer just a question for tenured philosophy professors or Hollywood directors. This week, it's a question being put to the United Nations.

The Office of Naval Research will award $7.5 million in grant money over five years to university researchers from Tufts, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Brown, Yale and Georgetown to explore how to build a sense of right and wrong and moral consequence into autonomous robotic systems.
"Even though today's unmanned systems are 'dumb' in comparison to a human counterpart, strides are being made quickly to incorporate more automation at a faster pace than we've seen before," Paul Bello, director of the cognitive science program at the Office of Naval Research told Defense One. "For example, Google's self-driving cars are legal and in-use in several states at this point. As researchers, we are playing catch-up trying to figure out the ethical and legal implications. We do not want to be caught similarly flat-footed in any kind of military domain where lives are at stake."
The United States military prohibits (http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/300009p.pdf) lethal fully autonomous robots. And semi-autonomous robots can't "select and engage individual targets or specific target groups that have not been previously selected by an authorized human operator," even in the event that contact with the operator is cut off, according to a 2012 Department of Defense policy directive (http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/300009p.pdf).
"Even if such systems aren't armed, they may still be forced to make moral decisions," Bello said. For instance, in a disaster scenario, a robot may be forced to make a choice about whom to evacuate or treat first, a situation where a bot might use some sense of ethical or moral reasoning. "While the kinds of systems we envision have much broader use in first-response, search-and-rescue and in the medical domain, we can't take the idea of in-theater robots completely off the table," Bello said.
Some members of the artificial intelligence, or AI, research and machine ethics communities were quick to applaud the grant. "With drones, missile defines, autonomous vehicles, etc., the military is rapidly creating systems that will need to make moral decisions," AI researcher Steven Omohundro (http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2014/04/why-there-will-be-robot-uprising/82783/?oref=search_Steven%20Omohundro) told Defense One. "Human lives and property rest on the outcomes of these decisions and so it is critical that they be made carefully and with full knowledge of the capabilities and limitations of the systems involved. The military has always had to define 'the rules of war' and this technology is likely to increase the stakes for that."
"We're talking about putting robots in more and more contexts in which we can't predict what they're going to do, what kind of situations they'll encounter. So they need to do some kind of ethical reasoning in order to sort through various options," said Wendell Wallach, the chair of the Yale Technology and Ethics Study Group and author of the book Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right From Wrong (http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Machines-Teaching-Robots-Right/dp/0199737975).
The sophistication of cutting-edge drones like British BAE Systems's batwing-shaped Taranis and Northrop Grumman's X-47B reveal more self-direction creeping into ever more heavily armed systems. The X-47B, Wallach said, is "enormous and it does an awful lot of things autonomously."


But how do you code something as abstract as moral logic into a bunch of transistors?  The vast openness of the problem is why the framework approach is important, says Wallach. Some types of morality are more basic, thus more code-able, than others. 
"There's operational morality, functional morality, and full moral agency," Wallach said. "Operational morality is what you already get when the operator can discern all the situations that the robot may come under and program in appropriate responses... Functional morality is where the robot starts to move into situations where the operator can't always predict what [the robot] will encounter and [the robot] will need to bring some form of ethical reasoning to bear."
It's a thick knot of questions to work through. But, Wallach says, with a high potential to transform the battlefield.
"One of the arguments for [moral] robots is that they may be even better than humans in picking a moral course of action because they may consider more courses of action," he said.
Ronald Arkin, an AI expert from Georgia Tech and author of the book Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots,  (http://www.amazon.com/Governing-Lethal-Behavior-Autonomous-Robots-ebook/dp/B008I9YG9G/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1399927574&sr=1-1&keywords=Ronald+Arkins) is a proponent of giving machines a moral compass. "It is not my belief that an unmanned system will be able to be perfectly ethical in the battlefield, but I am convinced that they can perform more ethically than human soldiers are capable of," Arkin wrote in a 2007 research paper (PDF). Part of the reason for that, he said, is that robots are capable of following rules of engagement to the letter, whereas humans are more inconsistent.
AI robotics expert Noel Sharkey is a detractor. He's been highly critical (http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2014/05/every-country-will-have-armed-drones-within-ten-years/83878/?oref=d-river) of armed drones in general. and has argued (http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27343076) that autonomous weapons systems cannot be trusted to conform to  international law.
"I do not think that they will end up with a moral or ethical robot," Sharkey told Defense One. "For that we need to have moral agency. For that we need to understand others and know what it means to suffer. The robot may be installed with some rules of ethics but it won't really care. It will follow a human designer's idea of ethics."
"The simple example that has been given to the press about scheduling help for wounded soldiers is a good one. My concern would be if [the military] were to extend a system like this for lethal autonomous weapons - weapons where the decision to kill is delegated to a machine; that would be deeply troubling," he said.
This week, Sharkey and Arkin are debating the issue of whether or not morality can be built into AI systems before the U.N. where they may find an audience very sympathetic to the idea that a moratorium should be placed on the further development of autonomous armed robots.
Christof Heyns, U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/united-nations-debate-should-we-ban-killer-robots-1448030), is calling for a moratorium. "There is reason to believe that states will, inter alia, seek to use lethal autonomous robotics for targeted killing," Heyns said in an April 2013 report (http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/RegularSession/Session23/A-HRC-23-47_en.pdf) to the U.N.
The Defense Department's policy directive on lethal autonomy offers little reassurance here since the department can change it without congressional approval, at the discretion of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and two undersecretaries of Defense. University of Denver scholar Heather Roff, in an op-ed for the Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/heather-roff/reigning-in-the-killer-ro_b_3094675.html), calls that a "disconcerting" lack of oversight and notes that "fielding of autonomous weapons then does not even raise to the level of the Secretary of Defense, let alone the president."
If researchers can prove that robots can do moral math, even if in some limited form, they may be able to diffuse rising public anger and mistrust over armed unmanned vehicles. But it's no small task.
"This is a significantly difficult problem and it's not clear we have an answer to it," said Wallach. "Robots both domestic and militarily are going to find themselves in situations where there are a number of courses of actions and they are going to need to bring some kinds of ethical routines to bear on determining the most ethical course of action. If we're moving down this road of increasing autonomy in robotics, and that's the same as Google cars as it is for military robots, we should begin now to do the research to how far can we get in ensuring the robot systems are safe and can make appropriate decisions in the context they operate."

I još priče o tome kako i da li roboti mogu da donose etičke sudove, ovog puta u sasvim civilnom okruženju. Naime, Eric Sofge je prošle nedelje proizveo minorni cunami na internetu pišući na blogu na Popular Scienceu o tome kako, pošto ćemo uskoro imati komercijalno dostupne autonomne automobile, koji sami voze, bez ljudskog upravljanja, postaje bitno sledeće pitanje: ako automobil shvati da je u situaciji da mora da bira između toga da izazivanjem sudara ubije jednu osobu ili dve osobe, ko je odgovoran za odluku koju je doneo? Dakle, ko nosi sav teret etičkog suda donesenog u tom trenutku? Proizvođač? Programer? Ovo nas prilično vraća na Asimova i njegove zakone robotike. Evo tog posta:

The Mathematics of Murder: Should a Robot Sacrifice Your Life to Save Two? (http://www.popsci.com/blog-network/zero-moment/mathematics-murder-should-robot-sacrifice-your-life-save-two)

Quote
It happens quickly—more quickly than you, being human, can fully process.
A front tire blows, and your autonomous SUV swerves. But rather than veering left, into the opposing lane of traffic, the robotic vehicle steers right. Brakes engage, the system tries to correct itself, but there's too much momentum. Like a cornball stunt in a bad action movie, you are over the cliff, in free fall.
Your robot, the one you paid good money for, has chosen to kill you. Better that, its collision-response algorithms decided, than a high-speed, head-on collision with a smaller, non-robotic compact. There were two people in that car, to your one. The math couldn't be simpler.
This, roughly speaking, is the problem presented by Patrick Lin, an associate philosophy professor and director of the Ethics + Emerging Sciences Group at California Polytechnic State University. In a recent opinion piece for Wired (http://www.wired.com/2014/05/the-robot-car-of-tomorrow-might-just-be-programmed-to-hit-you/), Lin explored one of the most disturbing questions in robot ethics: If a crash is unavoidable, should an autonomous car choose who it slams into?
It might seem like a simple thought experiment, a twist on the classic "trolley problem," an ethical conundrum (http://people.howstuffworks.com/trolley-problem.htm) that asks whether you'd save five people on a runaway trolley, at the price of killing one person on the tracks. But the more detailed the crash scenarios get, the harder they are to navigate. Assume that the robot has what can only be described as superhuman senses and reaction speed, thanks to its machine reflexes and suite of advanced sensors. In that moment of truth before the collision, should the vehicle target a small car, rather than a big one, to err towards protecting its master? Or should it do the reverse, aiming for the SUV, even if it means reducing the robo-car owner's chances of survival? And what if it's a choice between driving into a school bus, or plowing into a tree? Does the robot choose a massacre, or a betrayal?
The key factor, again, is the car's superhuman status. "With great power comes great responsibility," says Lin. "If these machines have greater capacity than we do, higher processor speeds, better sensors, that seems to imply a greater responsibility to make better decisions."
Current autonomous cars, it should be said, are more student driver than Spider-Man, unable to notice a human motorist waving them through an intersection, much less churn through a complex matrix of projected impacts, death tolls, and what Lin calls "moral math" in the moments before a collision. But sensors, processors and software are the rare elements of robotics that tend to advance rapidly (while actuation and power density, for example, limp along with typical analog stubbornness). While the timeframe is unclear, autonomous cars are guaranteed to eventually do what people can't, either as individual sensor-laden devices, or because they're communicating with other vehicles and connected infrastructure, and anticipating events as only a hive mind can.
So if we assume that hyper-competence is the manifest destiny of machines, then we're forced to ask a question that's bigger than who they should crash into. If robots are going to be superhuman, isn't it their duty to be superheroes, and use those powers to save as many humans as possible?

* * *

This second hypothetical is bloodier than the first, but less lethal.
A group of soldiers has wandered into the kill box. That's the GPS-designated area within which an autonomous military ground robot has been given clearance to engage any and all targets. The machine's sensors calculate wind-speed, humidity, and barometric pressure. Then it goes to work.
The shots land cleanly, for the most part. All of the targets are down.
But only one of them is in immediate mortal danger—instead of suffering a leg wound, like the rest, he took a round to the abdomen. Even a robot's aim isn't perfect.
The machine pulls back, and holds its fire while the targets are evacuated.
No one would call this kind of robot a life-saver. But in a presentation to DARPA and the National Academy of Scientists two years ago, Lin presented the opposite what-if scenario: A killer robot that's accurate enough to shoot essentially every one of its target.
According to Lin, such a system would risk violating the Geneva Conventions' article on restricting "arms which cause superfluous injury (http://www.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/1a13044f3bbb5b8ec12563fb0066f226/f095453e41336b76c12563cd00432aa1) or unnecessary suffering." The International Committee Red Cross developed more specific guidelines in a later proposal (http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/pdf/SIrUS-project.pdf), calling for a ban on weapons with a "field mortality of more than 25% or hospital mortality of more than 5%." In other words, new systems shouldn't kill a target outright more than a quarter of the time, or have more than a five percent chance of leading to his or her death in a hospital.
"It's implicit in war, that we want to give everyone a fair chance," says Lin. "The other side probably aren't all volunteers. They could be conscripted. So the laws of war don't authorize you to kill, but to render enemy combatants unable to fight." A robot that specializes in shooting people in the head, or some other incredibly effective, but overwhelmingly lethal capability—where death is a certainty, because of superhuman prowess—could certainly be defined as inhumane.
As with the autonomous car crash scenario, everything hinges on that level of technological certainty. A human soldier or police officer isn't legally or ethically expected to aim for a target's leg. Accuracy, at any range or skill level, is never a sure thing for mere mortals, much less ones full of adrenaline. Likewise, even the most seasoned, professione driver can't be expected to execute the perfect maneuver, or the ethically "correct" decision, in the split-second preceding a sudden highway collision.
But if it's possible to build that level of precision into a machine, expectations would invariably change. The makers of robots that do bodily harm (though intention or accident) would have to address a range of trolley problems during development, and provide clear decisions for each one. Armed bot designers might have it relatively easy, if they're able to program systems to cripple targets instead of executing them. But if that's the clear choice—that robots should actively reduce human deaths, even among the enemy—wouldn't you have to accept that your car has killed you, instead of two strangers?

* * *

Follow this line of reasoning to its logical conclusion, and things start to get a little sci-fi, and more than a little unsettling. If robots are proven capable of sparing human lives, sacrificing the few for the good of the many, what sort of monster would program them to do otherwise?
And yet, nobody in their right mind would buy an autonomous car that explicitly warns the customer that his or her safety is not its first priority.
That's the dilemma that makers of robot vehicles could eventually face if they take the moral and ethical high road, and design them to limit human injury or death without discrimination. To say that such an admission would slow the adoption of autonomous cars is an understatement. "Buy our car," jokes Michael Cahill, a law professor and vice dean at Brooklyn Law School, "but be aware that it might drive over a cliff rather than hit a car with two people."
Okay, so that was Cahill's tossed-out hypothetical, not mine. But as difficult as it would be to convince automakers to throw their own customers under the proverbial bus, or to force their hand with regulations, it might be the only option that shields them from widespread litigation. Because whatever they choose to do—kill the couple, or the driver, or randomly pick a target—these are ethical decisions being made ahead of time. As such, they could be far more vulnerable to lawsuits, says Cahill, as victims and their family members dissect and indict decisions that weren't made in the spur of the moment, "but far in advance, in the comfort of corporate offices."
In the absence of a universal standard for built-in, pre-collision ethics, superhuman cars could start to resemble supervillains, aiming for the elderly driver rather than the younger investment banker—the latter's family could potentially sue for considerably more lost wages. Or, less ghoulishly, the vehicle's designers could pick targets based solely on make and model of car. "Don't steer towards the Lexus," says Cahill. "If you have to hit something, you could program it hit a cheaper car, since the driver is more likely to have less money."
The greater good scenario is looking better and better. In fact, I'd argue that from a legal, moral, and ethical standpoint, it's the only viable option. It's terrifying to think that your robot chauffeur might not have your back, and that it would, without a moment's hesitation, choose to launch you off that cliff. Or weirder still, concoct a plan among its fellow, networked bots, swerving your car into the path of a speeding truck, to deflect it away from a school bus. But if the robots develop that degree of power over life and death, shouldn't they have to wield it responsibly?
"That's one way to look at it, that the beauty of robots is that they don't have relationships to anybody. They can make decisions that are better for everyone," says Cahill. "But if you lived in that world, where robots made all the decisions, you might think it's a dystopia."

E, onda, nakon rasprave diljem interneta o ovom pitanju, Eric se vraća sa novim postom koji je zanimljiv koliko i prvi:



Robots Are Strong: The Sci-Fi Myth of Robotic Competence (http://www.popsci.com/blog-network/zero-moment/robots-are-strong-sci-fi-myth-robotic-competence)

QuoteLast week, I created a minor disturbance in the Internet, with a not-so-simple question (http://www.popsci.com/blog-network/zero-moment/mathematics-murder-should-robot-sacrifice-your-life-save-two)—should a robotic car sacrifice its owner's life, in order to spare two strangers?
It was never meant to be a rhetorical question. After talking to Patrick Lin, the California Polytechnic State University robo-ethicist who initially presented the topic of ethical vehicles in an op-ed for Wired (http://www.wired.com/2014/05/the-robot-car-of-tomorrow-might-just-be-programmed-to-hit-you/), as well as discussing the legal ramifications with a law professor and vice dean at Brooklyn Law School, I was convinced: For the good of our species, the answer is a wincing, but whole-hearted affirmative. If an autonomous vehicle has to choose between crashing into the few, in order to save the many, those ethical decisions should be worked out ahead of time, and baked into its algorithms. To me, all other options point to a chaos of litigation, or a monstrous, machine-assisted Battle Royale, as everyone's robots—automotive or otherwise—prioritize their owners' safety above all else, and take natural selection to the open road.
The reaction to this story was varied, as it should be for such a complex thought experiment. But a few trends emerged.
First, there were the usual comment-section robo-phobics, who may or may not have read past my headline, or further than the summaries presented by response pieces on Gizmodo (http://gizmodo.com/should-your-driverless-car-kill-you-to-save-two-other-p-1575246184) and Slate (http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/05/14/driverless_cars_won_t_kill_you_you_still_have_ultimate_control_of_autonomous.html). The most liked (so far) comment on Facebook: "Enough to justify NEVER making robots or self driving cars. Ethical and moral decisions should be made by humans, not their creations." Similarly, people talked about Skynet, because Terminator references are as unkillable as the movie's fictional robot assassins, despite being just as humorless, and based on nothing that's ever happened in real life.
But the more interesting responses were the dismissals, which came in two varieties: advising that all robot cars should simply follow legendary SF author Isaac Asimov's First Law of Robotics (that a robot may not harm a human being, through action or inaction), or predicting that robot cars will be so infallible, that lethal collisions will be obsolete. "I don't think this would be an issue," wrote Reddit user (http://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/25ghfm/the_mathematics_of_murder_should_a_robot/) iamnotmagritte. "The cars would probably communicate with each other, avoiding the situation altogether, and in the case this isn't enough, letting each other know what paths to take to avoid either crashing." During a Twitter discussion with Tyler Lopez, who wrote the related Slate piece, and made some excellent points about the technical and legal inability of current autonomous cars to solve any sort of "who do I kill?" trolley problem, Lopez shared that sentiment. With vehicles and road infrastructure networked together, he proposed (https://twitter.com/tyler_lopez/status/466620986981621760), "the dangers associated with the moral algorithm would be solved by network algorithms instead."
Robots, in other words, simply have to be told not to kill anyone, much less two people, and they'll carry out that mission with machine precision.
This is distressing. To me, it's proof of something I've suspected for years, but haven't been able to articulate, or at least mention without seeming like even more of an insufferable snob. But here goes: Humans, on the whole, do not understand how robots work.
This shouldn't be a huge surprise. Robotics is an immensely complex field of study, and only a vanishingly small portion of the human race are training or employed as roboticists. But you could say the same of physics, and yet the average person doesn't feel qualified to casually weigh in on the mechanics of gravitational lensing, or the spooky feasibility of alternate universes branching out with each decision we make.
So what is it about robots that makes people assume they understand them?
This isn't a rhetorical question either. The answer is Isaac Asimov. Or, more generally, science fiction. SF writers invented the robot long before it was possible to build one. Even as automated machines have become integral to modern existence, the robot SF keeps coming. And, by and large, it keeps lying. We think we know how robots work, because we've heard campfire tales about ones that don't exist.
I'll tackle other major myths of robotics in future posts, but let's start with the one most germane to robot cars, and the need to develop ethical frameworks for any autonomous machine operating in our midst.
Let's talk about the myth of robotic competence.

* * *
"Trust me," Bishop says, before the knife starts moving. In one of the most famous scenes in a movie filled with famous scenes, the android (played by Lance Henriksen) stabs the table between his splayed fingers, and those of the Space Marine his hand is pinning down. He stabs other gaps, and the pace builds until the blade is a blur, gouging the table in a staccato frenzy. When he's done, we see that Bishop has nicked himself slightly. But the poor Marine is unharmed. A bravura performance that's merely a side benefit of being an artificial person.
This is how Aliens introduces its resident robot, and his inhuman degree of competence. Along with possessing uncanny knife skills and hand-eye coordination, Bishop is unflinchingly brave, inhumanly immune to claustrophobia, able to expertly pilot combat spacecraft (not exactly standard training for a medical officer), and is barely fazed by having his body torn in half. Really, there was no reason to send humans on that doomed bug hunt. A crew of armed synthetics—cleared to do harm, as Bishop was not—could have waltzed off of LV-426 with nary a drop of their white blood spilled.
So why, exactly, is Bishop such a remarkable specimen? It's not that Aliens peered into our future, and divined the secrets of robotic efficiency that modern roboticists have yet to discover. It's because, like most SF, the movie is a work of adventure fiction. And when a story's primary goal is to thrill, its robots have to be thrilling.
Aliens is merely continuing a tradition that dates back to literature's first unofficial android, Frankenstein's monster, an assembled being whose superhuman physical and mental gifts aren't based on the quality of raw materials—he wasn't stitched together from Olympic athletes and Nobel winners. The monster's perfection is just as unexplained as Bishop's, or that of countless other fictional automatons, from Star Trek's Data to Almost Human's Dorian. You could guess at the reasons, of course. Where humans are a random jumble of genetic traits, some valuable, others maladaptive, robots are painstakingly optimized. Machines don't tire, or lose their nerve. Though their programming can be compromised, or it might suddenly sprout inconvenient survival instincts, their ability to accomplish tasks is assured. Robots are as infallible as the Swiss clocks they descended from.
The myth of robotic competence is based on a hunch. And it's a hunch that, for the most part, has been proven dead wrong by real-life robots.
Actual robots are devices of extremely narrow value and capability. They do one or two things with competence, and everything else terribly, or not at all. Auto-assembly bots can paint or spot-weld a vehicle in a fraction of the time that a human crew might require, and with none of the health concerns. That's their knife trick. But ask them to install upholstery, and they would most likely bash the vehicle to pieces.
Robot cars, at the moment, have a similarly savant-like range of expertise. As The Atlantic recently covered (http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/05/all-the-world-a-track-the-trick-that-makes-googles-self-driving-cars-work/370871/), Google's driverless vehicles require detailed LIDAR maps—3D models created from lasers sweeping the contours of a given roadway—to function. Autonomous cars have to do impressive things, like detecting the proximity of surrounding cars, and determining right of way at intersections. But they are algorithmically locked onto their laser roads. They stay the proscribed course, following a trail of sensor-generated breadcrumbs. Compared to what humans have to contend with, these robots are the most sheltered sort of permanent student drivers. No one is quizzing them by sending pedestrians or drunk drivers darting into their path, or diverting them through un-mapped, snow-covered country lanes. Their ability to avoid fatal collisions remains untested.
Of course, they'll get better. Sensors will improve and multiply, control algorithms will become more robust, and perhaps the robots will begin talking amongst themselves, warning each other of imminent danger. But the leap from a crash-reduced world to a completely crash-free one is an assumption, and not well-supported by the harsh realities of robotics in particular, and mechanical devices in general. Machines break. Software stumbles. The automotive environment is one of the most punishing and challenging in all of engineering, requiring components to stand up to wild swings of temperature, treacherous road conditions, and the unexpected failure of other components within an intricate, interlocking system. There's only one way to assume that robots will always know that a tire is about to blow, or be able to broadcast the emergency to all nearby cars, each of which will respond with the instant, miraculous performance of a Hollywood stunt driver. For that, you can't be a roboticist, or someone whose computer has crashed inexplicably, or whose WiFi has ever gone down, or whose streaming video has momentarily stuttered. To buy into the myth of robotic competence—or hyper-competence, really—you have to believe that robots are perfect, because SF says so.
* * *

When anyone cites Isaac Asimov's Laws of Robotics, it's an unintentional cry for help. It means that he or she sees robots as a modern fairy tale, the Google-built successors of the glitchy old golem of Jewish myth.
But Asimov's Laws weren't designed to solve future dilemmas related robots with the power of life and death. They are narrative devices, whose tidy, oversimplified directives allow for the loopholes, contradictions and logical gaps that can lead to compelling stories. If you're quoting any of those laws, you're falling for a dual-trap, employing the same dangerously narrow reasoning as the makers and deployers of Asimov's robots (who are supposed to be doing it wrong). And even worse, you're relying on fantasies to guide your thinking about reality. Even if it were possible to simply order all robots to never hurt a person, unless they are suddenly able to conquer the laws of physics, or banish the Blue Screen of Death in all its vicissitudes, large automated machines are going to roll or stumble or topple into people. This might be rare, but it will be an inevitability for some number of poor souls. Plus, the military, still the largest provider of R&D funding for robotics, might have something to say about that First Law being applied to all such machines.
Which isn't to say that SF means to mislead us about robotics, or should be ignored. I've talked to many roboticists and artificial intelligence researchers who were inspired by hyper-competent bogeymen, from 2001's HAL 9000 to the Terminator's T-800. The dream of robotic power is intoxicating. That the systems these scientists create are usually pale shadows of human competence is a mere fact of robotics. After all, the point of automation, in almost all cases, isn't to create a superhuman capability. It's to take people out of the equation, to save money, or save their lives, or save them the time and trouble of doing something boring. A Predator drone is not a better aircraft than a manned F-16 fighter, because it's robotic. In fact, it's not a better aircraft at all. Drones are, without exception, the least impressive military vehicles in the sky. But they're small, and cheaper to buy and deploy than a proper airborne killing machine. They're "good enough" technology (http://archive.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/magazine/17-09/ff_goodenough?currentPage=all), if your mission is to assassinate a ground target, in a region where air defense technology amounts to running for cover. But pit them against traditional attack craft, or systems designed to down encroaching aircraft, and armed drones will excel only at becoming smoking ruins.
In very specific, very limited applications, robots are strong. In most cases, though, they are weak. They are cost-effective surrogates. Or they are incredibly humble devices, like the awkward, bumbling humanoids of the DARPA Robotics Challenge (http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/TTO/Programs/DARPA_Robotics_Challenge.aspx), who are celebrated for gradually struggling through tasks (driving a vehicle, walking over rubble, using a power tool) that any able-bodied person would accomplish in exponentially less time. Journalists are often complicit in this myth-building. They inflate automated capabilities, romanticizing the decision-making that goes into how a robot approaches a task, or turning every discussion of exoskeletons and advanced prosthetics for the disabled into a bright-eyed prophesy of Iron Man-like abilities to come. Where journalists should be dismantling false, SF-sourced preconceptions about robotic technology, they're instead referencing those tales of derring-do, and reinforcing the sense that SF was right all along. Whether in make-believe settings, or the distorted scene-setting of media coverage, robots are strong, because anything less would be a buzzkill.
Which makes me the guy earnestly pooping on everyone's robot party. I think there's another option, though. Robots can be impressive without being overstated. A robotic limb can be a remarkable achievement because it restores independence to an amputee, and not because Almost Human imagines that a bionic leg is great for kicking people across the room. It's possible to love SF's thought experiments and vague predictions, while recognizing that it's not in SF's best interest to be rigidly accurate. Robots don't tend to shamble into dour literature about college professors and their desperate affairs. Fictional machines are the better, upgraded angels of our nature, protecting their makers with impossible intellects and physical prowess. More often they're rising against their masters in flawless, one-sided coups that are roughly as feasible (and impossible to banish from pop culture) as zombie outbreaks. Robots are perfect because that's the version of robots that's most fun.
That's a foolish way to think or talk about real robots, which are destined to break down and fall short. Automation is transforming our society in ways that are both disturbing and exciting. Assassination (in some places) is easier with robots. Collisions could one day be reduced with robots. Machine autonomy will annihilate whole professions and create or enhance others. Robots have only begun to reconfigure human life. So shut up, for a moment, about SF's artificial heroes and villains, and the easy, ill-informed fantasies that fill the gaps of technical understanding. There are too many actual, fallible robots to talk about. And there's only so much time in our short, brutish, meatbag lives to discuss what we're going to do with them.

Hipotetički, možda će se neko od nas zateći na Mesecu. Možda kao član neke naučne ekspedicije ili jedan od prvih kolonista namernih da tamo zasnuju zajednicu i povedu ljudsku rasu korak dalje zvezdama. Mesec je sjajno mesto za proširene vene (niska gravitacija!) i zdrav ten (nema proklete atmosfere da blokira najbolje delove sunčeve svetlosti!!) ali ima jednu veliku manu: ne možete da redovno obilazite Sagitu jer je pristup internetu najblaže rečeno nesiguran. Srećom, MIT-ovi naučnici imaju rešenje i za ovaj problem: laseri, pored toga što se od njih prave korisne kancelarijske alatke i futuristička oružja, mogu da širokopojasni internet dobace i na Mesec!!!!! Ping će biti problematičan zbog daljine, pa je igranje Quakea u mreži verovatno za sada isključeno, ali ko hoće samo da torentuje najnovije epizode Rules of Engagement, ima sreće! Dolecitirani tekst pokazuje koji su tehnološki izazovi vezani za ovakve poduhvate.


MIT figures out how to give the moon broadband -- using lasers (http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9248549/MIT_figures_out_how_to_give_the_moon_broadband_using_lasers)

QuoteFour transmitting telescopes in the New Mexico desert, each just 6 inches in diameter, can give a satellite orbiting the moon faster Internet access than many U.S. homes get. The telescopes form the earthbound end of an experimental laser link to demonstrate faster communication with spacecraft and possible future bases on the moon and Mars. Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will give details about the system and its performance next month at a conference of The Optical Society.


The Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration (LLCD) kicked off (http://www.techhive.com/article/2047298/nasa-to-test-laser-communications-link-with-new-lunar-mission.html) last September with the launch of NASA's LADEE (Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer), a research satellite now orbiting the moon. NASA built a laser communications module into LADEE for use in the high-speed wireless experiment.
LLCD has already proved itself, transmitting data from LADEE to Earth at 622Mbps (bits per second) and in the other direction at 19.44Mbps, according to MIT. It beat the fastest-ever radio communication to the moon by a factor of 4,800.
NASA hopes lasers can speed up communication with missions in space, which use radio to talk to Earth now, and let them send back more data. Laser equipment also weighs less than radio gear, a critical factor given the high cost of lifting any object into space.
The project uses transmitting telescopes at White Sands, New Mexico, to send data as pulses of invisible infrared light. The hard part of reaching the moon by laser is getting through Earth's atmosphere, which can bend light and cause it to fade or drop out on the way to the receiver.
One way the researchers got around that was by using the four separate telescopes. Each sends its beam through a different column of air, where the light-bending effects of the atmosphere are slightly different. That increases the chance that at least one of the beams will reach the receiver on the LADEE.
Test results have been promising, according to MIT, with the 384,633-kilometer optical link providing error-free performance in both darkness and bright sunlight, through partly transparent thin clouds, and through atmospheric turbulence that affected signal power.
One reason it works is that there's plenty of signal power to spare. The transmission power from the Earth antennas totals 40 watts, and less than a billionth of a watt is received on the LADEE. But that's still 10 times the signal needed to communicate without errors, according to MIT. On the craft, a smaller telescope collects the light and focuses it into an optical fiber. After the signal is amplified, it's converted to electrical pulses and into data.

Navodno ljudi napisali program koji je prošao Turingov test!  :-| :-| :-| :-| :-| :-| :-| :-| :-|


Turing Test breakthrough as super-computer becomes first to convince us it's human  (http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/computer-becomes-first-to-pass-turing-test-in-artificial-intelligence-milestone-but-academics-warn-of-dangerous-future-9508370.html)

QuoteEugene Goostman, a computer programme pretending to be a young Ukrainian boy, successfully duped enough humans to pass the iconic test
 
A programme that convinced humans that it was a 13-year-old boy has become the first computer ever to pass the Turing Test. The test — which requires that computers are indistinguishable from humans — is considered a landmark in the development of artificial intelligence, but academics have warned that the technology could be used for cybercrime.




Computing pioneer Alan Turing said that a computer could be understood to be thinking if it passed the test, which requires that a computer dupes 30 per cent of human interrogators in five-minute text conversations.
Read more: What exactly is the Turing test? (http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/what-is-the-turing-test-and-why-does-it-matter-9511133.html)Eugene Goostman, a computer programme made by a team based in Russia, succeeded in a test conducted at the Royal Society in London. It convinced 33 per cent of the judges that it was human, said academics at the University of Reading, which organised the test.
It is thought to be the first computer to pass the iconic test. Though other programmes have claimed successes, those included set topics or questions in advance.
A version of the computer programme, which was created in 2001, is hosted online for anyone talk to (http://www.princetonai.com/bot/bot.jsp). ("I feel about beating the turing test in quite convenient way. Nothing original," said Goostman, when asked how he felt after his success.)
The computer programme claims to be a 13-year-old boy from Odessa in Ukraine.
"Our main idea was that he can claim that he knows anything, but his age also makes it perfectly reasonable that he doesn't know everything," said Vladimir Veselov, one of the creators of the programme. "We spent a lot of time developing a character with a believable personality."
The programme's success is likely to prompt some concerns about the future of computing, said Kevin Warwick, a visiting professor at the University of Reading and deputy vice-chancellor for research at Coventry University.


"In the field of Artificial Intelligence there is no more iconic and controversial milestone than the Turing Test, when a computer convinces a sufficient number of interrogators into believing that it is not a machine but rather is a human," he said. "Having a computer that can trick a human into thinking that someone, or even something, is a person we trust is a wake-up call to cybercrime.
"The Turing Test is a vital tool for combatting that threat. It is important to understand more fully how online, real-time communication of this type can influence an individual human in such a way that they are fooled into believing something is true... when in fact it is not."
The test, organised at the Royal Society on Saturday, featured five programmes in total. Judges included Robert Llewellyn, who played robot Kryten in Red Dwarf, and Lord Sharkey, who led the successful campaign for Alan Turing's posthumous pardon last year.
Alan Turing created the test in a 1950 paper, 'Computing Machinery and Intelligence'. In it, he said that because 'thinking' was difficult to define, what matters is whether a computer could imitate a real human being. It has since become a key part of the philosophy of artificial intelligence.
The success came on the 60th anniversary of Turing's death, on Saturday.

Sad je na redu da sa kompjuterskim programima komuniciramo na fejsbuku i tviteru, pa da oni komuniciraju međusobno. Kad to postignemo, moći ćemo da batalimo internet i da se bavimo stvarnim životom.

To! Jedva čekam da vidim pornografiju koju će kompjuteri praviti za kompjutere dok mi sedimo na Adi ispod nekog drveta i pijemo lađena pića!!!!!!

Šta da vidiš? Pa, sediš na Adi, u ladovini i pijuckaš ladni sokić.

jebga, sačekaćemo još malo za takvu akciju
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140609/07284327524/no-computer-did-not-pass-turing-test-first-time-everyone-should-know-better.shtml (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140609/07284327524/no-computer-did-not-pass-turing-test-first-time-everyone-should-know-better.shtml)

mada, mislim da ne bi bio problem napraviti dva četbota da se hotuju

Ejebiga kad ja verujem independentu  :cry: :cry: U moju odbranu, imam puno posla, nisam stigao da čitam kmentare i reakcje inače bih video da je ovo bulšit.  :(

Zamisli da botMeho i botScallop trabunjaju po ZS, a nas dvojica seirimo uz piće i meze.

Sanjam o tom partikularnom Elizijumu!!!!!!!!!

Ma, mogao bih da ti dam i veselije primere. Na ovom našem bunjištu gomila nikova nije u stanju da u lice izgovori ono šta napiše. Kad bi ih zamenili botovi možda bi našli načina da se predstave kao ljudi.

Inače, Erik Sofge u Popular Science veli da je Turingov test originalno bio zamišljen da pokaže ko može bolje da imitira žene: muškarci ili veštačka inteligencija.
Lie Like A Lady: The Profoundly Weird, Gender-Specific Roots Of The Turing Test (http://www.popsci.com/blog-network/zero-moment/lie-lady-profoundly-weird-gender-specific-roots-turing-test)

Quote

By now, you may have heard that the Turing Test, that hallowed old test of machine intelligence proposed by pioneering mathematician Alan Turing in 1950, has been passed (http://www.reading.ac.uk/news-and-events/releases/PR583836.aspx). In a contest held this past weekend, a chatbot posing as a 13-year-old Ukrainian boy fooled a third of its human judges into thinking it was a human. This prompted the University of Reading, which had organized the competition, to announce the acheivment of "an historic milestone in artificial intelligence."
You may have also heard that this was a complete sham, and the academic equivalent of urinating directly on Turing's grave. Turing imagined a benchmark that would answer the question, "Can machines think," with a resounding yes, demonstrating some level of human-like cognition. Instead, the researchers who built the winning program, "Eugene Goostman," engaged in outright trickery. Like every chatbot before it, Eugene evaded questions, rather than processing their content and returning a truly relevant answer. And it used possibly the dirtiest trick of all. In a two-part deception, Eugene's broken English could be explained away by not being a native speaker, and its general stupidity could be justified by its being a kid (no offense, 13-year-olds). Instead of passing the Turing Test, the researchers gamed it. They aren't the first—Cleverbot was considered by some to have passed in 2011 (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20865-software-tricks-people-into-thinking-it-is-human.html)—but as of right now, they're the most famous.
What you may not have heard, though, is how profoundly bizarre Alan Turing's original proposed test was. Much like the Uncanny Valley, the Turing Test is a seed of an idea that's been warped and reinterpreted into scientific canon. The University of Reading deserves to be ridiculed for claiming that its zany publicity stunt is a groundbreaking milestone in AI research. But the test it's desecrating deserves some scrutiny, too.
"Turing never proposed a test in which a computer pretends to be human," says Karl MacDorman, an associate professor of human-computer interaction at Indiana University. "Turing proposed an imitation game in which a man and a computer compete in pretending to be a woman. In this competition, the computer was pretending to be a 13-year-old boy, not a woman, and it was in a competition against itself, not a man."
MacDorman isn't splitting hairs with this analysis. It's right there in the second paragraph of Turing's landmark 1950 paper (http://www.loebner.net/Prizef/TuringArticle.html), "Computing Machinery and Intelligence," published in 1950 in the journal Mind. He begins by describing a scenario where a man and a woman would both try to convince the remote, unseen interrogator that they are female, using type-written responses or by speaking through an intermediary. The real action, however, comes when the man in replaced by a machine. "Will the interrogator decide wrongly as often when the game is played like this as he does when the game is played between a man and a woman?" asks Turing.
The Imitation Game asks a computer to not only imitate a thinking human, but a specific gender of thinking human. It sidesteps the towering hurdles associated with creating human-like machine intelligence, and tumbles face-first into what should be a mathematician's nightmare—the unbounded, unquantifiable quagmire of gender identity.
The imagined machine would need to understand the specific social mores and stereotypes of the country it's pretending to hail from. It might also have to decide when its false self was born. This was in 1950, after all, just 22 years after British women were granted universal voting rights. The aftershocks of the women's suffrage movement were still being felt. So how should a machine pretend to feel about this subject, whether as a woman of a certain age, or as a student born after those culture-realigning battles were won?
Whether a computer can pull this off seems terribly fascinating, and like an excellent research question for some distant era, long after the puzzle of artificial general intelligence is solved. But the Imitation Game is an exercise posed at the inception of the digital age, at a time when the term computer was as likely to conjure up an image of a woman crunching numbers for the Allied war effort as a machine capable of chatting about its hair.
The hair thing is Turing's example, not mine. More on that later.
By now you might be wondering why I haven't moved on to the Turing Test, which is surely some clarified, revised version of the Imitation Game that Turing presented in a later publication. Would that it were so. When he died in 1954, Turing hadn't removed gender from his ground-breaking thought experiment. The Turing Test is an act of collective academic kindness, conferred on its namesake posthumously. And as it entered popular usage, it took on new meaning and significance, as the standard by which future artificial intelligences should be judged. The moment when a computer tricks its human interrogator will be the first true glimpse of machine sentience. Depending on your science fiction intake, it will be cause for celebration, or war.
In that respect, the Turing Test shares something with the Uncanny Valley, a hypothesis that's also based on a very old paper, which also presented no experimental results, and also guesses at specific aspects of technology that wouldn't be remotely possible for decades. In this 1970 paper, roboticist Masahiro Mori imagined a curve on a graph, with positive feelings towards robots rising steadily as those machines looked more and more human-like, before suddenly plunging. At that proposed level of human mimicry, subjects would feel unease, if not terror. Finally, the graph's valley would form when some potential amount of perfect human-aping capability is achieved, and we don't just like androids—we love them!
The excessive italics are my attempt to highlight the fact that, in 1970, the Uncanny Valley was based on no interactions with actual robots. It was a thought experiment. And it still is, in large part, because we haven't achieved perfect impostors, and the related academic experiments rely not on robots, but static images and computer-generated avatars. Also, Mori himself never bothered to test his own theory, in the 44 years since he wistfully dreamt it up. (If that seems overly harsh, read the paper (http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/humanoids/the-uncanny-valley), co-translated by Karl MacDorman. It's alarmingly short and florid.) Instead, he eventually wrote a book about how robots are born Buddhists. (Again (http://www.amazon.com/The-Buddha-Robot-Masahiro-Mori/dp/4333010020), don't take my word for it.)
But despite the flimsy, evidence-free nature of Mori's paper, and the fact that face-to-face interactions with robots have yielded a variety of results, too complex to conform to any single curve, the Uncanny Valley is still treated by many as fact. Any why shouldn't it be? It sounds logical. Like the Turing Test, there's a sense of poetry to its logic, and its ramifications, which involve robots. But however it applies to your opinion of the corpse-eyed cartoons in The Polar Express, the Uncanny Valley adds nothing of value to the field of robotics. It's science as junk food.
The Turing Test is also an overly simplified, and often unfortunately deployed concept. Its greatest legacy is the chatbot, and the competitions that try—and generally fail—to glorify the damnable things. But where the Uncanny Valley and the Turing Test differ is in their vision. The Turing Test, as we've come to understand it, and as last weekend's event proves, is a hollow measure. Turing, however, was still a visionary. And in his strange, sloppy, apparently over-reaching Imitation Game, he offers a brilliant insight into the nature of human and artificial intelligence.
Talking about your hair is smarter than it sounds.

* * *

Turing's first sample question for the Imitation Game reads, "Will X please tell me the length of his or her hair?" And the notional answer, from a human male: "My hair is shingled, and the longest strands are about nine inches long."
Think about what's happening in that response. The subject is picturing (presumably) someone else's hair, or whipping up a visual from scratch. He's included a reference to a specific haircut, too, rather than a plainly descriptive mention that it's shorter in back.
If a machine could deliver a similar answer, it would mean one of two things.
Its programmers are great at writing scripted responses, and lucked out when it detected the word "hair." The less cynical, pre-chatbot possibility is that the computer is able to access an image, and describe its physical characteristics, as well as its cultural context.
Making gender such a core component of a test for machine intelligence still makes me uneasy, and seems like the sort of tangential inclusion that would be lambasted by modern researchers. But what Turing sought was the ability to process data on the fly, and draw together multiple types of information. Intelligence, among other things, means understanding things like length and color, but also knowing what shingled hair is.
The Imitation Game also has better testing methodology than the standard version of the Turing Test, since it involves comparing a human's ability to deceive with a machine's ability to do the same. At first glance, this might seem like insanity—if this test is supposed to lead to computers that think like us, who cares if they can specifically pretend to be one gender or another? What makes the Imitation Game brilliant, though, is that it's a contest. It sets a specific goal for programmers, instead of staging an open-ended demonstration of person-like computation. And it asks the computer to perform a task that its human competitor could also fail at. The Turing Test, on the other hand, doesn't pit a computer against a person in an actual competition. Humans might be included as a control element, but no one expects them to fail at coming across at the most basic of all tasks—being a person. 
The Imitation Game might still be vulnerable to modern chatbot techniques. As legions of flirty programs on "dating" sites can attest, falling back on lame stereotypes can be a surprisingly successful strategy for temporarily duping humans. There's nothing perfect about Turing's original proposal. And it shouldn't be sacred either, considering its advanced age, and the developments in AI since it was written. But for all its problems and messy socio-cultural complications, I don't think we've done Turing any favors by replacing the Imitation Game with the Turing Test. Being better than a man at pretending to be a living woman is an undeniably fraught victory condition for AI. But it's a more contained experiment than simply aping the evasive chatroom habits of semi-literate humans, and would call for greater feats of machine cognition. After this latest cycle of breathless announcements and well-deserved backlash, no one should care when the next unthinking collection of auto-responses passes the Turing Test.
But if something beats a human at the Imitation Game?
I'm getting chills just writing that.

Novi, 3D-štampani materijal može da izdrži težinu 160000 puta veću od svoje:

New ultrastiff, ultralight material developed (http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/new-ultrastiff-ultralight-material-developed-0619)

QuoteNanostructured material based on repeating microscopic units has record-breaking stiffness at low density.


What's the difference between the Eiffel Tower and the Washington Monument?
Both structures soar to impressive heights, and each was the world's tallest building when completed. But the Washington Monument is a massive stone structure, while the Eiffel Tower achieves similar strength using a lattice of steel beams and struts that is mostly open air, gaining its strength from the geometric arrangement of those elements.
Now engineers at MIT and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have devised a way to translate that airy, yet remarkably strong, structure down to the microscale — designing a system that could be fabricated from a variety of materials, such as metals or polymers, and that may set new records for stiffness for a given weight.
The new design is described in the journal Science by MIT's Nicholas Fang; former postdoc Howon Lee, now an assistant professor at Rutgers University; visiting research fellow Qi "Kevin" Ge; LLNL's Christopher Spadaccini and Xiaoyu "Rayne" Zheng; and eight others.
The design is based on the use of microlattices with nanoscale features, combining great stiffness and strength with ultralow density, the authors say. The actual production of such materials is made possible by a high-precision 3-D printing process called projection microstereolithography, as a result of the joint research collaboration between the Fang and Spadaccini groups since 2008.
Normally, Fang explains, stiffness and strength declines with the density of any material; that's why when bone density decreases, fractures become more likely. But using the right mathematically determined structures to distribute and direct the loads — the way the arrangement of vertical, horizontal, and diagonal beams do in a structure like the Eiffel Tower — the lighter structure can maintain its strength.
A pleasant surprise
The geometric basis for such microstructures was determined more than a decade ago, Fang says, but it took years to transfer that mathematical understanding "to something we can print, using a digital projection — to convert this solid model on paper to something we can hold in our hand." The result was "a pleasant surprise to us," he adds, performing even better than anticipated.
"We found that for a material as light and sparse as aerogel [a kind of glass foam], we see a mechanical stiffness that's comparable to that of solid rubber, and 400 times stronger than a counterpart of similar density. Such samples can easily withstand a load of more than 160,000 times their own weight," says Fang, the Brit and Alex d'Arbeloff Career Development Associate Professor in Engineering Design. So far, the researchers at MIT and LLNL have tested the process using three engineering materials — metal, ceramic, and polymer — and all showed the same properties of being stiff at light weight.
"This material is among the lightest in the world," LLNL's Spadaccini says. "However, because of its microarchitected layout, it performs with four orders of magnitude higher stiffness than unstructured materials, like aerogels, at a comparable density."
Light material, heavy loads
This approach could be useful anywhere there's a need for a combination of high stiffness (for load bearing), high strength, and light weight — such as in structures to be deployed in space, where every bit of weight adds significantly to the cost of launch. But Fang says there may also be applications at smaller scale, such as in batteries for portable devices, where reduced weight is also highly desirable.
Another property of these materials is that they conduct sound and elastic waves very uniformly, meaning they could lead to new acoustic metamaterials, Fang says, that could help control how waves bend over a curved surface.
Others have suggested similar structural principles over the years, such as a proposal last year (https://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/how-to-make-big-things-out-of-small-pieces-0815) by researchers at MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA) for materials that could be cut out as flat panels and assembled into tiny unit cells to make larger structures. But that concept would require assembly by robotic systems that have yet to be developed, says Fang, who has discussed this work with CBA researchers. This technique, he says, uses 3-D printing technology that can be implemented now.
Martin Wegener, a professor of mechanical engineering at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany who was not involved in this research, says, "Achieving metamaterials that are ultralight in weight, yet stiffer than you would expect from usual scaling laws for elastic solids, is of obvious technological interest. The paper makes an interesting contribution in this direction."
The work was supported by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and LLNL.

Printing with Light (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3AdR9Pt_Jo#ws)

Chris Hadfield za Cracked o tome kao je to biti kosmonaut:


http://www.cracked.com/article_21369_6-ways-movies-get-space-wrong-by-astronaut-chris-hadfield.html (http://www.cracked.com/article_21369_6-ways-movies-get-space-wrong-by-astronaut-chris-hadfield.html)

 'Optical fibre' made out of thin air (http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/optical-fibre-made-out-of-thin-air-1.2715321)

Quotecientists say they have turned thin air into an "optical fibre" that can transmit and amplify light signals without the need for any cables.
In a proof-of-principle experiment they created an "air waveguide" that could one day be used as an instantaneous optical fibre to any point on earth, or even into space.
The findings, reported in the journal Optica, have applications in long range laser communications, high-resolution topographic mapping, air pollution and climate change research, and could also be used by the military to make laser weapons.

   
• Read the full paper (http://arxiv.org/abs/1404.5293)

"People have been thinking about making air waveguides for a while, but this is the first time it's been realized," said Howard Milchberg of the University of Maryland, who led the research, which was funded by the U.S. military and National Science Foundation.
Lasers lose intensity and focus with increasing distance as photons naturally spread apart and interact with atoms and molecules in the air.
Fibre optics solves this problem by beaming the light through glass cores with a high refractive index, which is good for transmitting light.
The core is surrounded by material with a lower refractive index that reflects light back in to the core, preventing the beam from losing focus or intensity.
Fibre optics, however, are limited in the amount of power they can carry and the need for a physical structure to support them.
Light and air Milchberg and colleagues' made the equivalent of an optical fibre out of thin air by generating a laser with its light split into a ring of multiple beams forming a pipe.
They used very short and powerful pulses from the laser to heat the air molecules along the beam extremely quickly.
Such rapid heating produced sound waves that took about a microsecond to converge to the centre of the pipe, creating a high-density area surrounded by a low-density area left behind in the wake of the laser beams.
"A microsecond is a long time compared to how far light propagates, so the light is gone and a microsecond later those sound waves collide in the centre, enhancing the air density there," says Milchberg.
The lower density region of air surrounding the centre of the air waveguide had a lower refractive index, keeping the light focused.
"Any structure [even air] which has a higher density will have a higher index of refraction and thereby act like an optical fibre," says Milchberg.
Amplified signal Once Milchberg and colleagues created their air waveguide, they used a second laser to spark the air at one end of the waveguide turning it into plasma.
An optical signal from the spark was transmitted along the air waveguide, over a distance of a metre to a detector at the other end.
The signal collected by the detector was strong enough to allow Milchberg and colleagues to analyze the chemical composition of the air that produced the spark.
The researchers found the signal was 50 per cent stronger than a signal obtained without an air waveguide.
The findings show the air waveguide can be used as a "remote collection optic," says Milchberg.
"This is an optical fibre cable that you can reel out at the speed of light and place next to [something] that you want to measure remotely, and have the signal come all the way back to where you are."
Australian expert Ben Eggleton of the University of Sydney says this is potentially an important advance for the field of optics.
"It's sort of like you have an optical fibre that you can shine into the sky, connecting your laser to the top of the atmosphere," says Eggleton.
"You don't need big lenses and optics, it's already guided along this channel in the atmosphere."

Zgodno, mikrosekunda je oko 300 m, ali...


The findings, reported in the journal Optica, have applications in long range laser communications, high-resolution topographic mapping, air pollution and climate change research, and could also be used by the military to make laser weapons.

Pa, normalno da to sve ima i vojnu namenu kad im vojska finansira istraživanje.

QuoteThis research was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, and the National Science Foundation.

Ako ti misliš da je normalno.  :(

Pa ako su im dva od tri finansijera iz domena odbrane, valjda je to "normalno" ili makar očekivano? Zašto je sad tebi to nenormalno kad si i ti radio za vojsku???

Baš čudno. Ja za vojsku, a ti za Crveni krst. Pa, tebi normalno, a meni baš i nije.

Neko tu nije normalan!!!

Ako stigneš na vreme jednom ću ti ispričati zašto sam ja u pravu a ti ne. 8)

Pošto je moj otac juče prvi put posle 43 godine izgovorio rečenicu "U pravu sam ja, ali i ti si u pravu", obraćajući se meni, onda živim u nadi da ću nešto slično jednom čuti i od tebe. Ti si doduše stariji odnjega dve godine ali me poznaješ kraće, pa će to da se potre  :lol:

Učinio ti je da se bolje osećaš.

Meni je to dovoljno - ne moram ja stvarno da budem u pravu sve dok se svi ponašaju kao da jesam.  :lol:

To i Vučić očekuje.

Živimo SF: aktuelni nemački prvak u skoku u dalj, Markus Rehm - nema desnu nogu. Umesto toga ima zgodnu protezu i skače kao zmaj. Naravno, to ne deluje baš kaoigranje po istim pravilima kako i ostali takmičari, ali barem kul izgleda:

Markus Rehm - 8.24 m - German Champion Long Jump 2014 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNtZ_lbhafE#ws)


http://www.parasport-news.com/germanys-markus-rehm-sets-world-record-in-the-long-jump/1628/ (http://www.parasport-news.com/germanys-markus-rehm-sets-world-record-in-the-long-jump/1628/)

QuoteYesterday at the  Ulm German Athletics Championships, Markus Rehm (https://www.facebook.com/markus.rehm88) set a world record in the F44 long jump, with a jump of 8.24 meters on his fourth attempt. He was the first amputee athlete to compete at the championships.

His jump also secured (http://news-round.com/news/rehm-becomes-long-jump-master-with-leg-prosthesis/) him a first place finish, and qualified him for the European athletics championships which take place in Zurich, Switzerland from August 12 to 18.  Former European champion Christian Reif finished second with a jump of 8.2 meters.  Following the race, the twenty-five year old jumper was quoted by n-tv.de (http://www.n-tv.de/sport/Rehm-duepiert-die-Weitsprung-Elite-article13314436.html) the as saying, "I still have heart palpitations.  There are simply jumps you meet perfectly - and so it was today."   On Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/markus.rehm88), he said, "I AM SPEECHLESS ... and can not believe it, 8.24 m and thus German Champion! Perfect conditions and an excellent audience ... now I have to come down again! made ​​short finish and there you go to Mainz to the Current."

Not everyone is happy with the result.   Rehm runs and jumps with a specially designed blade that is 15 inches longer than his other leg.  Reif accused Rehm of basically cheating as a result.   There are allegations that it gives him an unfair competitive advantage when jumping. German Athletics Federation head coach  Idriss Gonschinska is quoted by  n-tv.de (http://www.n-tv.de/sport/Rehm-duepiert-die-Weitsprung-Elite-article13314436.html) as saying in response to this allegation, "It takes complex analysis in order to answer this question."

Rehm competed at the 2012 Summer Paralympics in London, where he also set a world record in the long jump with a  7.35 meter jump for 1,093 points. He competes for TSV Bayer 04 Leverkusen.

Južnokorejski svemirski program stavljen na led nakon što je jedina njihova astronautkinja rešila da prekine da se bavi time:


Why South Korea's Only Astronaut Quit (http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/south-koreas-astronaut-quit/story?id=24959899)

QuoteShe went from astronaut to an astro-not.
Yi So-yeon, South Korea's first and only astronaut quit her job this week, ending the country's manned space program.
The Korea Aerospace Research Institute said Yi sent a resignation letter by mail that explained she would be stepping down from her position due to personal reasons, according to local reports (http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/news/2014/08/12/0200000000AEN20140812008500320.html?input=www.tweeter.com&_ga=1.74234330.99154093.1407935218).



Yi beat out more than 36,000 South Koreans who applied to become the first Korean astronaut. The government paid $20 million to Russia for her ticket to space, something that has been called a "matter of national pride."
She made history on April 8, 2008, when she boarded a Soyuz spacecraft bound for the International Space Station, becoming the first Korean and the 49th woman to visit space.
During her 11 days at the ISS, Yi conducted science experiments and even hosted a traditional kimchi dinner in honor of the first Russian in space, Yuri Gagarin.
The 29-year-old bio-engineering student's space flight was celebrated across the country and a crowd of thousands convened in front of Seoul City Hall to mark the occasion. Gwang Ju Science High School, Yi's alma mater, also held a rally to cheer on its famous alumna.
Her return to Earth wasn't so smooth. The space capsule, which was carrying two other astronauts, veered off course and landed 260 miles away, near some shepherds in Kazakhstan.
"They thought at first we were aliens," Yi said in an interview (http://www.haas.berkeley.edu/groups/pubs/berkeleyhaas/winter2013/haas_list.html).
Since her stint in space, Yi has worked on research from the ground, given speeches about her time in space and participated in educational programs to inspire students. In 2010, she began a new journey as an MBA student at the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business to pursue more down-to-earth endeavors in the private sector.
Reflecting on why she was chosen for the trip of a lifetime, Yi said: "I think they felt I was open minded and would easily reach out to the public."

Japan je poznat po tome što tamo neke od najinovativnijih tehnologija na planeti idu ruku pod ruku sa izrazito retro rešenjima. Na primer, kod njih je keš i dalje veoma prisutno sredstvo isplaćivanja plata a telefaks se koristi i u poslovanju velikih firmi. Ultrabizarno, telegrafija u Japanu trenutno cveta:
Telegram not dead STOP Alive, evolving in Japan STOP (http://www.itworld.com/unified-communications/431519/telegram-not-dead-stop-alive-evolving-japan-stop)

Quote

Throughout Japan, an army of workers stands ready to ensure important messages are delivered as quickly as possible. But they don't work in data centers maintaining email servers. They deliver telegrams.

Staff from Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT), one of the world's largest telecom companies, still drive around big cities and even board ships to remote Japanese islands hand-delivering telegrams from friends, loved ones and business partners.

The couriers are continuing a 145-year-old tradition, from 1869, when a government agency that preceded NTT began telegraphy services between Tokyo and the port of Yokohama.

Japan is one of the last countries in the world where telegrams are still widely used. A combination of traditional manners, market liberalization and innovation has kept alive this age-old form of messaging, first commercialized in the mid-19th century by Samuel Morse and others.

While they're not exactly practical, telegrams today are easy to send in Japan. They can be ordered via the Internet or by phone, simply by dialing 115. (Telegram Day is observed on the corresponding calendar date, Nov. 5.)

Companies affiliated with the country's three mobile carriers, NTT DoCoMo, KDDI and SoftBank, offer telegrams, which are sent via modern server networks instead of the dedicated electrical wires of the past (Morse telegraphy hasn't been used since 1962), and then printed out with modern printers instead of tape glued on paper.

But customers are still charged according to the length of the message, which is delivered within three hours. A basic NTT telegram up to 25 characters long can be sent for ¥440 ($4.30) when ordered online.

That the medium has endured so long takes many by surprise, and there have been premature reports about the death of the telegram (http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-22953657) at the hands of email, SMS and other modern communications.

But the telegram is alive and well in Japan. In fact, it's enjoying something of a renaissance.

The catalog of telegram services for NTT East, serving Tokyo and eastern and northern Japan, is 33 pages long. It showcases one of the main attractions for today's telegram writers: gifts. People can choose from a range of presents to accompany a heartfelt message, from Hello Kitty dolls to lacquered accessory boxes and bouquets of preserved flowers.

There's even a telegram that comes with incense sticks to burn at family altars or graves for Japan's Obon holiday in August, in which ancestors are remembered.

Indeed, another part of the appeal of telegrams is the fact that they often play a role in traditional customs and etiquette, which remains strong among older generations and in maintaining inter-company relationships.

"In Japan, there's still the custom, related to manners, of sending telegrams on occasions such as weddings and funerals," said Naoto Takumi, a spokesman for NTT East's TelWel, which handles telegrams. "It's like the New Year greetings cards that Japanese send at the end of the year."

Enrollments, graduations and new job positions also call for congratulations, so the beginning of the academic and fiscal year in April sees a flurry of wires, Takumi added.

While the number of telegrams sent by NTT peaked roughly 50 years ago, customers still wrote over 10 million of them in 2012.

The tally falls by about 10% a year, but there's a growing number of smaller companies offering telegrams and other delivery services in Japan.

That's because Japan liberalized some mail and messaging services about 10 years ago when it launched plans to privatize Japan Post, a government corporation that controls trillions of dollars' worth of customer savings.

Postal privatization eventually sputtered, but the new entrants have gone from sending 420,000 telegrams and other kinds of messages in 2004 to nearly 4 million in 2012.

In July, Sagawa Express, a long-established courier company, began offering telegrams presented in stylish cards from ¥1,382. Another company offers novelty "Marshmallow Telegrams" -- boxes of marshmallows made with edible characters that spell out a message.

"Some companies are trying to compete with NTT on price and offerings," says Takeo Kiyokawa, a general manager at PS Communications, a SoftBank group company set up a few years ago to offer domestic telegrams.

The firm's Hot Denpo service includes fancy gifts by fashion designers such as Junko Koshino, who created a gold and brown plastic clutch purse to enclose telegrams. It's priced at ¥8,000.

It's surprisingly stylish given that about 90% of PS Communications customers are businesses and 70% of the telegrams it sends are condolences. Yet Hot Denpo users are slowly increasing, Kiyokawa says.

"The telegram culture is continuing," he said, "but I'm not sure what will happen 10 years from now."

Younger Japanese may be unfamiliar with the medium, but gift cartoon characters are bridging the gap.

"I sent my mother a Doraemon telegram," a 27-year-old Japanese model wrote on her blog for Mother's Day, referring to the famous robot cat from manga and anime. The stuffed toy comes with a prerecorded greeting and thanks the recipient for working hard.

"She was thrilled! Thank you (Mom) for raising me."

Ja ću iskoristiti priliku da kažem da je pronalazač bio Amerikanac prezimena Mors, a da smo ga mi prozvali Morze verovatno pod uticajem nemačkog. :lol: Trebalo je dakle da imamo Morsovu azbuku.

Telegraf ili telegram?

Pa, telegram, ali ovde sam više mislio "telegraf" kao usluga a ne kao sprava.

Obnovljiva energija može da zadovolji sve naše potvrde, tvrde, a pritom nam čak i ne treba neki veliki sistem za skladištenje jer možemo da koristimo pametan softver za predviđanje potrošnje... Uistinu, živimo SF, mada je ovo više idealizovana slika koja ignoriše mnoge inženjerske zbiljnosti:



Is Storage Necessary for Renewable Energy?  (http://www.engineering.com/ElectronicsDesign/ElectronicsDesignArticles/ArticleID/8272/Is-Storage-Necessary-for-Renewable-Energy.aspx)

Naravno, "potvrde" = "potrebe", imao sam brain fart.

Quote from: Meho Krljic on 19-08-2014, 09:58:29
Obnovljiva energija može da zadovolji sve naše potrebe, tvrde, a pritom nam čak i ne treba neki veliki sistem za skladištenje jer možemo da koristimo pametan softver za predviđanje potrošnje... Uistinu, živimo SF, mada je ovo više idealizovana slika koja ignoriše mnoge inženjerske zbiljnosti:

Pametan softver? Mene, manijaka neophodnosti skladištenja energije, ovakva razmišljanja uvek vuku u više pravaca. Pa, kako je topik Živimo SF, evo nekih:


Najpre iz moje daleke prošlosti. Poznato je da bi energija Sunca, kad bismo umeli da je spakujemo u sanduke i kutijice, samo iz Sahare, mogla da zadovolji sve naše potrebe na Zemlji. Manji problem su kolektori energije, a daleko veći sistem transporta, ako zanemarimo Tesline ideje. Međutim, postoji i sistem kondenzovanja i pakovanja energije koji bi sve pretvorio u robu. Tu je meni pala na um priča o briketima aktivnog uglja, čak sam i napisao jednu SF priču, ali sam se zapleo u teorije zavere. Naime, ti briketi su reusable (što bi ti rekao), kondenzovana energija se aktivira običnom vodom, a regeneracija se postiže ponovnim izlaganjem Suncu. Jedino je neophodno prvi put razviti aktivnu površinu reda veličine deset ari po gramu uglja. Ko se malo razume u fizičku hemiju i adsorpciju пис оф каке. Nešto kao karbo animalis ili zeolit povećane sorpcione moći. Kao što sam već napomenuo, postavilo bi se pitanje posedovanja Sahare i izlišnosti današnjih potrošača neobnovljivih resurs, a to je opet pucačina.


Drugo razmišljanje se povezuje na fatalnu privlačnost softvera. Nikada ne pomislite na to da može i da zakaže. Da padnu komunikacioni sateliti, da neko zlonameran sve hakuje i slično. Virtualizacija stvarnosti je daleko ranjivija nego što izgleda da jeste.


Na trećem mestu, a možda i na prvom, je priča o tome kako je zlato prestalo da bude podloga svetskog monetarnog sistema, pa su sad sve države dužne, a niko ne zna gde su pare. Ustvari, one i ne postoje osim kao podloga za besomučno kockanje svetom kao da je prćija na buvljaku. Tako bi i taj famozni softver za uparvljanje energijom postao virtuelan više nego što moj ukus može da podnese.

Da, da, zato sam gore i napisao da je ovo više idealizovana slika koja ignoriše inženjerske zbiljnosti, računajući tu između ostalog i na to da "pametan" softver ovog tipa svakako još ne postoji u nekoj ozbijnoj formi, kao i da je oslanjanje na pametnu predikciju potrošnje koja bi eliminisala potrebu za skladištenjem naprosto matematički ideal koji u stvarnosti teško damože da bude ostvaren zbog velikog broja faktora - a neki od njih su svakako ti koje ti pominješ - nebezbednost softvera, nepredviđene fluktuacije potrošnje koje su posledica kojekakvih efekata leptirovih krila itd. No, zavodljiva je ta priča o obnovljivim izvorima energije koji u teoriji mogu da zadovolje sve zemaljske energetske potrebe. Nemačka je imala taj neki momenat pre par meseci kada je 75% sve energije potrošene u zemlji bilo iz obnovljivih izvora. (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/05/13/3436923/germany-energy-records/) A da ne pominjemo kad se tehnologija spusti na nivo pojedinca u nekoj većoj meri (naravno u onim geografski oblastima gde je to izvodljivo). Već sada imamo primere kako disruptivno može da bude decentralizovanje energetskog snabdevanja a zamisli ako "svi" budemo u nekom momentu u mogućnosti da proizvodimo dovoljno energije za svoja domaćinstva koristeći solarne panele, turbine za vetar i, šta ja znam, geotermanlne električne generatore... Prosto ne mogu da pojmim kakva će tu promena socijalne i političke (i ekonomske, dakako) paradigme nastati, kad energija koju prave veliki proizvođači bude namenjena samo industriji... I da li će to biti na bolje ili na gore, naravno.  :lol:

Pa, mi i sada možemo da živimo od obnovljivih izvora energije, ali se ne isplati. Crko bi biznis.

Apsolutno je to jedan od elemenata jednačine - energetske firme jesu među najmoćnijima u svetu, ali kao što Tesla automobili polako osvajaju tržište uprkos opstrukcijama od strane klasične automobilske industrije tako je zamislivo da će se nešto slično dešavati i u domenu energetskog snabdevanja za individualna domaćinstva.

E, moj Meho. Zavodljiva je, ali neostvariva, bar ne za veći deo čovečanstva, još dugo... dugo...


Pogledaj, molim te, koliko košta tih 50-60 procenata, koji ponekad narastu na 70tak.


http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php/Electricity_and_natural_gas_price_statistics (http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php/Electricity_and_natural_gas_price_statistics)


Za dve godine im je cena energije porasla sa 0,25 na 0,29 € - preko 14%.
Već sada pomažu svoju industriju tako što ima je cena za industriju dvostruko manja nego za stanovništvo.


Cena energije za stanovništvo u Nemačkoj je 5,5 puta veća nego kod nas.
A mi smo negde na svetskom proseku, po parama.


Bojim se da ni kod njih to nije održivo i da će se na ponovo na našim grbačama slomiti njihovi zeleni štapovi...

Da, gadno ih šamaraju (pogotovo su im porezi na to povisoki). No, hajde, da vidimo kuda sve to vodi. Pretpostavljam da im porez koji naplate od industrijskog prometa robe nadoknadi tu dotiranu cenu struje i da imaju neku računicu, ali koliko je ona održiva na duže staze, pojma nemam...

Sve vodi u ćorsokak dokle god filozofija marketinga bude počivala na premisi: brže i više, uz raubovanje ključnog dela - bolje.

Moguće da je Meho već negde okačio ovu vest, ali meni je skroz nova i impresivna, tako da moram... :)




(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F69.175.86.51%2Fimages%2Fstories%2Fsolar-clear.jpg&hash=04339cbdad7dfc7d7381268bbefab8a5b9d74bb2)






This new type of transparent solar cell can be used to cover windows, buildings or smartphone screens to produce solar energy.








http://69.175.86.51/news/20142108-26048.html (http://69.175.86.51/news/20142108-26048.html)

Nisam. Zaista deluje revolucionarno.

Dopada mi se mogućnost da ova neupadljivost tehnološke spravice upravo prevagne u eskiviranju opstrukcija koje pominješ, to u nekom skoro polulegalnom domenu kojim bi se mi mali miševi rado osvetili industrijskom monopolu koji nam tako lako i uspešno diktira energetsku politiku. Nešto kao andergraund civil disobidijenc! :)

Nego, ovo je BAŠ za rubriku "Živimo SF". Mladi ljudi bez očiglednih "radnih sposobnosti" zarađuju hiljade funti kačeći šestosekundne video-snimke na Vine a u kojima pominju kojekakve brendove koji ih za to plaćaju. Tekst je iz Telegrafa pa bar pola mora da se baci u vodu. Ipak, ako je ovo sve poluizmišljeno, i dalje stoji da smo na ivici zaista naučnofantastične zbilje:



Britain's social media stars making £2,000 a second (https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/britains-social-media-stars-making-105531043.html)

QuoteTwitter's video platform Vine has been an unexpected money spinner for these Britons who gave up their jobs to make a living from their smartphone

For 21-year-old Ben Phillips (https://vine.co/benphillipsofficial), a £12,000 windfall is less than a minute away six seconds, to be precise.
All he needs to do is upload a clip filmed on his smartphone to the social media platform Vine. If he mentions a product or brand, that company will pay him thousands of pounds.
Now the Cardiff local gets paid up to £2,000 for each second of promoted video he uploads.
Mr Phillips' comedy clips include playing pranks and acting sketches with his friends not high budget television ads which have earned him the ear of advertisers.
But it's not his homemade videos that brands are interested in. They are queuing up to get a mention in the hope that his 1.2 million followers will buy their products.
From shoe shop to shooting videos
Mr Phillips is one of a growing group of young British "Viners" a small clique of smartphone users who upload six-second home videos for anyone to watch.
His newfound internet stardom is a far cry from his job in a shoe shop in South Wales, when last July he was working and began uploading Vines in his spare time.
"I saw some lads in America were getting loads of interest on this website, so I began with some comedy scenes," he said.
He said he had no idea that a chance encounter with the website would turn into a lucrative business.
"I was working at my mum's shop and hadn't a clue what Vine would turn into, no one was on it in the UK."
Mr Phillips began by filming spots with his then-girlfriend's three-year-old son, Harley. He began a "Dr Harley" series in which the toddler would give spoof medical advice. One instalment - If you've got a boo boo, wash it, kiss it and plaster it! has been watched by more than six million people.
A clip of the pair mooing while seated in the back of a car received two million views ("loops," Mr Phillips calls them, explaining the Vine lingo).
A video of Harley tidying his room to the riff of the White Stripes' Seven Nation Army also surpassed the two million loop mark.


Ben Phillips: 'We don't have celebrity status'
Mr Phillips said the pair's popularity rocketed over night. "About two months after I started doing Vines with my ex's little boy Harley, we got around one million followers."
At that point, advertisers began knocking on his door. Car makers, clothing brands, mobile networks, and food and drink producers were all keen to get a mention in his videos.
"I had companies saying 'we want to pay you to promote our product' and management teams contacting me out of the blue."
Mr Phillips said he preferred to go it alone, and began picking which brands to promote. "I'd only really promote products that I would use. But it works when I do because we don't have that 'celebrity' status we're just ordinary people."


He said he would continue to create videos on Vine but to make people laugh, not to make cash. "The money side of it doesn't really phase me because my sole intention is to show people skills and cheer them up.
"Six seconds is enough to make someone smile. People at work, if they're really bored, can watch a couple of videos and then get back on with the day."
Mr Phillips recently returned from a trip to Venice. "Just yesterday I was recording on my phone from a gondola I'm trying to upload videos from landmarks across the world."
His product coverage is eclectic, ranging from covering up graffiti on his white car with Tipp-Ex (complete with hashtag #TipexThursdays) to creating a promotional video for Nokia.
£2,000 a second: how?
For each video, Mr Phillips says that advertisers will pay around £6,000 to £12,000 per vine.
A rate of £2,000 a second is hefty even for large advertisers but Mr Phillips says it offers good value. "I can guarantee a company one to seven million loops within 24 hours. What magazine could offer that? I'm giving people phenomenal marketing."
The key to getting an advertising deal is simple: get more followers.
This is a market where individuals can be picked up and dropped instantly. Rob Fishman, founder of social media company Niche, said: "Whatever the media platform, anyone with a few thousand followers is valuable to companies."
But as soon as their popularity wanes, advertisers will look towards the next big fad.
Lon Safko, author of the Social Media Bible, said: "It's all about the eyes. As a sponsor that's all I care about."
Mr Safko said the platform might not be lasting. "Someone might be hot now, but a year from now, people will be bored and move on to the next shiny object.
"It's a fad that changes often," he said.
Daz Black: 'One day they'll get bored'
East Sussex builder Daz Black recently abandoned construction to concentrate on Vine full-time once he reached the one million follower mark.
Mr Black, 29, said he was careful about advertising products he wouldn't buy himself. "I've got offers coming in from all directions, but if I promote something that's a con it will come back to haunt me," he said.
"If you blatantly advertise that gets really annoying, but if you play it down people can enjoy the videos and not notice the advertising is there."
Mr Black, whose recent video, How guys asked the father to marry their daughter, received 3.5m views, began using Vine by "playing around and making stupid faces."


He said: "Ideas just come to me most just randomly - I'm not sure if it's talent or something I should be worried about!"
Mr Black, from Staplecross, said he was pursuing a career in comedy TV in case Vine lost popularity. "Vine's getting bigger and bigger but advertising may have a potential to kill it off.
"I know how the internet is I'm only going to get older - maybe one day they'll get bored of me."
Black in ' Classic mum sayings ' (3.2 million views). He hopes to be a TV comedy actor.
How to cash in on social media popularity
As a ballpark, Mr Safko said that anyone with a few hundred thousand followers could get cash for promoting a product in their videos.
He said: "You have to accumulate a staggering amount of followers to make your video have any impact and be worth anything to a sponsor."
Companies approach popular posters, but wannabe social media 'stars' can be proactive by joining a go-between like Niche.co or GrapeStory.
But Darren Barefoot, co-author of A Social Media Marketing Handbook, said there was no guarantee that Vine would stick around as a popular medium. "Right now it appeals to 18 to 25 year-olds, which is a user base that's valuable to advertisers but is also very volatile," he said.
Mr Barefoot said that, for now, the down-to-earth humour of Vine users kept them popular. "These people have a raw and honest sense of humour that they can get across in six seconds. It's enough time for one good joke."
But not everybody can amass millions of followers over night. "All of the people who are making money now didn't set it up to make an income - it was an accident," Mr Barefoot said.
Free trip to NYC...
However, even people with a few thousand followers get attention from brands - with freebies and trips up for grabs for those who are followed.
Holly Graham, a compliance officer from Edinburgh, uses Vine in her spare time and has amassed 17,600 followers from her spoof Game of Thrones videos.


She said that although she would not rule out making a career out of her "Lady Holly" account, she was happy to keep it a hobby.
"I can go two months without making a vine and then spend a night making 5 in a row," she said.
Ms Graham has been offered various freebies from brands including concert tickets and a free trip to New York. She said: "I've been contacted by a few companies to advertise certain things in my Vine, mainly apps, but I haven't done so yet as I haven't found one that I'm particularly interested in."

јавио ио9



Conscious Brain-to-Brain Communication in Humans Using Non-Invasive Technologies (http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0105225)


баја у индији рекао баји у француској 'здраво' а овај му узвратио истом мером


сажвакана варијанта (http://io9.com/technologically-assisted-telepathy-demonstrated-in-huma-1630047523)

 :-? :-? :-? Oumajgad!!!!!

Čvrsta svetlost, usporavanje fotona, ništa ja tu ne razumem osim da sve što sam kao dijete čitao u Spajdermenu postaje stvarnost:

'Solid' light could compute previously unsolvable problems (http://phys.org/news/2014-09-solid-previously-unsolvable-problems.html)

Quote
Researchers at Princeton University have begun crystallizing light as part of an effort to answer fundamental questions about the physics of matter.

The researchers are not shining light through crystal – they are transforming light into crystal. As part of an effort to develop exotic materials such as room-temperature superconductors, the researchers have locked together photons, the basic element of light, so that they become fixed in place.
"It's something that we have never seen before," said Andrew Houck, an associate professor of electrical engineering and one of the researchers. "This is a new behavior for light."
The results raise intriguing possibilities for a variety of future materials. But the researchers also intend to use the method to address questions about the fundamental study of matter, a field called condensed matter physics.
"We are interested in exploring – and ultimately controlling and directing – the flow of energy at the atomic level," said Hakan Türeci, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and a member of the research team. "The goal is to better understand current materials and processes and to evaluate materials that we cannot yet create."
The team's findings, reported online on Sept. 8 in the journal Physical Review X, are part of an effort to answer fundamental questions about atomic behavior by creating a device that can simulate the behavior of subatomic particles. Such a tool could be an invaluable method for answering questions about atoms and molecules that are not answerable even with today's most advanced computers.
In part, that is because current computers operate under the rules of classical mechanics, which is a system that describes the everyday world containing things like bowling balls and planets. But the world of atoms and photons obeys the rules of quantum mechanics, which include a number of strange and very counterintuitive features. One of these odd properties is called "entanglement" in which multiple particles become linked and can affect each other over long distances.

The difference between the quantum and classical rules limits a standard computer's ability to efficiently study quantum systems. Because the computer operates under classical rules, it simply cannot grapple with many of the features of the quantum world. Scientists have long believed that a computer based on the rules of quantum mechanics could allow them to crack problems that are currently unsolvable. Such a computer could answer the questions about materials that the Princeton team is pursuing, but building a general-purpose quantum computer has proven to be incredibly difficult and requires further research.
Another approach, which the Princeton team is taking, is to build a system that directly simulates the desired quantum behavior. Although each machine is limited to a single task, it would allow researchers to answer important questions without having to solve some of the more difficult problems involved in creating a general-purpose quantum computer. In a way, it is like answering questions about airplane design by studying a model airplane in a wind tunnel – solving problems with a physical simulation rather than a digital computer.
In addition to answering questions about currently existing material, the device also could allow physicists to explore fundamental questions about the behavior of matter by mimicking materials that only exist in physicists' imaginations.
To build their machine, the researchers created a structure made of superconducting materials that contains 100 billion atoms engineered to act as a single "artificial atom." They placed the artificial atom close to a superconducting wire containing photons.
By the rules of quantum mechanics, the photons on the wire inherit some of the properties of the artificial atom – in a sense linking them. Normally photons do not interact with each other, but in this system the researchers are able to create new behavior in which the photons begin to interact in some ways like particles.
"We have used this blending together of the photons and the atom to artificially devise strong interactions among the photons," said Darius Sadri, a postdoctoral researcher and one of the authors. "These interactions then lead to completely new collective behavior for light – akin to the phases of matter, like liquids and crystals, studied in condensed matter physics."
Türeci said that scientists have explored the nature of light for centuries; discovering that sometimes light behaves like a wave and other times like a particle. In the lab at Princeton, the researchers have engineered a new behavior.
"Here we set up a situation where light effectively behaves like a particle in the sense that two photons can interact very strongly," he said. "In one mode of operation, light sloshes back and forth like a liquid; in the other, it freezes."
The current device is relatively small, with only two sites where an artificial atom is paired with a superconducting wire. But the researchers say that by expanding the device and the number of interactions, they can increase their ability to simulate more complex systems – growing from the simulation of a single molecule to that of an entire material. In the future, the team plans to build devices with hundreds of sites with which they hope to observe exotic phases of light such as superfluids and insulators.
"There is a lot of new physics that can be done even with these small systems," said James Raftery, a graduate student in electrical engineering and one of the authors. "But as we scale up, we will be able to tackle some really interesting questions."

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-09-solid-previously-unsolvable-problems.html#jCp (http://phys.org/news/2014-09-solid-previously-unsolvable-problems.html#jCp) Researchers at Princeton University have begun crystallizing light as part of an effort to answer fundamental questions about the physics of matter.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-09-solid-previously-unsolvable-problems.html#jCp (http://phys.org/news/2014-09-solid-previously-unsolvable-problems.html#jCp) Researchers at Princeton University have begun crystallizing light as part of an effort to answer fundamental questions about the physics of matter.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-09-solid-previously-unsolvable-problems.html#jCp (http://phys.org/news/2014-09-solid-previously-unsolvable-problems.html#jCp) Researchers at Princeton University have begun crystallizing light as part of an effort to answer fundamental questions about the physics of matter.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-09-solid-previously-unsolvable-problems.html#jCp (http://phys.org/news/2014-09-solid-previously-unsolvable-problems.html#jCp)

Očigledno da si imao dobro polaznu literaturu. :lol:

Koje me nažalost ne priprema dovoljno (kao ni moje oskudno koketiranje sa akademskim obrazovanjem) da uopšte pratim ovakav tekst niti shvatim implikacije onog što se u njemu iznosi. Vidim da u komentarima jedan veli "Evo, vidite da relativnost nikada nije ni važila, samo nam je bilo zgodno da se pozivamo na nju", a je nemam pojma ni šta TO znači  :lol:

Nemo se ždereš, ko ti kaže da je razumeo laže ko pas. Ja ne smem ni da čitam. Lepše je u iluzijama.

Have Jedi created a new 'religion'? (http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29753530)

Quote
Followers of Jediism are aiming to build a belief system that goes beyond the Star Wars films. But does it amount to a new religion?
It began as a joke at the expense of statisticians. In the UK's 2001 Census, 390,127 people - or 0.7% of the population - described themselves as Jedi. A question on religious belief had been asked for the first time in a census and Jedi - from the cloak-wearing, lightsaber swishing rebels in the Star Wars films - was a tongue-in-cheek response.
It was a post-modernist Star Wars joke by atheists. Or so many assumed. But for some the force was strong.
An ideas festival at Cambridge University this weekend will look at how new "religious movements", such as Jediism, the Indigo Children and Wicca, have expanded online. And in the case of Jedi, how they have developed ever-more complex doctrines and scriptures.
What might have started as an intellectual exercise by fans adding to the movies and filling in the gaps, has become an attempt to build a coherent religious code.
Beth Singler, a researcher in the Divinity Faculty of Cambridge University, estimates that there are about 2,000 people in the UK who are "very genuine" about being Jedi. That's roughly the same number as the Church of Scientology, she says. Jediism is not a joke for them but an inspiration. They don't believe in "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...", says Singler quoting the opening text that fills the screen of Star Wars. "It's somewhere between metaphor and literal truth."



"Feel the force" has become a rather tired cliche. But behind it is a New Age mysticism similar to many of the "holistic" ideas that emerged in the 1960s and 70s. "The Force is what gives a Jedi his power," says Obi-Wan Kenobi, played by Alec Guinness, who initiates young men into Jedi tradition. "It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together."


The Jedi belief system is a patchwork quilt of Taoism, Buddhism, Catholicism and Samurai, says Singler. Often the ideas offer a simple dualism of good and evil, light and dark. "Fear is the path to the dark side," Yoda tells Anakin Skywalker. "Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. I sense much fear in you."
Star Wars creator George Lucas never intended to start a "religion", she says. "Most Jedi don't see him as a guru in the same way that L Ron Hubbard is in Scientology."
Many Jedi have moved away from the Star Wars stories. The Temple of the Jedi Order in the US has three tenets - focus, knowledge and wisdom. "The philosophical and theological considerations of Jediism are not so much from Star Wars as from the inspirations behind Star Wars," says "Akkarin" aka Michael Kitchen, of the Temple of the Jedi Order, a spokesman for the Temple. Star Wars was based on the mythological ideas put forward by the writer Joseph Campbell, who in turn was influenced by thinkers such as Carl Jung, Alan Watts, and Jiddu Krishnamurti. "None of them is given any sort of reverential treatment as saints," Kitchen says. "We study only their ideas, not the person themselves."


How many Jedi are there?

   
• Australia - 65,000
• Canada - 9,000
• Czech Republic - 15,070
• England and Wales - 176,632

Source: 2011 census data




Patrick Day-Childs, a 21-year-old video games journalist in Southampton, is a council member of the UK's Church of Jediism. The Church has 200,000 people around the world who are active online, he says, although not all are necessarily believers. Day-Childs first joined when he was 14 for a joke but he says the more he looked into it, the more it made sense. "I use it every single day of my life," he says. It is both calming and inspiring.
Jediism permits people to have more than one religion. But Day-Childs having spent time looking at other faiths found Jediism was the only one that fitted him. "It's an actual religion, not just about fandom. At its absolute core it's about helping people." Unlike many older faiths, there is no divine being. He feels that the ancient religions are losing relevance. But because Jediism embraces technology and science it appeals to a new audience. The Church's founder, Daniel Jones, has written scriptures that go beyond Star Wars, instead dealing with how a Jedi should live. The doctrine has occasionally proved controversial. In 2009 Jones was thrown out of a Tesco store (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1214367/Jedi-church-founder-thrown-Tesco-refusing-remove-hood-left-emotionally-humiliated.html#ixzz3H3cQXxtC) for refusing to remove his Jedi hood. He said he felt humiliated. At that time the hood was required in public places.
But Jedi doctrine has since changed so that children can no longer demand it's their right to wear the hood at school. Education is too important to Jedi for that, Day-Childs says. However the hood can still be useful for young Jedis who are anxious in public, he says.



People who join must learn key tenets of the faith. The Church has a code made up of five statements, one of which reads: "There is no Passion there is Serenity - We can like things but we must not become materialistic and obsessed by them."
There are no physical Jedi temples. So why join what is essentially a big online forum? George D Chryssides, author of The Study of Religion, compares it to the reason why people join different political parties. In the end it comes down to community.
For Mark Vernon, a former priest, psychotherapist and writer, the Jedi story has real power. "The reason it's so powerful and universal is that we have to find ourselves. It's by losing ourselves and identifying with something greater like the Jedi myth that we find a fuller life."


The Anglican Bishop of Manchester, the Right Reverend David Walker, says Jediism is another way that people look to give meaning to their lives. Unlike the metaphysical religions, which have an element of God "and speak to something beyond", other faiths, like Jediism, are a code for living,. Like a lot of codes for living, he suspects that Jediism is about people living happier, more fulfilling lives, while also containing an element of altruism.
One of the central questions is, at what point does a belief system become a religion? For Bishop Walker it is a "very difficult question" but he puts forward a few hunches. It has to be about bettering society and altruism, he says. There needs to be a significant number of adherents, and, crucially, it will need to have been around for a long time. "We'd want to look at the Jedi for quite some decades before accepting them, [as a religion]" he says. But he admits that there are no hard-and-fast rules.
Naysayers should perhaps pause for thought: "If you strike me down," Obi Kenobi tells Darth Vader, "I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine."

Najkorisnija stvar koju videh u skorije vreme

New Technology for the Blood Service (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlsohMj_IVA#ws)

Šta vredi kad ne znaju da ubodu?

In other news, Scallopovo ime ulazi u anale mikro robotike:

http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/medical-robots/robotic-microscallops-can-swim-through-your-eyeballs (http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/medical-robots/robotic-microscallops-can-swim-through-your-eyeballs)

I NASA ima mini podmornicu za kontrolu nasada scallopsa. Vidi na topiku Opet Amerika.

Novi, supreprecizni atomski časovnik redefiniše način na koji shvatamo merenje vremena:


New Clock May End Time As We Know It (http://www.npr.org/2014/11/03/361069820/new-clock-may-end-time-as-we-know-it)

Quote
"My own personal opinion is that time is a human construct," says Tom O'Brian (https://jila.colorado.edu/faculty/tom-obrian). O'Brian has thought a lot about this over the years. He is America's official timekeeper at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (http://www.nist.gov/) in Boulder, Colorado.
To him, days, hours, minutes and seconds are a way for humanity to "put some order in this very fascinating and complex universe around us."
We bring that order using clocks, and O'Brian oversees America's master clock (http://www.nist.gov/pml/div688/nist-f2-atomic-clock-040314.cfm). It's one of the most accurate clocks on the planet: an atomic clock that uses oscillations in the element cesium to count out 0.0000000000000001 second at a time. If the clock had been started 300 million years ago, before the age of dinosaurs began, it would still be keeping time — down to the second. But the crazy thing is, despite knowing the time better than almost anyone on Earth, O'Brian can't explain time.
"We can measure time much better than the weight of something or an electrical current," he says, "but what time really is, is a question that I can't answer for you."
Maybe its because we don't understand time, that we keep trying to measure it more accurately. But that desire to pin down the elusive ticking of the clock may soon be the undoing of time as we know it: The next generation of clocks will not tell time in a way that most people understand.
The New Clock
At the nearby University of Colorado Boulder is a clock even more precise than the one O'Brian watches over. The basement lab (http://jilawww.colorado.edu/YeLabs/) that holds it is pure chaos: Wires hang from the ceilings and sprawl across lab tables. Binder clips keep the lines bunched together.
In fact, this knot of wires and lasers actually is the clock. It's spread out on a giant table, parts of it wrapped in what appears to be tinfoil. Tinfoil?
"That's research grade tinfoil," says Travis Nicholson, a graduate student here at the JILA, a joint institute between NIST and CU-Boulder. Nicholson and his fellow graduate students run the clock day to day. Most of their time is spent fixing misbehaving lasers and dealing with the rats' nest of wires. ("I think half of them go nowhere," says graduate student Sara Campbell.)
At the heart of this new clock is the element strontium. Inside a small chamber, the strontium atoms are suspended in a lattice of crisscrossing laser beams. Researchers then give them a little ping, like ringing a bell. The strontium vibrates at an incredibly fast frequency. It's a natural atomic metronome ticking out teeny, teeny fractions of a second.
This new clock can keep perfect time for 5 billion years.
"It's about the whole, entire age of the earth," says Jun Ye (http://jilawww.colorado.edu/YeLabs/people/jun-ye), the scientist here at JILA who built this clock. "Our aim is that we'll have a clock that, during the entire age of the universe, would not have lost a second."
But this new clock has run into a big problem: This thing we call time doesn't tick at the same rate everywhere in the universe. Or even on our planet.
Time Undone
Right now, on the top of Mount Everest, time is passing just a little bit faster than it is in Death Valley. That's because speed at which time passes depends on the strength of gravity. Einstein himself discovered this dependence as part of his theory of relativity, and it is a very real effect.
The relative nature of time isn't just something seen in the extreme. If you take a clock off the floor, and hang it on the wall, Ye says, "the time will speed up by about one part in 10¹⁶."
    i (http://www.npr.org/2014/11/03/361069820/new-clock-may-end-time-as-we-know-it#)     The world's most precise atomic clock is a mess to look at. But it can tick for billions of years without losing a second.
   Ye group and Baxley/JILA/Flickr    That is a sliver of a second. But this isn't some effect of gravity on the clock's machinery. Time itself is flowing more quickly on the wall than on the floor. These differences didn't really matter until now. But this new clock is so sensitive, little changes in height throw it way off. Lift it just a couple of centimeters, Ye says, "and you will start to see that difference."
This new clock can sense the pace of time speeding up as it moves inch by inch away from the earth's core.
That's a problem, because to actually use time, you need different clocks to agree on the time. Think about it: If I say, 'let's meet at 3:30,' we use our watches. But imagine a world in which your watch starts to tick faster, because you're working on the floor above me. Your 3:30 happens earlier than mine, and we miss our appointment.
This clock works like that. Tiny shifts in the earth's crust can throw it off, even when it's sitting still. Even if two of them are synchronized, their different rates of ticking mean they will soon be out of synch. They will never agree.
The world's current time is coordinated between atomic clocks all over the planet. But that can't happen with the new one.
"At this level, maintaining absolute time scale on earth is in fact turning into nightmare," Ye says. This clock they've built doesn't just look chaotic. It is turning our sense of time into chaos.
Ye suspects the only way we will be able to keep time in the future is to send these new clocks into space. Far from the earth's surface, the clocks would be better able to stay in synch, and perhaps our unified sense of time could be preserved.
But the NIST's chief timekeeper, Tom O'Brian, isn't worried about all this. As confusing as these clocks are, they're going to be really useful.
"Scientists can make these clocks into exquisite devices for sensing a whole bunch of different things," O'Brian says. Their extraordinary sensitivity to gravity might allow them to map the interior of the earth, or help scientists find water and other resources underground.
A network of clocks in space might be used to detect gravitational waves from black holes and exploding stars.
They could change our view of the universe.
They just may not be able to tell us the time.

Jebeš tačnost. Mnogo je bolja ova:


Ne brojim vreme na sate,
ni po vrelom sunčevom hodu.
Dan mi je kad tvoje oči se vrate,
a noć kad ponovo od mene odu.

Hihihih, u Njemačkoj bi neki da se greju - na servere:



Germans get free heating from the cloud  (http://www.datacenterdynamics.com/focus/archive/2014/11/germans-get-free-heating-cloud)

QuoteThe idea of cloud heating won't go away. Germany now has a company, Cloud&Heat (https://www.cloudandheat.com), which offers free hot water from a distributed data center installed in your office.
   Cloud&Heat places servers on remote premises (potentially your office). They process data for Cloud&Heat's data customers, and heat your building with the waste heat. Cloud customers get cheap pay-as-you-go cloud compute, block storage and object storage, based on OpenStack (http://www.openstack.org/marketplace/public-clouds/cloud-and-heat-technologies/cloud-heat). Heat customers (the people who host the server cabinets) get free heating.
   It's a similar deal to Qarnot (http://www.datacenterdynamics.com/focus/archive/2014/10/can-data-centers-turn-heaters), the French outfit we mentioned a couple of weeks back. But where Qarnot is planning to offer domestic heating with a wall-mounted four-processor radiator, Cloud&Heat is pitching a bigger unit. Its site says it could work for single-family dwelings, but the pictures show a  sizeable cabinet that would be more at home on business premises.


Cloud Exchange offering
It also appears that the Germans may be ahead in implementation - Cloud&Heat's site offers a free trial of the cloud services provided by its distributed data center, and the site proclaims that these services are available on the Deutsche Börse Cloud Exchange (DBCE). Presumably, as all cloud services are based on standardisation, the company's cloud offering looks more or less like what you get from other operators.
   The heating side of the equation is more interesting. You pay up front to have a fire-proof cabinet installed. The installation cost is about the same as a conventional heating system, the company says, and it then provides hot water and room heating free of charge. Cloud&Heat pays the Internet and electricity bills for the unit.
   Cloud heat has a problem of matching supply and demand: data processing isn't necessarily needed at the same time as heat is required. Cloud&Heat's units have a buffering tank to store the hot water till it is needed.
   The system can be used in conjunction with other heating systems. And the unit is also arranged to vent excess heat outside in summer when no heating is required.
   Essentially, Cloud&Heat is eliminating its real-estate costs and some of its hardware expenses. The servers in the cabinets operate unattended - though they may need upgrading every three years or so. So Cloud&Heat will have to take on some service calls and truck rolls to keep the system going.


Cloud sans frontieres?
Security is an interesting aspect. Cloud&Heat nods to data sovereignty by assuring data customers that all their data is kept within German borders. However, I assume you won't know where your data is kept - because it could be assigned to any of the company's heat customers.
   Your data is not on a secure site, but it is encrypted, and Cloud&Heat says only its own employees can get into the cabinets. But without the reliable power and network infrastructure provided in data centers, cloud customers will need a lot of reassurance that the distributed system can re-route and restore servers if there is any problem with network or power to the heat customer's location.


As always, I'm left with some questions. How real is this? How many heat customers does the company have, and does it have any arrangements with other cloud providers to supply extra capacity if there is a mismatch between heat and cloud demands?
   I've yet to hear anything directly form the company, but a a few photos on a website (http://www.so-geht-saechsisch.de/arbeiten-und-erfinden/unternehmergeist/Cloud--Heat) produced by the government of Saxony suggest the comany's cabinets conceal a fairly non-standard configuration (left) - it looks like an array of individual servers wired together, instead of a conventional rack.
   I'm hoping to hear more form the company in due course.
   But I have to admit, despite all the questions I am warming to the idea of cloud heating..
   A version of this article appeared on Green Datacenter News (http://www.greendatacenternews.org).

Nije smešno. Znaš li koliko se para potroši na lađenje servera?

Ne, ne, jasno je meni da je ovo zdrava ideja. Zimi. Ali šta leti?

Za roštilj.

kad Putin zavrne slavinu biće il' server il' smederevac

Autistične osobe generalno teže nalaze zaposlenje iz nekoliko razloga. Više od osamdesetpet procenata autističnih osoba u SAD je nezaposleno. I, iako te osobe nisu baš SVE redom kao Dastin Hofman u Rejnmenu, stoji da su statistički često prikraćene za socijalne veštine ali obdarene u domenu prepoznavanja obrazaca i matematičkih operacija. Organizacija u SAD, Meticulon, ih obučava i pomaže u pronalaženju posla u oblasti testiranja softvera:



http://sdtimes.com/autistic-advantage-software-testing/ (http://sdtimes.com/autistic-advantage-software-testing/)

http://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/welcome-to-the-fuetch?bffb (http://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/welcome-to-the-fuetch?bffb)

http://yugopapir.blogspot.ru/2013/12/emisija-jugoslavija-godine-2000-te.html (http://yugopapir.blogspot.ru/2013/12/emisija-jugoslavija-godine-2000-te.html)

How Intel Gave Stephen Hawking a Voice (http://www.wired.com/2015/01/intel-gave-stephen-hawking-voice/?mbid=social_fb)

Veoma zanimljivo. I još jednom podseća da je Stiven Hoking u suštini holivudski scenario koji diše, ide unaokolo i promišlja stvarnost.

A Elon Musk bi da nam podari - svermirski internet!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Elon Musk's $10B Space Internet Venture Would Link With Future Mars Colony (http://hothardware.com/news/elon-musk-sets-sights-on-10b-space-internet-venture)

Quote[size=0pt]You have to hand it to Tony Stark, err, I mean Elon Musk (http://hothardware.com/tags/elon-musk). The man helped to co-found PayPal (http://hothardware.com/tags/paypal) and he's the CEO of Tesla Motors (http://hothardware.com/tags/tesla-motors), which has brought us wonderful electric vehicles like the Roadster (http://hothardware.com/tags/roadster) and the outrageous Model S P85D (http://hothardware.com/tags/p85d). Musk also helms SpaceX (http://hothardware.com/tags/spacex), which just recently made its fifth successful trip the International Space Station (ISS (http://hothardware.com/tags/iss)) to deliver supplies via the Dragon capsule. The secondary mission of the latest ISS launch resulted in the "successful failure" of the Falcon 9 (http://hothardware.com/tags/falcon-9) rocket, which Musk described as a Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly (http://hothardware.com/news/crash-and-burn-elon-musk-posts-amazing-video-of-failed-falcon-9-rocket-landing) (RUD) event.[/size]

[size=0pt]And let's not forget that Musk is also the chairman of [/size][size=0pt]SolarCity (http://hothardware.com/tags/solarcity)[/size][size=0pt], which produces commercial- and consumer-grade solar panels. You would think that Musk already has enough on his plate, but you'd be dead wrong. In addition to his [/size][size=0pt]Hyperloop (http://hothardware.com/tags/hyperloop)[/size][size=0pt] side project, Musk is eyeing a space-based Internet network that would be comprised of hundred of micro satellites orbiting roughly 750 miles above Earth. [/size]
[size=0pt]The so-called "Space Internet" would provide faster data speeds than traditional communications satellites that have a geosynchronous orbit of roughly 22,000 miles. "Our focus is on creating a global communications system that would be larger than anything that has been talked about to date," said Musk. He hopes that the service will eventually grow to become "a giant global Internet service provider," reaching over three billion people who are currently either without Internet service or only have access to low-speed connections. [/size]

[size=0pt]And this wouldn't be a Musk venture without reaching for some overly ambitious goal. The satellite network would truly become a "Space Internet" platform, as it would form the basis for a direct communications link between Earth and Mars. "I think this needs to be done, and I don't see anyone else doing it," Musk told [/size][size=0pt]Bloomberg Businessweek.[/size]
[size=0pt]Musk's endgame is to help establish a colony on Mars and all of the pieces of the puzzle (including SpaceX's rapidly-reusable Falcon rockets) are slowly coming together. "The reason SpaceX was created was to accelerate development of rocket technology, all for the goal of establishing a self-sustaining, permanent base on Mars," said Musk at the 33rd annual International Space Development Conference in May of last year. "And I think we're making some progress in that direction — not as fast as I'd like."[/size]

[size=0pt]Space Internet would also help to fund Musk's efforts to establish a colony on Mars; well, that and the half billion price tag for a private citizen to make the trip according to his calculations. [/size]

Edit: e, do kurca i ovo formatiranje... Ništa, kliknite na link...

New amazing metal is so hydrophobic it makes water bounce like magic (http://sploid.gizmodo.com/new-amazing-metal-is-so-hydrophobic-it-makes-water-boun-1680799039)


(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.kinja-img.com%2Fgawker-media%2Fimage%2Fupload%2Fs--hfx-3Wks--%2Fml0zxpl9kvfpwl1m1egp.gif&hash=4f96649ab7ca08564d77a5571b097ba2d860c1d3)

Oumajgad, a šta kad ovaj robot počne da gleda anime i ratne filmove?


Military-funded robots can learn by watching YouTube (http://www.itworld.com/article/2878194/militaryfunded-robots-can-learn-by-watching-youtube.html)

QuoteSo far, the robots are only teaching themselves to cook

Those fearing the rise of an all-powerful artificial intelligence like Skynet, take note: Robots are now learning by watching YouTube.
Depending on your views of the video-sharing service, that can be hilarious or frightening. But so far, the machines are just watching cooking videos, according to researchers backed by the U.S. Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency (DARPA).
The computer scientists from the University of Maryland have succeeded in getting humanoid robots to reproduce what they see in a set of YouTube cooking clips, including recognizing, grabbing and using the right kitchen tools.
Part of DARPA's Mathematics of Sensing, Exploitation and Execution program, the research involves getting the machines to understand what's happening in a scene, not just recognizing objects within it.
More significantly, the machines were able to autonomously decide the most efficient combination of motions they observe to accomplish the task at hand.
"Cooking is complex in terms of manipulation, the steps involved and the tools you use," University of Maryland Computer Lab director Yiannis Aloimonos said in a posting on the University's website (http://umdrightnow.umd.edu/news/robots-learn-watching-videos). "If you want to cut a cucumber, for example, you need to grab the knife, move it into place, make the cut and observe the results to make sure you did them properly."


For lower-level tasks involved in the cooking experiment, the team used convolutional neural networks (CNNs), which are learning frameworks based on biological models, to process the visual data. One CNN was for classifying hand grasp motions while another CNN was for object recognition.
On top of these, the robots classified the individual actions they saw into what the researchers describe as words in a sentence. The machines were then able to put the individual vocabulary units together into goal-oriented sentences.
The researchers recorded recognition accuracy of 79 percent on objects, 91 percent on grasping types and 83 percent on predicted actions, according to their paper on the experiment (http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/%7Eyzyang/paper/YouCookMani_CameraReady.pdf).
"The ability to learn actions from human demonstrations is one of the major challenges for the development of intelligent systems," Aloimonos and colleagues, including a researcher from the National Information Communications Technology Research Centre of Excellence in Australia (NICTA) (http://www.nicta.com.au/), wrote in the paper, which doesn't discuss whether the robots reached the stage of actually being able to cook and whether their cooking is edible or not.
"Our ultimate goal is to build a self-learning robot that is able to enrich its knowledge about fine-grained manipulation actions by 'watching' demo videos."
The work was presented this week at a meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence in Austin, Texas.

нешто старији чланак (сеп.2014) о новим технологијама из прошле године од којих неке изгледају као да су директно пренете из СФ-а (виа њорлд економик форум (https://agenda.weforum.org/2014/09/top-ten-emerging-technologies-2014/))

све у свему, верујем да је чарли брукер прочитао ово и очекујем бар једну интересантну епизоду блек мирора

Quote
Technology has become perhaps the greatest agent of change in the modern world. While never without risk, positive technological breakthroughs promise innovative solutions to the most pressing global challenges of our time, from resource scarcity to global environmental change. However, a lack of appropriate investment, outdated regulatory frameworks and gaps in public understanding prevent many promising technologies from achieving their potential.

The World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Emerging Technologies identifies recent key trends in technological change in its annual list of Top 10 Emerging Technologies. By highlighting the most important technological breakthroughs, the Council aims to raise awareness of their potential and contribute to closing gaps in investment, regulation and public understanding. For 2014, the Council identified ten new technologies that could reshape our society in the future.

The 2014 list is:

Body-adapted Wearable Electronics
Nanostructured Carbon Composites
Mining Metals from Desalination Brine
Grid-scale Electricity Storage
Nanowire Lithium-ion Batteries
Screenless Display
Human Microbiome Therapeutics
RNA-based Therapeutics
Quantified Self (Predictive Analytics)
Brain-computer Interfaces

Body-adapted Wearable Electronics
Jogger runs around Chestnut Hill Reservoir in BostonFrom Google Glass to the Fitbit wristband, wearable technology has generated significant attention over the past year, with most existing devices helping people to better understand their personal health and fitness by monitoring exercise, heart rate, sleep patterns, and so on. The sector is shifting beyond external wearables like wristbands or clip-on devices to "body-adapted" electronics that further push the ever-shifting boundary between humans and technology.
The new generation of wearables is designed to adapt to the human body's shape at the place of deployment. These wearables are typically tiny, packed with a wide range of sensors and a feedback system, and camouflaged to make their use less intrusive and more socially acceptable. These virtually invisible devices include earbuds that monitor heart rate, sensors worn under clothes to track posture, a temporary tattoo that tracks health vitals and haptic shoe soles that communicate GPS directions through vibration alerts felt by the feet. The applications are many and varied: haptic shoes are currently proposed for helping blind people navigate, while Google Glass has already been worn by oncologists to assist in surgery via medical records and other visual information accessed by voice commands.
Technology analysts consider that success factors for wearable products include device size, non-invasiveness, and the ability to measure multiple parameters and provide real-time feedback that improves user behaviour. However, increased uptake also depends on social acceptability as regards privacy. For example, concerns have been raised about wearable devices that use cameras for facial recognition and memory assistance. Assuming these challenges can be managed, analysts project hundreds of millions of devices in use by 2016.

Nanostructured Carbon Composites
A car drives into a heavily secured downtown the first day of the G20 Summit in PittsburghEmissions from the world's rapidly-growing fleet of vehicles are an environmental concern, and raising the operating efficiency of transport is a promising way to reduce its overall impact. New techniques to nanostructure carbon fibres for novel composites are showing the potential in vehicle manufacture to reduce the weight of cars by 10% or more. Lighter cars need less fuel to operate, increasing the efficiency of moving people and goods and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
However, efficiency is only one concern – another of equal importance is improving passenger safety. To increase the strength and toughness of new composites, the interface between carbon fibres and the surrounding polymer matrix is engineered at the nanoscale to improve anchoring – using carbon nanotubes, for example. In the event of an accident, these surfaces are designed to absorb impact without tearing, distributing the force and protecting passengers inside the vehicle.
A third challenge, which may now be closer to a solution, is that of recycling carbon fibre composites – something which has held back the widespread deployment of the technology. New techniques involve engineering cleavable "release points" into the material at the interface between the polymer and the fibre so that the bonds can be broken in a controlled fashion and the components that make up the composite can be recovered separately and reused. Taken together, these three elements could have a major impact by bringing forward the potential for manufacturing lightweight, super-safe and recyclable composite vehicles to a mass scale.

Mining Metals from Desalination Brine
Waves crash against a lighthouse during storms that battered Britain and where a 14-year-old boy was swept away to sea, at Newhaven in South East EnglandAs the global population continues to grow and developing countries emerge from poverty, freshwater is at risk of becoming one of the Earth's most limited natural resources. In addition to water for drinking, sanitation and industry in human settlements, a significant proportion of the world's agricultural production comes from irrigated crops grown in arid areas. With rivers like the Colorado, the Murray-Darling and the Yellow River no longer reaching the sea for long periods of time, the attraction of desalinating seawater as a new source of freshwater can only increase.
Desalination has serious drawbacks, however. In addition to high energy use (a topic covered in last year's Top 10 Emerging Technologies), the process produces a reject-concentrated brine, which can have a serious impact on marine life when returned to the sea. Perhaps the most promising approach to solving this problem is to see the brine from desalination not as waste, but as a resource to be harvested for valuable materials. These include lithium, magnesium and uranium, as well as the more common sodium, calcium and potassium elements. Lithium and magnesium are valuable for use in high-performance batteries and lightweight alloys, for example, while rare earth elements used in electric motors and wind turbines – where potential shortages are already a strategic concern – may also be recovered.
New processes using catalyst-assisted chemistry raise the possibility of extracting these metals from reject desalination brine at a cost that may eventually become competitive with land-based mining of ores or lake deposits. This economic benefit may offset the overall cost of desalination, making it more viable on a large scale, in turn reducing the human pressures on freshwater ecosystems.

Grid-scale Electricity Storage
A tree stands near fog over the central Bosnian town of Vitez on the Lisac mountain range during sunsetElectricity cannot be directly stored, so electrical grid managers must constantly ensure that overall demand from consumers is exactly matched by an equal amount of power fed into the grid by generating stations. Because the chemical energy in coal and gas can be stored in relatively large quantities, conventional fossil-fuelled power stations offer dispatchable energy available on demand, making grid management a relatively simple task. However, fossil fuels also release greenhouse gases, causing climate change – and many countries now aim to replace carbon-based generators with a clean energy mix of renewable, nuclear or other non-fossil sources.
Clean energy sources, in particular wind and solar, can be highly intermittent; instead of producing electricity when consumers and grid managers want it, they generate uncontrollable quantities only when favourable weather conditions allow. A scaled-up nuclear sector might also present challenges due to its preferred operation as always-on baseload. Hence, the development of grid-scale electricity storage options has long been a "holy grail" for clean energy systems. To date, only pumped storage hydropower can claim a significant role, but it is expensive, environmentally challenging and totally dependent on favourable geography.
There are signs that a range of new technologies is getting closer to cracking this challenge. Some, such as flow batteries may, in the future, be able to store liquid chemical energy in large quantities analogous to the storage of coal and gas. Various solid battery options are also competing to store electricity in sufficiently energy-dense and cheaply available materials. Newly invented graphene supercapacitors offer the possibility of extremely rapid charging and discharging over many tens of thousands of cycles. Other options use kinetic potential energy such as large flywheels or the underground storage of compressed air.
A more novel option being explored at medium scale in Germany is CO2 methanation via hydrogen electrolysis, where surplus electricity is used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, with the hydrogen later being reacted with waste carbon dioxide to form methane for later combustion – if necessary, to generate electricity. While the round-trip efficiency of this and other options may be relatively low, clearly storage potential will have high economic value in the future. It is too early to pick a winner, but it appears that the pace of technological development in this field is moving more rapidly than ever, in our assessment, bringing a fundamental breakthrough more likely in the near term.

Nanowire Lithium-ion Batteries
A vehicle trapped overnight by an ice storm sits abandoned on the Glenshane Pass in Northern IrelandAs stores of electrical charge, batteries are critically important in many aspects of modern life. Lithium-ion batteries, which offer good energy density (energy per weight or volume) are routinely packed into mobile phones, laptops and electric cars, to name just a few common uses. However, to increase the range of electric cars to match that of petrol-powered competitors – not to mention the battery lifetime between charges of mobile phones and laptops – battery energy density needs to be improved dramatically.
Batteries are typically composed of two electrodes, a positive terminal known as a cathode, and a negative terminal known as an anode, with an electrolyte in between. This electrolyte allows ions to move between the electrodes to produce current. In lithium-ion batteries, the anode is composed of graphite, which is relatively cheap and durable. However, researchers have begun to experiment with silicon anodes, which would offer much greater power capacity.
One engineering challenge is that silicon anodes tend to suffer structural failure from swelling and shrinking during charge-discharge cycle. Over the last year, researchers have developed possible solutions that involve the creation of silicon nanowires or nanoparticles, which seem to solve the problems associated with silicon's volume expansion when it reacts with lithium. The larger surface area associated with nanoparticles and nanowires further increases the battery's power density, allowing for fast charging and current delivery.
Able to fully charge more quickly, and produce 30%-40% more electricity than today's lithium-ion batteries, this next generation of batteries could help transform the electric car market and allow the storage of solar electricity at the household scale. Initially, silicon-anode batteries are expected to begin to ship in smartphones within the next two years.

Screenless Display
An illustration picture shows a woman looking at the Facebook website on a computer in MunichOne of the more frustrating aspects of modern communications technology is that, as devices have miniaturized, they have become more difficult to interact with – no one would type out a novel on a smartphone, for example. The lack of space on screen-based displays provides a clear opportunity for screenless displays to fill the gap. Full-sized keyboards can already be projected onto a surface for users to interact with, without concern over whether it will fit into their pocket. Perhaps evoking memories of the early Star Wars films, holographic images can now be generated in three dimensions; in 2013, MIT's Media Lab reported a prototype inexpensive holographic colour video display with the resolution of a standard TV.
Screenless display may also be achieved by projecting images directly onto a person's retina, not only avoiding the need for weighty hardware, but also promising to safeguard privacy by allowing people to interact with computers without others sharing the same view. By January 2014, one start-up company had already raised a substantial sum via Kickstarter with the aim of commercializing a personal gaming and cinema device using retinal display. In the longer term, technology may allow synaptic interfaces that bypass the eye altogether, transmitting "visual" information directly to the brain.
This field saw rapid progress in 2013 and appears set for imminent breakthroughs of scalable deployment of screenless display. Various companies have made significant breakthroughs in the field, including virtual reality headsets, bionic contact lenses, the development of mobile phones for the elderly and partially blind people, and hologram-like videos without the need for moving parts or glasses.

Human Microbiome Therapeutics
MRSA bacteria strain is seen in a petri dish in a microbiological laboratory in BerlinThe human body is perhaps more properly described as an ecosystem than as a single organism: microbial cells typically outnumber human cells by 10 to one. This human microbiome has been the subject of intensifying research in the past few years, with the Human Microbiome Project in 2012 reporting results generated from 80 collaborating scientific institutions. They found that more than 10,000 microbial species occupy the human ecosystem, comprising trillions of cells and making up 1%-3% of the body's mass.
Through advanced DNA sequencing, bioinformatics and culturing technologies, the diverse microbe species that cohabitate with the human body are being identified and characterized, with differences in their abundance correlated with disease and health.
It is increasingly understood that this plethora of microbes plays an important role in our survival: bacteria in the gut, for example, allow humans to digest foods and absorb important nutrients that their bodies would otherwise not be able to access. On the other hand, pathogens that are ubiquitous in humans can sometimes turn virulent and cause sickness or even death.
Attention is being focused on the gut microbiome and its role in diseases ranging from infections to obesity, diabetes and inflammatory bowel disease. It is increasingly understood that antibiotic treatments that destroy gut flora can result in complications such as Clostridium difficile infections, which can in rare cases lead to life-threatening complications. On the other hand, a new generation of therapeutics comprising a subset of microbes found in healthy gut are under clinical development with a view to improving medical treatments. Advances in human microbiome technologies clearly represent an unprecedented way to develop new treatments for serious diseases and to improve general healthcare outcomes in our species.

RNA-based Therapeutics
Handout image of structures found in the HIV RNA genome as identified by UNC researchersRNA is an essential molecule in cellular biology, translating genetic instructions encoded in DNA into the production of the proteins that enable cells to function. However, as protein production is also a central factor in most human diseases and disorders, RNA-based therapeutics have long been thought to hold the potential to treat a range of problems where conventional drug-based treatments cannot offer much help. The field has been slow to develop, however, with initial high hopes being dented by the sheer complexity of the effort and the need to better understand the variability of gene expression in cells.
Over the past year, there has been a resurgence of interest in this new field of biotech healthcare, with two RNA-based treatments approved as human therapeutics as of 2014. RNA-based drugs for a range of conditions including genetic disorders, cancer and infectious disease are being developed based on the mechanism of RNA interference, which is used to silence the expression of defective or overexpressed genes.
Extending the repertoire of RNA-based therapeutics, an even newer platform based on messenger RNA (mRNA) molecules is now emerging. Specific mRNA sequences injected intramuscularly or intravenously can act as therapeutic agents through the patient's own cells, translating them into the corresponding proteins that deliver the therapeutic effect. Unlike treatments aimed at changing DNA directly, RNA-based therapeutics do not cause permanent changes to the cell's genome and so can be increased or discontinued as necessary.
Advances in basic RNA science, synthesis technology and in vivo delivery are combining to enable a new generation of RNA-based drugs that can attenuate the abundance of natural proteins, or allow for the in vivo production of optimized, therapeutic proteins. Working in collaboration with large pharmaceutical companies and academia, several private companies that aim to offer RNA-based treatments have been launched. We expect this field of healthcare to increasingly challenge conventional pharmaceuticals in forging new treatments for difficult diseases in the next few years.

Quantified Self (Predictive Analytics)
A woman speaks on her iPhone as she walks on a busy street in downtown ShanghaiThe quantified-self movement has existed for many years as a collaboration of people collecting continual data on their everyday activities in order to make better choices about their health and behaviour. But, with today's Internet of Things, the movement has begun to come into its own and have a wider impact.
Smartphones contain a rich record of people's activities, including who they know (contact lists, social networking apps), who they talk to (call logs, text logs, e-mails), where they go (GPS, Wi-Fi, and geotagged photos) and what they do (apps we use, accelerometer data). Using this data, and specialized machine-learning algorithms, detailed and predictive models about people and their behaviours can be built to help with urban planning, personalized medicine, sustainability and medical diagnosis.
For example, a team at Carnegie Mellon University has been looking at how to use smartphone data to predict the onset of depression by modelling changes in sleep behaviours and social relationships over time. In another example, the Livehoods project, large quantities of geotagged data created by people's smartphones (using software such as Instagram and Foursquare) and crawled from the Web have allowed researchers to understand the patterns of movement through urban spaces.
In recent years, sensors have become cheap and increasingly ubiquitous as more manufacturers include them in their products to understand consumer behaviour and avoid the need for expensive market research. For example, cars can record every aspect of a person's driving habits, and this information can be shown in smartphone apps or used as big data in urban planning or traffic management. As the trend continues towards extensive data gathering to track every aspect of people's lives, the challenge becomes how to use this information optimally, and how to reconcile it with privacy and other social concerns.

Brain-computer Interfaces
Chilean software engineer Jorge Alviarez, places head sensors on Jenifer Astorga, who suffers from quadriplegia, during a training session for her in Valparaiso city.The ability to control a computer using only the power of the mind is closer than one might think. Brain-computer interfaces, where computers can read and interpret signals directly from the brain, have already achieved clinical success in allowing quadriplegics, those suffering "locked-in syndrome" or people who have had a stroke to move their own wheelchairs or even drink coffee from a cup by controlling the action of a robotic arm with their brain waves. In addition, direct brain implants have helped restore partial vision to people who have lost their sight.
Recent research has focused on the possibility of using brain-computer interfaces to connect different brains together directly. Researchers at Duke University last year reported successfully connecting the brains of two mice over the Internet (into what was termed a "brain net") where mice in different countries were able to cooperate to perform simple tasks to generate a reward. Also in 2013, scientists at Harvard University reported that they were able to establish a functional link between the brains of a rat and a human with a non-invasive, computer-to-brain interface.
Other research projects have focused on manipulating or directly implanting memories from a computer into the brain. In mid-2013, MIT researchers reported having successfully implanted a false memory into the brain of a mouse. In humans, the ability to directly manipulate memories might have an application in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder, while in the longer term, information may be uploaded into human brains in the manner of a computer file. Of course, numerous ethical issues are also clearly raised by this rapidly advancing field.
This list was compiled by the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Emerging Technologies. Noubar Afeyan, Managing Partner, Flagship Ventures is the Council's Chair, as well as a Mentor for the Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2014. Mark Lynas, Freelance Writer on Science, Technology and Climate Change, and Sir David King, Special Representative for Climate Change, Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the United Kingdom, are its Vice-chairs.

а о истом трошку иде и ова МИТ-ова листа технолошких пробоја 2014. (http://www.technologyreview.com/lists/technologies/2014/) (која, руку на срце, изгледа популистичка колико нека мит-ова листа може да буде)

Quote
Agricultural Drones (http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/526491/agricultural-drones/)
Relatively cheap drones with advanced sensors and imaging capabilities are giving farmers new ways to increase yields and reduce crop damage.
Ultraprivate Smartphones (http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/526496/ultraprivate-smartphones/)
New models built with security and privacy in mind reflect the Zeitgeist of the Snowden era.
Brain Mapping (http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/526501/brain-mapping/)
A new map, a decade in the works, shows structures of the brain in far greater detail than ever before, providing neuroscientists with a guide to its immense complexity.
Neuromorphic Chips (http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/526506/neuromorphic-chips/)
Microprocessors configured more like brains than traditional chips could soon make computers far more astute about what's going on around them.
Genome Editing (http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/526511/genome-editing/)
The ability to create primates with intentional mutations could provide powerful new ways to study complex and genetically baffling brain disorders.
Microscale 3-D Printing (http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/526521/microscale-3-d-printing/)
Inks made from different types of materials, precisely applied, are greatly expanding the kinds of things that can be printed.
Mobile Collaboration (http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/526526/mobile-collaboration/)
The smartphone era is finally getting the productivity software it needs.
Oculus Rift (http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/526531/oculus-rift/)
Thirty years after virtual-reality goggles and immersive virtual worlds made their debut, the technology finally seems poised for widespread use.
Agile Robots (http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/526536/agile-robots/)
Computer scientists have created machines that have the balance and agility to walk and run across rough and uneven terrain, making them far more useful in navigating human environments.
Smart Wind and Solar Power (http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/526541/smart-wind-and-solar-power/)
Big data and artificial intelligence are producing ultra-accurate forecasts that will make it feasible to integrate much more renewable energy into the grid.

Robert Hajnlin se smeje iz groba:



Exclusive - The FAA: regulating business on the moon (http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/03/us-usa-moon-business-idUSKBN0L715F20150203)

Quote(Reuters) - The United States government has taken a new, though preliminary, step to encourage commercial development of the moon.


According to documents obtained by Reuters, U.S. companies can stake claims to lunar territory through an existing licensing process for space launches.The Federal Aviation Administration, in a previously undisclosed late-December letter to Bigelow Aerospace, said the agency intends to "leverage the FAA's existing launch licensing authority to encourage private sector investments in space systems by ensuring that commercial activities can be conducted on a non-interference basis." In other words, experts said, Bigelow could set up one of its proposed inflatable habitats on the moon, and expect to have exclusive rights to that territory - as well as related areas that might be tapped for mining, exploration and other activities. However, the FAA letter noted a concern flagged by the U.S. State Department that "the national regulatory framework, in its present form, is ill-equipped to enable the U.S. government to fulfill its obligations" under a 1967 United Nations treaty, which, in part, governs activities on the moon.  The United Nations Outer Space treaty, in part, requires countries to authorize and supervise activities of non-government entities that are operating in space, including the moon. It also bans nuclear weapons in space, prohibits national claims to celestial bodies and stipulates that space exploration and development should benefit all countries.    "We didn't give (Bigelow Aerospace) a license to land on the moon. We're talking about a payload review that would potentially be part of a future launch license request. But it served a purpose of documenting a serious proposal for a U.S. company to engage in this activity that has high-level policy implications," said the FAA letter's author, George Nield, associate administrator for the FAA's Office of Commercial Transportation."We recognize the private sector's need to protect its assets and personnel on the moon or on other celestial bodies," the FAA wrote in the December letter to Bigelow Aerospace. The company, based in Nevada, is developing the inflatable space habitats. Bigelow requested the policy statement from the FAA, which oversees commercial space transportation in the U.S. The letter was coordinated with U.S. departments of State, Defense, Commerce, as well as NASA and other agencies involved in space operations. It expands the FAA's scope from launch licensing to U.S. companies' planned activities on the moon, a region currently governed only by the nearly 50-year old UN space treaty.  But the letter also points to more legal and diplomatic work that will have to be done to govern potential commercial development of the moon or other extraterrestrial bodies."It's very much a wild west kind of mentality and approach right now," said John Thornton, chief executive of private owned Astrobotic, a startup lunar transportation and services firm competing in a $30 million Google-backed moon exploration XPrize contest. Among the pending issues is lunar property and mineral rights, a topic that was discussed and tabled in the 1970s in a sister UN proposal called the Moon Treaty. It was signed by just nine countries, including France, but not the United States."It is important to remember that many space-faring nations have national companies that engage in commercial space activities. They will definitely want to be part of the rule making process," said Joanne Gabrynowicz, a professor of space law at University of Mississippi .    Bigelow Aerospace is expected to begin testing a space habitat aboard the International Space Station this year. The company intends to then operate free-flying orbital outposts for paying customers, including government agencies, research organizations, businesses and even tourists. That would be followed by a series of bases on the moon beginning around 2025, a project estimated to cost about $12 billion. Company founder Robert Bigelow said he intends to invest $300 million of his own funds, about $2.5 billion in hardware and services from Bigelow Aerospace and raise the rest from private investors. The FAA's decision "doesn't mean that there's ownership of the moon," Bigelow told Reuters. "It just means that somebody else isn't licensed to land on top of you or land on top of where exploration and prospecting activities are going on, which may be quite a distance from the lunar station." Other companies could soon be testing rights to own what they bring back from the moon. Moon Express, another aspiring lunar transportation company, and also an XPrize contender, intends to return moon dust or rocks on its third mission."The company does not see anything, including the Outer Space Treaty, as being a barrier to our initial operations on the moon," said Moon Express co-founder and president Bob Richards. That includes "the right to bring stuff off the moon and call it ours."  (Reporting Irene Klotz; Editing by Joe White (http://blogs.reuters.com/search/journalist.php?edition=us&n=joe.white&), Hank Gilman and Andrew Hay)

Srpska Pravoslavna Crkva je upozoravala, ali da li iko to sluša sem nas, Srba? Niko!


Office complex implants RFID chips in employees' hands (http://www.computerworld.com/article/2881178/office-complex-implants-rfid-chips-in-employees-hands.html?nsdr=true)

Quote
Workers volunteer to get the implants
The corporate tenants of a Swedish high-tech office complex are having RFID chips implanted (http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/stockholm-office-workers-epicenter-implanted-microchips-pay-their-lunch-1486045) in their hands, enabling access through security doors, as well as services such as copy machines, all without PIN codes or swipe cards.
The employees working at Epicenter (https://epicenterstockholm.com/), a 15,000-square-foot building in Stockholm, can even pay for lunch using their implants -- just as they would with the swipe of a credit card.
The owners of Epicenter say they want the facility to be a "magnet for fast growing digital companies and cutting-edge creative corporate initiatives."
"The fact that some people at the Epicenter office have chosen to replace their key fobs with NFC implants is their own personal choice," said Hannes Sjöblad, founder of Bionyfiken, a Swedish association of Biohackers. "It's a small, but indeed fast-growing, fraction which has chosen to try it out."
Sjöblad said there are also several other offices, companies, gyms and education institutions in Stockholm where people access the facilities with implanted RFID/NFC chips (near field communication).



The RFID implants are a bit larger than a grain of rice, and Sjöblad's group tested the chips last year. Bionyfiken has just launched a nationwide study (http://www.bionyfiken.se/nfcimplantproject/) on RFIC/NFC implants.   Featured Resource Presented by Citrix Systems  10 Essential Elements for a Secure Enterprise Mobility Strategy (http://resources.computerworld.com/ccd/assets/73796/detail)  With enhanced mobility and work flexibility comes increased security risk. Explore the security
Learn More (http://resources.computerworld.com/ccd/assets/73796/detail)   The goal of the Bionyfiken project is to create a user community of at least 100 people with NFC implants who experiment with and help develop possible uses.
For example, applications could expand beyond access and include employee ID and location tracking.
Participants in the Bionyfiken project normally pay for their own implants. There are even "implant parties," that involve from eight to 15 "implantees" and a bit of socializing around the experience.
BioNyfiken is also working to change public perception and educate people on the idea that subdermal implants are not only harmless but, in fact, useful in everyday life.
The fast-growing Bionyfiken RFID implant community is made up by a diverse group of people who see "experimenting with technology as a natural way of life," the organization's webpage states.
"The chips are easy to insert and just as easy to remove. The life length of a chip implant is long. I expect mine to last for 10-plus years, but likely I will want a newer model before that time," Sjöblad said.
Sjöblad believes getting an RFID implant is a highly personal choice "as it relates to individual integrity, which both I and my fellow Swedes consider highly important."



"However, I fundamentally believe that smart implants are a technology of the future," he added.
Not everyone is convinced inserting radio-transmitting chips with user ID information under your skin is a good idea.
John Kindervag, a principal security and privacy analyst at Forrester Research, said RFID implants are simply "scary" and pose a major threat to privacy and security.
While RFID/NFC chips, whether implanted or carried in a fob, are passive and not activated until they come within inches of an electronic reader, that reader can be hacked by impersonating another person's RFID chip to gain sensitive data.
Additionally, nefarious thieves can also set up readers in inconspicuous places (such as retail stores) to activate RFID/NFC chips, stealing access to the same information.
The difference between implants and popular mobile payment technologies, such as Apple Pay, is that an NFC implant would not typically be shielded.
External RFID chips, contained in smart phones, fobs or cards, can be placed in sleeves or protective wallets that block the NFC signals until they're ready for use, Kindervag said.
Sjöblad, however, said implants have the potential to greatly increase efficiency and simplify mundane tasks. RFID chips are already used as car keys and membership cards, as well as be used as passwords and pin codes for logging into smartphones, tablets and computers.
"But this is really just a beginning. I believe it will be possible to use them for riding public transport within a year or two. 
I believe it will be possible to facilitate payments with implants within two years," Sjöblad said. "I believe they will have the capacity to replace fitness trackers within 3 years. 
And that, indeed, is still just the beginning."
RFID chips could also be used to control activity, Kindervag warned. For example, if a fob is used to enable a vehicle's ignition, a driver who is late with a car payment could have that device disabled by the bank.
"I think it's pretty scary that people would want to do that [implant chips]," Kindervag said. "That's a frightening apocalyptic vision, for sure."

Introducing Spot (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8YjvHYbZ9w#ws)

Elon Musk je veliki Iain M. Banks fan!  :D



Elon Musk Names SpaceX Drone Ships in Honor of Sci-Fi Legend

(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.space.com%2Fimages%2Fi%2F000%2F045%2F386%2Fi02%2Fspacex-spaceport-drone-ship-name.jpg%3F1422998070&hash=a74d17a15c7b2fdd006349e4c68ca6b3deb00cdf)

The robotic ships that serve as landing platforms for SpaceX rockets now have names that honor legendary sci-fi author Iain M. Banks.

Late last month, SpaceX's billionaire founder and CEO Elon Musk announced that he had named the company's first spaceport drone ship "Just Read the Instructions." The second autonomous boat, which is under construction, will be called "Of Course I Still Love You," Musk added.

"'Just Read the Instructions' and 'Of Course I Still Love You' are two of the sentient, planet-sized Culture starships which first appear in Banks' 'The Player of Games,'" Tor.com noted last month. "Just as the Minds inhabiting each Culture ship choose their names with care, you have to imagine that Musk did the same here."

http://www.space.com/28445-spacex-elon-musk-drone-ships-names.html (http://www.space.com/28445-spacex-elon-musk-drone-ships-names.html)

Još malo Elona Muska, ovog puta o Tesla baterijama za domove. Dakle - proizvodnja svoje (solarne) energije, trgovanje sa elektroprivrednim sistemima u oba smera itd. Libeat je već ukazivala na ovo. Moja zebnja je da će ta vrrsta liberalizacije tržišta snabdevanja domaćinstava energijom dovesti do toga da neka domaćinstva naprosto neće imati dovoljno energije jer neće biti ni u čijoj interesnoj zoni. Ali nije da sam ja to nešto promislio mnogo...

Why Tesla's battery for your home should terrify utilities  (http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/13/8033691/why-teslas-battery-for-your-home-should-terrify-utilities)

     Da, da, to je oblik stvari koje dolaze... ili bolje rečeno, možda ne sam oblik koliko njegovi obrisi.  :)

Elem, ti si se jednom ovlašno osvrnuo na koncept komunalne decentralizacije - sećam se da je Mića na to reagovao sa opaskom da trenutno u Srbiji naprosto nema dovoljno stručnog kadra da efikasno sprovede tu ideju u delo na mikro nivou - a upravo ovaj koncept dobro predstavlja srazmeru minimuma stručnosti na maksimum efikasnosti. Ovaj koncept ne podrazumeva vlasništvo infrastrukture, nego samo njeno iznajmljivanje, a benefit je za vlasnika utoliko što ga lišava troškova za neophodnu R&M podršku za instalaciju. Prostije rečeno, ti kao korisnik dobiješ instalaciju za relativno sitnije pare nego što te taj konkretno produkt do tada koštao, prođeš bazičnu obuku za održavanje i sitne popravke na toj instalaciji i koristiš je za svoj benefit, dok se viškom tvoje proizvodnje koristi vlasnik instalacije. Što se tebe tiče, plaćaš korištenje infrastrukture sa onim što ti ionako nije od konkretne koristi, za razliku od trenutnog sistema u kom je plaćaš upravo sa lebom kojeg jedeš, tojest ekvivalentom u formi novca.

E sad, jednom kad tako (sa)gledamo koncept, ispada da su ti strepnje možda i malko neosnovane: recimo da će sa ovimkonceptom upravo danas manje privilegovani ponajviše profitirati, znači ljudi u ruralnim i zabačenim krajevima za koje centralizovane komunalije i ne nalaze za shodno da im donesu i održavaju poštenu infrastrukturu. Kod mene je tu najbitnija električna energija i voda, mada je tu ubedljivo najbitnija sama energija, jer kad nje ima onda i sve ostalo bude više nadohvat ruke.

A to je još jedan od primera koji lepo povezuje ovu kontroverzu sa nekim drugim koje te u istoj meri zanimaju: sa liberalnim petljancijama u sakrosantno patrijahalno nasledno i imovinsko pravo.  :mrgreen:  Koncept se trenutno silno oslanja na agrikulturni segment industrije, i to ponajviše tamo gde isti počiva na privatnoj imovini. Farme u privatnom vlasništvu jesu i biće prirodno glavni korisnici i pokrovitelji koncepta: kad poseduješ par stotina hektara pod usevima ili u stočarstvu, tvoj pogled na komunalije neminovno postaje više feudalni nego što bi to liberalni ostatak sveta voleo. Ali praksa dokazuje da su agrikulturne površine daleko produktivnije kad su u obiteljskom vlasništvu, nego bilo kom drugom formatu uprave, otud su i neretko najčvršća baza zdrave ekonomije.

Naravno, to jedino tamo gde zakonodavstvo ima sluha za superiornost imovinskog i naslednog prava nad... hm, recimo izvesnim građanskim slobodama koje vrlo mnogo znače uglavnom manjinskoj populaciji. Što opet znači da se malko vraćamo na početak: vraćamo se na pretpostavku da neke ljudske potrebe ipak imaju prirodni prioritet nad nekim drugim ljudskim potrebama. A glad je tu daleko superiorna.

Žeđ je problematičnija nego glad. Mada su tu negde...


Sve više se u svetu shvata da je kod planiranja sistema neminovno posmatrati takozvani water-food-energy nexus. Bez jedinstvenog gledanja na ovo gotovo da nema pravog rešenja. Mada, i u najrazvijenijim zemljama, kao što je EU, ima dosta problema zbog donošenja zakona koji praktično jedan drugog poništavaju. Očit primer je Okvirna direktiva o vodama koja se zalaže da se vodotoci praktično vrata u prirorodno stanje, gde god je to moguće, a u isto vreme se donosi legislativa koja nalaže da moraš da imaš određenu količinu energije iz obnovljivih izvora energije, gde su mini-HE možda i najveći doprinos. A da bi napravio mini HE od kojih i nema velike koristi (10.000 mini HE na slivu Dunava koje sada postoje daju energije kao pola Đerdapa) moraš neminovno napraviti priličan pritisak na vodotok. Pa sada na razne načine pokušavaju da se doviju kako da reše ovaj problem...


A pitanje "centralizacija-decentralizacija" po meni je i dalje otvoreno i, kao što kažeš, neminovno je vezano za koncept vlasništva.


Iz nekog mog iskustva sa planiranjem sistema, decentralizacija je moguća i a verovatno i poželjna u ekonomski razvijenim društvima sa dovoljno resursa. Čim imaš problem sa količinom resursa (na primer vode u aridnim zemljama) problem se mora rešavati krupnijim sistemima, a tu je centralno planiranje neminovno. Slična je situacija sa ekonomski nemoćnim zemljama gde nemaš dovoljno kadra za planiranje i održavanje sistema, pa je potrebno centralno planiranje i rešavanje prvo najvažnijih i najurgentnijih problema.


Na Svetskom forumu voda u Koreji smo organizovali jednu sesiju u kojoj ćemo pokušati da na globalnom planu ukažemo na problem upravljanja vodama u zemljama u razvoju, koja, po našem mišljenju, u ovom trenutku nije adekvatno rešeno na globalnom planu, jer se nedovljno ulaže u razvoj državne uprave u zemljama u tranziciji. Međunarodne monetarne institucije imaju naviku da razgovaraju sa lokalnim samoupravama i da direktno sa njima rešavaju probleme, preskačući često državnu upravu i tako se formiraju sistemi koje posle nema ko da održava i koji vrlo često propadaju i ako se uspešno naprave...

da, istina je da ceo koncept uvelike štuca na globalnom planu.  :(  delim donekle mišljenje ovdašnjeg javnog mnenja koje smatra da države (to one trećeg sveta pogotovo) jednostavno nemaju dovoljno sluha a bogami ni političke volje (ni kredibiliteta, kad smo već kod toga) za neke opsežnije zahvate koji su ipak neminovni. Otud se ekološka svest više sedimentira u razne vandržavne institucije, što svakako nije konstruktivno, ali opet, ima svojih eventualnih prednosti, pogotovo u nestabilnim političkim sistemima. Teško je odvagati sve moguće prednosti i mane takvog procesa, ali nepobitno je da baš i nisu podatne za kalkulacije u klasičnim ekonomskim i inim modelima. Za sada, ovde opstaju samo zahvaljujući pominjanoj sakrosantnosti koncepta vlasništva: ovde si još uvek gospod bog na svom parčetu zemlje, i iz njega proizilazi ne samo sve što imaš, nego i sve što jesi. Na nekom uvrnutom nivou, biti zemljoposednik znači biti i institucija.


ali naravno da si u pravu kad kažeš da mnoge konkretne mere imaj usmisla samo ako se sprovode na globalnom nivou. kod mene je već nekih 6-7 godina na snazi load-shedding satnica po kojoj se određenim delovima grada u određeno vreme isključuje struja na period od 4 do 6 sati, ponekad i više. naravno, razlozi su mnogi i tragikomični u mnogim svojim aspektima, ali koren problema je svakako ponajviše u neracionalnom korištenju resursa. znaš, ima neke upotrebne vrednosti ta neugodnost kojoj nas svakodnevno podvrgavaju, često bez adekvatnog upozorenja: da ti na znanje svu dubinu krhkosti civilizacijskih tekovina koje uzimaš zdravo za gotovo, plus te silno ohrabri da budeš ekstremno samodovoljan.  :mrgreen:

Quote[size=0px]da, istina je da ceo koncept uvelike štuca na globalnom planu.  [/size][/size][size=0px]  delim donekle mišljenje ovdašnjeg javnog mnenja koje smatra da države (to one trećeg sveta pogotovo) jednostavno nemaju dovoljno sluha a bogami ni političke volje (ni kredibiliteta, kad smo već kod toga) za neke opsežnije zahvate koji su ipak neminovni. Otud se ekološka svest više sedimentira u razne vandržavne institucije, što svakako nije konstruktivno, ali opet, ima svojih eventualnih prednosti, pogotovo u nestabilnim političkim sistemima.[/size]

[size=0px]


Jeste, ali ta alokacija ekološke svesti u vandržavne institucije nije slučajna već jasno dirigovana na globalnom nivou. Mi smo na slivu Dunava, u okviru plana upravljanja vodama koji se pravio za čitav sliv, imali značajnu pomoć UN GEF fondova, bez kojih ne bi bilo moguće da se to napravi. Ali od 8 miliona evra koje su alocirane za tako nešto, oko 5-6 miliona evra je išlo nevladinim institucijama za različite programe razvoja svesti, uključivanja javnosti i sl., a samo milion-dva za pravi rad na istraživanjima koja je trebalo da doprinesu boljem poznavanju situacije na slivu i boljim rešenjima. [/size]

Hmmm...


Hyperloop Construction Starts Next Year With the First Full-Scale Track (http://www.wired.com/2015/02/construction-hyperloop-track-starts/)

Quote
Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, the company that wants to move  the revolutionary transit system (http://www.wired.com/2014/12/jumpstartfund-hyperloop-elon-musk/) out of Elon Musk's brain into the real world, plans to start construction on an actual hyperloop next year.
OK, it will only run five miles around central California, and it won't come anywhere close to the 800 mph Musk promised, but it's a start.
The Hyperloop, detailed by the SpaceX and Tesla Motors CEO in a 57-page alpha white paper in August 2013, is a transportation network of above-ground tubes that would span hundreds of miles. Thanks to extremely low air pressure inside those tubes, capsules filled with people zip through them at near supersonic speeds. 
The idea is to build a five-mile track in Quay Valley, a planned community (itself a grandiose idea) that will be built from scratch on 7,500 acres of land around Interstate 5, midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Construction of the hyperloop will be paid for with $100 million Hyperloop Transportation Technologies expects to raise through a direct public offering (http://www.wired.com/2015/02/crowdsourced-company-building-elons-hyperloop-going-public/) in the third quarter of this year.
They're serious about this, too. It's not a proof of concept, or a scale model. It's the real deal. "It's not a test track," CEO Dirk Ahlborn says, even if five miles is well short of the 400-mile stretch of tubes Musk envisions carrying people between northern and southern California in half an hour. Anyone can buy a ticket and climb aboard, but they won't see anything approaching 800 mph. Getting up to that mark requires about 100 miles of track, Ahlborn says, and "speed is not really what we want to test here."
Instead, this first prototype will test and tweak practical elements like station setup, boarding procedures, and pod design. "This is a very natural step," Ahlborn says, on the way to building a longer track that allows for higher speeds and testing freight shipping. It's also a way to prove that yes, this thing can be built.
Those designs were put together by a group of nearly 200 engineers all over the country who spend their free time spitballing ideas in exchange for stock options, and have day jobs at places like Boeing, NASA, Yahoo!, and Airbus. They and a group of 25 students at UCLA's graduate architecture program are working on a wide array of issues, including route planning, capsule design, and cost analysis.
The partnership with Quay Valley makes sense for both parties. It's a chunk of private land where Ahlborn doesn't have to grapple with the right-of-way issues that have plagued California's high-speed rail project. Quay Hays has been trying to build his housing and commercial development project for nearly a decade (the 2008 recession put the plan on hold). The Hyperloop fits with his vision of a place where cars take a back seat to non-polluting public transit systems (Ahlborn says the track and station will run as least partly on solar power).
For Quay, it doubles as advertising: The chance to ride in the world's first Hyperloop is a great reason for people driving down I-5 to take their bathroom break in the settlement he's evangelizing, take a look around, maybe buy a house.

Nathan Grayson verovatno korektno nagađa da će VR pornografija dovesti čovečanstvo do izumiranja

I Tried VR Porn, And It Was Weird (http://kotaku.com/i-tried-vr-porn-and-it-was-weird-1689987385)

Quote
"Have you ever tried VR porn?" Vander Caballero asked me. The video game developer was trying to convince me of VR's potential to revolutionize intimacy. "Do you want to try it right now?"
Of course I said yes. Of course I did. It's hardly what I expected from my demo session of his new game, but you don't say "no" when a game developer offers you the opportunity to try VR porn. I know this from experience. (I don't know this from experience.)

Caballero was the creative director on the critically acclaimed (http://kotaku.com/5934571/papo--yo-the-kotaku-review) puzzle game Papo & Yo. I'd just finished playing through the GDC demo of his new game, a Pokemon Snap-alike called Time Machine, in which you go back in time to get up close and personal with living, breathing dinosaurs. And I mean close. The game's main mechanic is scanning (in order to collect data about how reptiles lived back when they were still cool and gigantic), and it's frequently tense, sometimes terrifying. I was inches away from a sea-dwelling Pliosaurus' eye, and I'd have been megaton fish food if not for my ability to temporarily slow time while preparing dinosaurs' for their close-up.

It was really cool—not to mention one of the more unique, strangely intimate experiences I've had with VR—but I still had my reservations. Caballero wasn't fazed. He wanted to convince me that VR won't just take over games; it will take over our lives. He said he already uses his Samsung Gear VR headset on buses, trains, and planes. He transforms his commutes by going to other places. His journeys are destinations. Or when he's at home and his wife is sleeping, he can just strap on his headset and chill out in his own fully modeled movie theater. 3 (http://kotaku.com/that-moment-when-people-start-to-wear-these-things-in-p-1690006067)

That's when intimacy entered the picture. I suggested that it's kind of strange to hear Caballero—a person whose previous games have preached empathy, emotional intimacy, and understanding—rally behind habits that effectively cut him off from the rest of the world. I found it doubly strange because Caballero is such a warm, personable person. He grins frequently, he gestures broadly, he laughs easily. Conversations with him quickly take on their own sort of intimacy. He has a way of making people feel comfortable being open and honest, delving into topics that might not be in the realm of, for instance, a typical video game interview.

When faced with the idea that VR might—in certain cases—wall people off from each other, Caballero retorted that VR has the potential to put humanity into empathy overdrive, if applied correctly. Proximity, being close and connected to someone, the feeling that you could reach out and touch them if only there wasn't a wall of ones and zeroes in your way—that can be nearly as powerful as real life, he said.

Then came the porn. Not the type of intimacy I was thinking of, but sure!

Caballero handed me his Samsung Gear and opened a VR porn film he'd downloaded. It was a real person in a real environment—not a game engine—but I was able to look around at my leisure as the proceedings unfolded. 4 (http://kotaku.com/thats-where-you-went-wrong-it-only-works-with-a-cg-wai-1689993673)

It was breakfast-themed. Sunlight lazily streamed into a white-walled kitchen as a red-haired woman stripped on a table that I—or my "avatar"—was seated at. Occasionally she took sips from a glass of orange juice because thematic consistency or something, I guess. As she slowly shrugged out of a thin white shirt, she frequently made eye contact with "me," whispered and giggled playfully, teased touch but witheld sensation.

She got close. Really close. If she were a real person, we'd have been nose-to-nose. It was weirdly uncomfortable. My brain—only partially aware that what it was experiencing wasn't real—surged its synapses with mixed signals, ones usually reserved for awkward encounters with actual humans. "Who is this person? You just met her. Why is she right in your face? Please step back please step back please step back she's not stepping back. Why can't you step back?" I could count the moments of eye contact in eternities, it felt so awkward.

I am sometimes scared of people—especially when I can't talk to them. VR porn triggered that reaction hardcore. 5 (http://kotaku.com/interesting-as-someone-who-also-has-social-anxiety-iss-1690010053)

The illusion that she was a real human broke when she got even closer. My body was so confused by the lack of heat—no warm breath on the nape of my neck, not even a single heartbeat—that I felt it as a phantom sensation. I realized that I didn't feel like I was with another person so much as I was being "stroked" by the intangible ghost hand of some eerie automaton, a one-size-fits-all skeleton wearing intimacy's skin, paying no heed as said skin sloughed away to reveal its true nature.

Then she started eating her own underwear, and I wasn't into it at all. Apologies to folks who are into that, but it's not my thing. 6 (http://kotaku.com/om-nom-nom-nom-nom-nom-nom-1690003348)7 (http://kotaku.com/lol-1690004748)

Still, I couldn't deny that elements of the VR porn app were effective, even if only briefly. My brain believed it was dealing with another human being. It was really confusing and kinda weird, as a result. I couldn't deny that it prompted a strong reaction, though.8 (http://kotaku.com/a-k-a-a-boner-1690000634)

Later that day, I talked with someone else who'd also tried VR porn (albeit not with Vander Caballero; that is, to my knowledge, an honor only I can lay claim to), and his experience was totally different from mine. He explained:

"At first it felt surreal and disconnected, but I timed myself to get off at the same time she did," said this person, who preferred to remain anonymous. "And suddenly, I came, and we had that moment of [exhausted breathing sounds]. She was breathing at the same time. And then she looked me in the eye and leaned in and said, 'I love you, baby.' I was like, 'Wow, that was amazing.' And then I realized I'd only had that experience with a few girlfriends in my life. That's when I realized this shit is crazy. To connect with a human you need so many things, and this achieved it almost immediately. This girl was there with me, and she recognized me, and she appreciated me."9 (http://kotaku.com/and-then-she-looked-me-in-the-eye-and-leaned-in-and-sai-1690006819)10 (http://kotaku.com/1690010448)

So that's really... something! There's no denying that this person had a powerful, intimate experience thanks to VR. It didn't necessarily assuage my fears that some people might use VR to become more reclusive—in some ways, it made me more apprehensive—but the whole experience convinced me that possible pros are just as numerous as possible cons. Who's to say what the social ramifications of such a young technology will be? Maybe we'll strap on VR goggles to closer than ever before with people halfway across the world. Or maybe we'll use them to be millions of miles away from people while riding the same bus. Maybe we'll use them to avoid encountering people different than us—meeting strangers, learning to understand them—at all costs, or maybe we'll use them to inhabit their lives, literally take a walk in their shoes.

Maybe we'll stop having sex with each other. Maybe this is the end of humanity. 11 (http://kotaku.com/isnt-that-like-a-problem-in-japan-already-with-virtu-1689992552)12 (http://kotaku.com/http-youtu-be-k80uqwwuiys-t-1m16s-1690000946)13 (http://kotaku.com/i-think-you-need-to-rewatch-demolition-man-https-www-1690011554)14 (http://kotaku.com/thats-what-theyve-been-saying-about-the-gays-for-years-1690011896)15 (http://kotaku.com/http-youtu-be-jvnhytyb2re-1690016274)

Fuck if I know. All I know is, VR has the potential to cause widespread change, both in games and beyond. If nothing else, it will help you hide your porn better, seeing as it will be strapped to your face.

You thought I was gonna try to end with something more insightful, didn't you? Well, that's what you get for having expectations.

"Molekularni 3D printer" zvuči maltene kao replikator iz Star Trek i mada nije u pitanju to, ova nova mašina može da sintetizuje jedinjenja koja su do sada bila izuzetno teška i/ili skupa za proizvođenje, što bi farmaceutsku industriju moglo iz korena da promeni:

3D Printer for Small Molecules Opens Access to Customized Chemistry   (https://www.hhmi.org/news/3d-printer-small-molecules-opens-access-customized-chemistry)

QuoteSummary
HHMI scientists have designed a revolutionary "3D printer" for small molecules that could open the power of customized chemistry to many.
 
  Highlights

   
• Small molecules hold tremendous potential in medicine and technology, but they are difficult to synthesize without proper expertise.
• HHMI scientists have developed an automated "3D printer" for small molecules as a way to get around this bottleneck.
• The new technology has the potential to unlock access to these customized molecules in a way that will drive science forward on many levels.

Howard Hughes Medical Institute scientists have simplified the chemical synthesis of small molecules, eliminating a major bottleneck that limits the exploration of a class of compounds offering tremendous potential for medicine and technology.

Scientists led by Martin Burke, an HHMI early career scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, used a single automated process to synthesize 14 distinct classes of small molecules from a common set of building blocks. Burke's team envisions expanding the approach to enable the production of thousands of potentially useful molecules with a single machine, which they describe as a "3D printer" for small molecules. Their work is described in the March 13, 2015, issue of the journal Science (http://www.sciencemag.org/content/347/6227/1221).

According to Burke, the highly customized approach that chemists have long relied on to synthesize small molecules is time consuming and inaccessible to most researchers. "A lot of great medicines have not been discovered yet because of this synthesis bottleneck," he says. With his new technology, Burke aims to change that. "The vision is that anybody could go to a website, pick the building blocks they want, instruct their assembly through the web, and the small molecules would get synthesized and shipped," Burke says. "We're not there yet, but we now have an actionable roadmap toward on-demand small-molecule synthesis for non-specialists."


Nature produces an abundance of small molecules, and scientists have already adapted many of them for practical applications. The vast majority of drugs are considered small molecules, as are many important biological research tools. A wide-range of technologies, including LEDs, diagnostic tools, and solar cells also rely on small molecules. "Small molecules have already had a big impact on the world," says Burke. "But we've barely touched the surface of what they're capable of achieving. In large part, that's because there's a major synthesis bottleneck that precludes accessing all of their functional potential."

Burke explains that chemists almost always develop a customized approach for manufacturing small molecules, designing a series of chemical reactions that, when applied to the right starting materials, yield the desired product. "Every time you make a molecule you have to develop a unique strategy. That customization is slow," he says. Furthermore, it requires expertise. "Currently you have to have a high degree of training in synthesis to make small molecules," Burke says.

In his research, Burke has been exploring the potential of small molecules to treat disease. Plants, animals, and microbes manufacture many small molecules with protein-like functions, and with some precise chemical modifications, Burke suspects it may be possible to optimize some of these natural products to mimic the function of missing proteins enough to restore patients' health. To do that, he says, his team needs to synthesize and test not just the small molecule found in nature, but also new versions with targeted modifications.

Making those molecules is a major barrier to drug discovery, Burke says. "Doing real atomistic modifications to transform nature's starting points into actual medicines is really, really challenging. The slow step in most cases in the synthesis. As a result, many natural products don't get worked on in any practical way."

Burke's team took cues from nature to streamline the synthesis of the molecules they were studying, developing an approach that they have now expanded to make more general. "Nature makes most small molecules the same way," Burke says. "There are a small number of building blocks that are coupled together over and over again, using the same kind of chemistry in an iterative fashion." That means small molecules are inherently modular. So when Burke's team analyzed the chemical structures of thousands of different natural products, patterns emerged. "There are building blocks that appear over and over again, and we've been able to dissect out the building blocks that are most common," he says.

The small-molecule synthesizer that Burke's team built takes these building blocks – each with two chemical connectors that can be readily linked to the corresponding part on another building block -- and snaps them together like pop beads using a standard chemical reaction. The team used the approach to synthesize 14 different small molecules, ranging from relatively straightforward linear structures to densely folded molecules featuring several chemical rings.

Burke's team has developed hundreds of these chemical building blocks and made them commercially available. "But it's not really about the numbers," he says. "We are showing that with a very reasonable number of building blocks we can make many different types of natural products."

Burke says the technology is ready now to synthesize a range of very complex natural products, meaning the atom-by-atom modifications that researchers need to optimize these molecules into therapeutic compounds or technological tools are now accessible. He has founded a company, REVOLUTION Medicines, to use and continue to develop the technology for this purpose.

Ultimately, Burke says, he is excited about the opportunity to empower non-specialists – all kinds of scientists, engineers, medical doctors, and even the public – to produce small molecules. "When you put the power to manufacture into the hands of everyone, history speaks toward tremendous impact," he says. "A 3D printer for molecules could allow us to harness all the creativity, innovation, and outside-the-box thinking that comes when non-experts start to use technology that used to only be in the hands of a select few."

A Molecule-Making Machine (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_0wC5kDN3s#ws)

VR Porn Has Made Some Progress With Breasts, At Least (http://kotaku.com/vr-porn-has-made-some-progress-with-breasts-at-least-1695539854)

Nakon što je onaj nesrećni čovek sa sobom u smrt odveo i pun avion nedužnih putnika i kolega, rasprave o tome potrebuju li komercijalni avioni uopšte pilota u samom avionu su se rasplamsale.

Njujork Tajmz:


Planes Without Pilots (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/07/science/planes-without-pilots.html?_r=0)



Pa onda jedan malko stariji tekst:



NASA Advances Single-Pilot Operations Concepts (http://aviationweek.com/technology/nasa-advances-single-pilot-operations-concepts)


Asocijacija pilota:


http://www.alpa.org/Portals/Alpa/PressRoom/PressReleases/2015/140324-ALPA-AOSS-Statement.pdf (http://www.alpa.org/Portals/Alpa/PressRoom/PressReleases/2015/140324-ALPA-AOSS-Statement.pdf)

Nanotehnologija na časnom zadatku - da nas poštede dosadnog, i u slučaju mnogih ljudi prezrenog posla pranja zuba:

Plaque-busting nanoparticles could help fight tooth decay (http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2015/04/plaque-busting-nanoparticles-could-help-fight-tooth-decay)

Quote
Nanotechnology might soon save you a trip to the dentist. Researchers have developed tiny sphere-shaped particles that ferry a payload of bacteria-slaying drugs to the surface of the teeth, where they fight plaque and tooth decay on the spot. The approach could also be adapted to combat other plaquelike substances, known as biofilms, such as those that form on medical devices like orthopedic implants.
"It's quite clever," says oral microbiologist Robert Allaker of Queen Mary University of London, who was not involved with the research. "I think it was an innovative piece of work."
Plaque is a film made up of bacteria and a matrix of polymers composed of linked sugars, which clings tenaciously to teeth. When bacteria digest sugars in the mouth, they produce acid as a byproduct, which eats away at teeth, eventually causing decay. Topical antibacterial drugs don't work well on plaque because saliva quickly washes them away.
Nanoparticles can solve this problem by clinging to the surface of teeth and carrying drugs along with them. Although this is not the first technique to employ such a strategy, the research improves upon previous methods, because these particles attach not only to the tooth, but also to the plaque biofilm.
To build their nanoparticles, the researchers assembled spheres of polymers composed of two segments with different characteristics. The outer segments are positively charged, allowing the spheres to attach to negatively charged sites of both the plaque biofilms and tooth enamel. The inner core reacts to high acidity in the mouth, which loosens up the nanospheres and preferentially releases their contents—the antibacterial drug farnesol—in decay-prone regions where it's needed most.
The researchers initially tested the nanoparticles by creating a laboratory setup that mimicked plaque-covered teeth, using disks of a mineral found in tooth enamel, and culturing them with Streptococcus mutans, bacteria commonly found in plaque and one of the main culprits behind tooth decay. The team found that treatment with farnesol-carrying nanoparticles weakened the plaque's grip. Using a specially designed device to shear plaque off the disks, the researchers removed more than twice as much plaque from surfaces treated with farnesol-carrying nanoparticles as compared with those treated with farnesol alone.
In separate tests on rats infected with S. mutans, the team found that twice-daily applications of the nanoparticles reduced the severity and number of cavities (http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nn507170s) plaguing the rodents' teeth. Applying farnesol alone had negligible impact, the researchers report in ACS Nano.
This is the first time such a technique has been shown to be effective in animals, notes pharmaceutical scientist Dong Wang of the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, who was not involved with the research. "That's a huge step forward."
Still, the method does have possible drawbacks, Wang cautions. Because the nanoparticles attach to biofilms instead of just to teeth, they could also bombard biofilms on the tongue or elsewhere in the mouth, where they may have damaging effects on beneficial bacteria. "We want to kill the bad guys but we don't want to wipe out those that are helping us," he says.
On the other hand, because the nanoparticles are nondiscriminating in their attraction to biofilms, the method could be generalized for tackling other dangerous biofilms, for instance, those that form on orthopedic implants or catheters, Wang says.
Before the nanoparticles make their way onto pharmacy shelves, they first must pass muster in human tests. Because the nanoparticles would likely be swallowed after they've done their work, researchers would have to ensure they didn't cause any ill effects.
Still, "it's exciting to think about the possibilities," says biomedical engineer Danielle Benoit of the University of Rochester in New York, one of the senior authors on the study. She suggests that these nanoparticles could be added to mouthwash, toothpaste, or gels that would be applied to the teeth. "We really believe that given a couple weeks [or months] of treatment, you would be able to get rid of the biofilm altogether," reducing the need for dentists to scrape away plaque, Benoit says, "which would be awesome."
 

Naravno, ovo ne bi sasvim ugasilo zubarsku profesiju, ali nanelo bi joj ozbiljne gubitke.

Možda je već bilo, i možda je off topic ovde, ali:

Clothing Of The Future - Clothing in The Year 2000 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9eAiy0IGBI#)

Kompjuteri veličine zrna prašine su... stvarnost!



The Crazy-Tiny Next Generation of Computers (https://medium.com/backchannel/the-crazy-tiny-next-generation-of-computers-17e89e472839)

 :D


Every Wi-Fi Router Should Look Like The USS Enterprise (http://gizmodo.com/every-wi-fi-router-should-look-like-the-uss-enterprise-1695903201)

(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.kinja-img.com%2Fgawker-media%2Fimage%2Fupload%2Fs--HbT3O44R--%2Fc_fit%2Cfl_progressive%2Cq_80%2Cw_636%2Fdoo2e1w0ztkxgn3k0qz9.jpg&hash=01177508c16da2aa06cd86c999e5032e44a8ee7d)

Elon Musk predstavio powerwall (za kuće) i powerpack (za industriju), ogromne baterije koje u sklopu sa solarnim panelima omogućuju veću dozu nezavisnosti od postojeće električne mreže. Slažem se da je to budućnost, i Elonu svaka čast, ali šta ćemo da radimo sa otpadnim litijumom kad ovim baterijama istekne rok...

Elon Musk Debuts the Tesla Powerwall (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKORsrlN-2k#ws)

kad istekne rok, potopiti u ocean; nista nije dovoljno otrovno koliko ocean velik, sve ostalo bajke.

Quote from: mac on 01-05-2015, 18:26:59
Elon Musk predstavio powerwall (za kuće) i powerpack (za industriju), ogromne baterije koje u sklopu sa solarnim panelima omogućuju veću dozu nezavisnosti od postojeće električne mreže. Slažem se da je to budućnost, i Elonu svaka čast, ali šta ćemo da radimo sa otpadnim litijumom kad ovim baterijama istekne rok...

   
E to je zanimljivo a i vrlo škakljiva tema, sećam se jednog davnog seminarčića na kom su ljudi upozoravali da će država morati da se od samog početka ugradi u proces, to makar regulativno, upravo zbog mehanizma reciklaže. Znači ili da ga sufinancira, pa ga tako napravi poželjnim, ili da ga... hm, regulatorno prisili da postoji, jelte, što je taj škakljivi deo. Jer to je bumerang efekt, posledica poteza u kom sve skupe sirovine u svom proizvodu zameniš jeftinijim, pa onda sa jedne strane dobiješ jeftiniji finalni proizvod koji je tako pristupačniji kupcima, ali sa druge strane time ubiješ njegovu reciklažnu vrednost, jer trošak oko same reciklaže postane veći od cene koju bi produkt reciklaže mogao da stekne. Otud niko nema ekonomskog interesa da se reciklažom zapravo bavi, a država se nađe u nezavidnoj situaciji da mora rešavati problem iako nije taj luk ni jela ni mirisala. I to je ta vidovitost koja se tako tražila od država, da učestvuju u tome od samog početka, jer eventualno će morati, ionako. Znam da američki Department of Energy ima pristojan fond na raspolaganju za ohrabrivanje reciklaže za litijumske baterije, ali može im se, pa imaju. Ostatak sveta će morati da reaguje kad problem postane kritičan.

A najškakljiviji deo je izgleda upravo sama reciklažna industrija, jer ako je verovati izvesnim statistikama osiguravajućih institucija, ona kao da sve više poprima čisto mafioznu prirodu. U delovina sveta gde je zakon labaviji, reciklažna industrija sve više postaje sindikat za krađu infrastrukture koja je baš u tim zemljama slabo zaštićena, što zbog manjka para za logistiku kontrole teritorije, što zbog silnog entuzijazma sa kojim je na brzinu postavljana.

Odakle toliki litijum?

Iz Kine valjda. Vade ga vrlo zelenim metodama...

Kratka pitanja uvek dobiju dugačke odgovore.


Isto je kao kad bi pitao odakle plastične kese? Pitaš tek kad se pretvore u đubre. Dotle su besmisleno jeftine.

Ispravka, najviše litijuma ima u Čileu i Australiji (http://www.cnbc.com/id/101505280), ali pretpostavlja se da ga ima podosta u Boliviji, pa i u SAD. Jedan rudnik u SAD (http://cleantechnica.com/2014/09/15/teslas-lithium-supply-relies-americas-loneliest-highway/) autoputem je spojen direktno s fabrikom.

The birth of the weather forecast (http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32483678)

Quote
The man who invented the weather forecast in the 1860s faced scepticism and even mockery. But science was on his side, writes Peter Moore.
One hundred and fifty years ago Admiral Robert FitzRoy, the celebrated sailor and founder of the Met Office, took his own life. One newspaper reported the news of his death as a "sudden and shocking catastrophe".
Today FitzRoy is chiefly remembered as Charles Darwin's taciturn captain on HMS Beagle, during the famous circumnavigation in the 1830s. But in his lifetime FitzRoy found celebrity not from his time at sea but from his pioneering daily weather predictions, which he called by a new name of his own invention - "forecasts".
There was no such thing as a weather forecast in 1854 when FitzRoy established what would later be called the Met Office. Instead the Meteorological Department of the Board of Trade was founded as a chart depot, intended to reduce sailing times with better wind charts.
With no forecasts, fishermen, farmers and others who worked in the open had to rely on weather wisdom - the appearance of clouds or the behaviour of animals - to tell them what was coming. This was an odd scenario - that a bull in a farmer's field, a frog in a jar or a swallow in a hedge-row could detect a coming storm before a man of science in his laboratory was an affront to Victorian notions of rational progress.


Yet the early 19th Century had seen several important theoretical advances. Among them was an understanding of how storms functioned, with winds whirling in an anticlockwise direction around a point of low pressure.
Weather charts, another innovation, made it easier to visualise the atmosphere in motion. One influential theory argued that storms occurred along unstable fault lines between hot and cold air masses, just as we know earthquakes today happen on the boundaries of tectonic plates.
But despite this, the belief persisted among many that weather was completely chaotic. When one MP suggested in the Commons in 1854 that recent advances in scientific theory might soon allow them to know the weather in London "twenty-four hours beforehand", the House roared with laughter.


But FitzRoy was troubled by the massive loss of life at sea around the coasts of Victorian Britain. Between 1855 and 1860, 7,402 ships were wrecked off the coasts with a total of 7,201 lost lives. FitzRoy believed that with forewarning, many of these could have been saved.
After the disastrous sinking of the Royal Charter gold ship off Anglesey in 1859 he was given the authority to start issuing storm warnings.
FitzRoy was able to do this using the electric telegraph, a bewildering new technology that, the Daily News observed, "far outstrips the swiftest tempest in celerity".
With the telegraph network expanding quickly, FitzRoy was able to start gathering real-time weather data from the coasts at his London office. If he thought a storm was imminent, he could telegraph a port where a drum was raised in the harbour. It was, he said, "a race to warn the outpost before the gale reaches them".The Times weather forecast for 1 August 1861
The temperature in London was to be 62F (16.7C), clear with a south-westerly wind
The temperature in Liverpool was to be 61F, very cloudy with a light south-westerly wind
It was to be overcast in  Nairn,Portsmouth and Dover with the latter predicted to hit a pleasant 70F, the same as Lisbon
The forecast also covered Copenhagen, Helder, Brest and BayonneFitzRoy's storm warnings began in 1860 and his general forecasts followed the next year - stating the probable weather for two days ahead.
For FitzRoy the forecasts were a by-product of his storm warnings. As he was analysing atmospheric data anyway, he reasoned that he might as well forward his conclusions - fine, fair, rainy or stormy - on to the newspapers for publication. "Prophecies and predictions they are not," he wrote, "the term forecast is strictly applicable to such an opinion as is the result of scientific combination and calculation."
For years the public had read quack weather prognostications in almanacs, but this was the first time that predictions had been sanctioned by government. First published in The Times in 1861 and syndicated in titles across Britain, they soon became fantastically popular.
Following a particularly successful forecast, satirical magazine Punch anointed FitzRoy their new "Clerk of the Weather" and suggested he should henceforth be known as "The First Admiral of the Blew".
The forecasts soon became a quirk of this brave new Victorian society. Their appeal instantly stretched beyond just fishermen and sailors. Organisers of country fairs, fetes and flower shows obsessed over them. They had a particular appeal for the horseracing classes who used the predictions to help them pick their outfits or lay their bets.


But calculated by hand on threadbare data, the forecasts were often awry. In April 1862 the newspapers reported: "Admiral FitzRoy's weather prophecies in the Times have been creating considerable amusement during these recent April days, as a set off to the drenchings we've had to endure. April has been playing with him roughly, to show that she at least can flout the calculations of science, whatever the other months might do."
Reporting on the biggest date in the sporting calendar, the Derby, a month later, The Age wrote: "With what eagerness in every quarter was the meteorological column consulted in the newspapers where Admiral FitzRoy records the forecast of the weather, and with what satisfaction did the experienced interpreters of the prediction see that he had set down for the south of England - 'Wind SSW  to WNW moderate to fresh, some showers', which of course indicated that it would be a remarkably fine day, and that the umbrellas might be left behind."


But often FitzRoy was surprisingly accurate and when he was mistaken he replied to his critics - "those whose hats have been spoilt from umbrellas being omitted" - through the letter pages of the Times.
This willingness to engage increased his popularity and solidified his reputation as a daring and gallant scientist. Over the next years a prize racehorse was named in his honour, as was a ship, and on one occasion Queen Victoria sent her messengers to his house to find out if the weather was going to be calm for her crossing to Osborne House on the Isle of Wight.
Some papers suggested commercial uses for the forecasts. When French tightrope walker Charles Blondin arrived in London, proposing to traverse a wire over the Crystal Palace, Punch urged the organisers to charge extra for tickets in bad weather.
"The circumstance of a windy day must add very much to the excitement which is occasioned by Mr Blondin's terrific ascent. Admiral FitzRoy's 'forecasts' in the Times would generally enable them to anticipate the day before. When he is dancing on the tight-rope in a tempest, his spectators should give the space under his rope a wide berth."
But for all the light-hearted quips, FitzRoy faced more serious difficulties. Some politicians complained about the cost of the telegraphing back and forth. The scientific community were sceptical of his methods. While the majority of fishermen were supportive, others begrudged a day's lost catch to a mistaken signal.


A typical complaint was filed in the Cork Examiner. "Yesterday, at two o'clock, we received by telegraph Admiral FitzRoy's signal of a southerly gale. The gallant meteorologist might have sent it by post, as the gale had commenced the day before and concluded fully twelve hours before the receipt of the warning."
To compensate, FitzRoy worked harder than ever to decode the British weather. He published a book and gave lectures, but by 1865, with his critics in full voice, he was exhausted and beset by the return of an old depressive condition.
He retired from his west London home to Norwood, south of the capital, for a period of rest but he struggled to recover. The last forecast of his lifetime was published in his absence on 29 April 1865. It predicted thunder storms over London.


The following morning FitzRoy got out of bed to get ready for church. He kissed his daughter as he walked to his dressing room. Then he turned the key in the lock, and killed himself.
At the time it seemed that FitzRoy's forecasting project had ended in failure. But today his vision of a public forecasting service, funded by government for the benefit of all, is fundamental to our way of life.
His department, which began with a staff of three, now employs more than 1,500 people and has an annual budget of more than £80m. Perhaps the most fitting tribute came in 2002 when one of the BBC's iconic shipping forecast regions was renamed from Finisterre to FitzRoy in his honour.
Dame Julia Slingo, the Met Office's current chief scientist explains: "FitzRoy was really ahead of his time. He was not mistaken or eccentric, he was just at the start of a very long journey, one that continues today in the Met Office."
Peter Moore is the author of The Weather Experiment

Nego, vidite li vi ovo:  :P

Pseudoscience in the Witness Box



The FBI faked an entire field of forensic science. (http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2015/04/fbi_s_flawed_forensics_expert_testimony_hair_analysis_bite_marks_fingerprints.html?wpsrc=sh_all_dt_fb_top)



(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slate.com%2Fcontent%2Fdam%2Fslate%2Farticles%2Fnews_and_politics%2Fjurisprudence%2F2015%2F04%2F150422_JURIS_HairSample.jpg.CROP.original-original.jpg&hash=2e7c2af835d429ee4a23bb2209e5a3eddaf3337a)

Forenzika postaje fantastika. Da li ćemo TV serijale kao "CSI" (i njegove spinove) i "Bones" sada preseliti u SF?

Mali vodič koji se bavi time koliko je verovatno da vaš posao u bliskoj budućnosti preuzme robot:


Will Your Job Be Done By A Machine? (http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/05/21/408234543/will-your-job-be-done-by-a-machine)

Ja sam relativno bezbedan  :lol:

Zameniće te neki Call Center. A za bubnjeve već postoje aplikacije.

Ja sam bezbedan. Onaj majmun još nije iskuckao Šekspira.

Dajmo mu još nekoliko stotina godina i izdržljivu pisaću mašinu.  :lol:


Doduše, kako si ti ipak napisao količinski manje strana nego Šekspir, nije isključeno da, čisto u domenu verovatnoće, majmunima treba znatno manje vremena da nasumično udarajući u tipke, iskucaju tvoja sabrana dela. Ne opuštajmo se, Skalope, kada vidimo majmuna da udara u mašinu, dobacimo mu neku igračku da mu skrenemo pažnju i odgodimo neodložno još koji milenijum!!!!!!


Mog posla ni nema na ovim listama, ali upoređujući uslovno rečeno slične stvari, rekao bih da sam za sada bezbedan jer algoritmi još uvek nisu uznapredovali do te mere da mogu da uspešno rade te neke, ajde da kažem, kreativnije elemente mog posla. Dakle, dizajn projekata, odabir indikatora, monitoring planovi, narativno izveštavanje bla bla bla, nije to neka nauka ali zahteva sintetičko razmišljanje u kome mašine još uvek nisu sjajne. No, nećemo se opuštati. Ja sa godinama svakako ne postajem pametniji, a mašine, naprotiv, postaju pametnije svakog tjedna.

Bi li se ti kladio ko je napisao više strana teksta, Šekspir ili ja?

Bih, naravno!!!!!!!!!!!!

Evo, šekspir je, vele napisao 884,421 reči u svim svojim dramama (http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/stats/).* Sad ti prebroj reči u svojim sabranim delima pa da ga, jelte, merimo.Ko pobedi, onaj drugi mu sprema ručak   :lol:







* Druga procena kaže 884,647 (http://www.folger.edu/shakespeare-faq) ali hajde da idemo sa nižom, da bude lakše da ga stigneš.

Vidiš kako je lako prevariti se. Onako ofrlje, samo u SF-u imam objavljeno oko 750 000 reči. Ne zaboravi da sam skoro trideset godina imao dva do tri rada u VTI. A, baš bih voleo da ti spremim ručak. :lol:

Pa, ne računamo valjda i tvoje naučne radove???  :-? :-? :-? Mislio sam samo da se bavimo samo umetničkim delom tvog opusa, jer, ipak, onda sigurno i Šekspiru možemo da pripisujemo razne dopise koje je pisao administraciji  :lol:

Quote from: Meho Krljic on 02-06-2015, 10:56:55
u svim svojim dramama

Heh. Pa nećemo valjda smetnuti s uma da su ipak najbolji i najvredniji njegovi soneti? :|

ko bi reko da će scallop toliko da zapinje samo da bi jeo tofu :)

Quote from: Meho Krljic on 02-06-2015, 11:56:47

Doduše, kako si ti ipak napisao količinski manje strana nego Šekspir

Ko je pomenuo samo umetnički deo?


I ne vređaj me sa "dopisima". Jesi li ikada video nešto što je naučni ili stručni rad? Svaki ima svoju priču i jedina razlika je što nema prideva.

Quote from: Pizzobatto on 02-06-2015, 12:07:39
ko bi reko da će scallop toliko da zapinje samo da bi jeo tofu :)

Sve za slavu. Ma, jeo bih i košer samo da mu doakam. xfrog

Ma, dobro, mogu da mu spremim i pilav sa vrganjima. Tu sam jak.

Quote from: Linkin Uroborni on 02-06-2015, 12:05:15

Quote from: Meho Krljic on 02-06-2015, 10:56:55
u svim svojim dramama

Heh. Pa nećemo valjda smetnuti s uma da su ipak najbolji i najvredniji njegovi soneti? :-|

Actually, ja sam napisao "dramama" ali stranica sa koje sam uzeo cifru kaže " in Shakespeare's 43 works." što nije najjasnije, jer isti sajt ima manji broj njegovih drama ali mnogo veći broj soneta da bi se cifra od 43 razumela... Ko će ih pohvatati?

Quote from: scallop on 02-06-2015, 12:11:03

Quote from: Meho Krljic on 02-06-2015, 11:56:47

Doduše, kako si ti ipak napisao količinski manje strana nego Šekspir

Ko je pomenuo samo umetnički deo?


I ne vređaj me sa "dopisima". Jesi li ikada video nešto što je naučni ili stručni rad? Svaki ima svoju priču i jedina razlika je što nema prideva.

O, naravno da sam video nešto što je naučni ili stručni rad. Juče sam učestvovao u pisanju jednog (ali ću biti nepotpisan jer nemam akademsku istoriju i služio sam kao ghostwriter). I uopšte nisam sporio da treba znati pisati i kad pišeš naučni rad (mada mnogi, naravno, ne znaju), samo sam mislio da pričamo pre svega o konvencionalnije umetničkim uratcima. Jer se kod Šekspira statistika dotiče samo njih.

Quote from: Meho Krljic on 02-06-2015, 12:15:03
Ma, dobro, mogu da mu spremim i pilav sa vrganjima. Tu sam jak.

Quote from: Linkin Uroborni on 02-06-2015, 12:05:15

Quote from: Meho Krljic on 02-06-2015, 10:56:55
u svim svojim dramama

Heh. Pa nećemo valjda smetnuti s uma da su ipak najbolji i najvredniji njegovi soneti? :-|

Actually, ja sam napisao "dramama" ali stranica sa koje sam uzeo cifru kaže " in Shakespeare's 43 works." što nije najjasnije, jer isti sajt ima manji broj njegovih drama ali mnogo veći broj soneta da bi se cifra od 43 razumela... Ko će ih pohvatati?

Pa, Linkin. Kako ko? 8-)

Evo šta kaže link koji si već kačio, po žanrovima:

Tragedije - 289,628 reči (32.7% od ukupnog)
Komedije -283,011 reči (32.0% od ukupnog)
Istorijski komadi - 263,358 reči (29.8% od ukupnog)
Pesme - 30,909 words (3.5% od ukupnog)
Soneti - 17,515 words (2.0% od ukupnog)

Dakle, sve su uračunali.  :)

Misliš da se Šekspir bavio i naučnim istraživanjem? Ah, da nisam uračunao ni scenarija za stripove, a da ne pominjem ghostwriting. Tek tu sam nenadjebiv.

Quote from: Linkin Uroborni on 02-06-2015, 12:20:30


Evo šta kaže link koji si već kačio, po žanrovima:

Tragedije - 289,628 reči (32.7% od ukupnog)
Komedije -283,011 reči (32.0% od ukupnog)
Istorijski komadi - 263,358 reči (29.8% od ukupnog)
Pesme - 30,909 words (3.5% od ukupnog)
Soneti - 17,515 words (2.0% od ukupnog)

Dakle, sve su uračunali.  :)

Da, ali ako sabereš drame, sonete, pesme itd. dobija se veća cifra od 43, pa moj mozak tu implodira.

Quote from: scallop on 02-06-2015, 12:23:16
Misliš da se Šekspir bavio i naučnim istraživanjem? Ah, da nisam uračunao ni scenarija za stripove, a da ne pominjem ghostwriting. Tek tu sam nenadjebiv.

Ne znam ja šta je on sve još pisao izvan umetničke sfere, ali siguran sam da je pisao brojna pisma drugima po narudžbini i ko zna šta još. Ako krenemo da računamo sve to živo i ghostwriting, izlazimo izvan domena prebrojivih reči ili stranica i džaba nam poređenje.  :(

Nemoj da smetneš s uma da si ti počeo da porediš Šekspira i jednog Radmila Anđelkovića (što je velika čast). Ja sam samo pokušao da ti podignem svest o tome šta imaš na forumu.

Šekspir realno ima mnogo veći problem nego ghostwriting, a to je da mu se autorstvo dovodi u pitanje. Ako pretpostavite da je Šekspirova dela napisao neki drugi čovek, recimo Edvard de Vere, grof od Oksvorda, kao u filmu Anoniman (2011) onda zbrajanjem Šekspirovih i de Verovih karaktera može se doći do daleko veće cifre.

Ali, predlažem da ipak toliko ne sitničarite. scallop je ipak u jednoj očiglednoj prednosti na Šekspirom: njegovo delo još nije završeno. Šekspir je ipak odavno rekao sve šta je imao.  :mrgreen:

Quote from: scallop on 02-06-2015, 12:32:53
Nemoj da smetneš s uma da si ti počeo da porediš Šekspira i jednog Radmila Anđelkovića (što je velika čast). Ja sam samo pokušao da ti podignem svest o tome šta imaš na forumu.

Ko da ja ne znam šta imamo na forumu. Ja sam ipak tvoje radove čitao još osamdesetih godina, kada dobar broj današnjih forumskih učesnika još nije znao ni da čita ili se još nije ni rodio.

Quote from: Linkin Uroborni on 02-06-2015, 12:37:56
Šekspir realno ima mnogo veći problem nego ghostwriting, a to je da mu se autorstvo dovodi u pitanje. Ako pretpostavite da je Šekspirova dela napisao neki drugi čovek, recimo Edvard de Vere, grof od Oksvorda, kao u filmu Anoniman (2011) onda zbrajanjem Šekspirovih i de Verovih karaktera može se doći do daleko veće cifre.

Ali, predlažem da ipak toliko ne sitničarite. scallop je ipak u jednoj očiglednoj prednosti na Šekspirom: njegovo delo još nije završeno. Šekspir je ipak odavno rekao sve šta je imao.  :mrgreen:

Isztina. Da odgodimo ovu raspravu dok Skalop ne objavi da završava svoju spisateljsku karijeru. Možda do tada i postane vegetarijanac pa se poraduje i tofuu  :lol:

A oduzimanjem de Vereovih od Šekspirovih? A Scallop se ne poredi sa Šekspirom. Nemoguće je. Ali može sa svim ostalim primercima ZS.

Pa, dobro ovde smo poredili samo kvantitet, ne bih ja baš na svoju neznalačku grbaču preuzeo poređenja vaših umetničkih dometa. Mnogo bi bilo.  :lol:

Ovo znam napamet preko 55 godina i ne da se nadjebati:


SONNET 55

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone, besmear'd with sluttish time.

When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.

'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity

That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the judgment that yourself arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.

I, sad? Dal' ja jedem Mehin tofu ili on moju jaretinu iz rerne? Ili da prepustimo da odluče Pizzabata i Ridiculus?

Najbolje da ne odlučujemo dok ne otkriješ koliko još misliš da pišeš.  :lol: Do tad će i moji kulinarski skilovi uključivati i spremanje janjetine, jaretine i ostalih mesa mladunčadi životinja.

S jedne strane, Meho bi trebalo da bude fer i uvaži da je njegova opaska ako ništa bila dezinformatorska, jer brojke su bliske, pa bi prema tome majmunima trebalo praktično vrlo slično vreme da nasumično skuckaju Šekspira kao i scallopa. Nema tu neke razlike, teorijski. Nasumično je nasumično.  xwink2

S druge strane, krajnje je nehumano terati bilo koga da jede tofu. scallop bi tu trebalo da bude fer i da u svakom slučaju pripremi tu jaretinu.  :|

Da, pa ja sam svakako napravio asumpciju koju bi u praksi trebalo proveriti, ali pošto smo lenji, to se verovatno neće desiti - ko sad da skuplja sve te naučne radove i broji reči - nema šanse.

A tofu uopšte nije neukusan kad se lepo spremi. Ja sam živi svedok!!!!!

Super ide umesto slanine u ovom "biskvitu"

http://www.zloprase.com/dorucak/rastanak-novi-susret-i-hrskavi-biskviti-sa-slaninom/ (http://www.zloprase.com/dorucak/rastanak-novi-susret-i-hrskavi-biskviti-sa-slaninom/)

Ti i spremanje sirote mladunčadi? Rasplakaću se.


Trenutno pišem amatersku, bandoglavu teoriju pisanja fantastike. Razmišljam da u Teoriji... otvorim topik "Skallopovi tripovi". Nekako mi nedostaje onaj sa originalnim naslovom. Na primer, sinoć sam gledao u Kulturnim vestima RTS dr Zorana Živkovića. On uvek ima gromoglasne izjave. Kao: "Pisac se postaje sa pedeset godina." Šta znam? Možda je u pravu. Znam neke koji nemaju, a misle da su pisci. Ili: "Ako vas neko pita ko je najbolji srpski pisac naučne fantastike, slobodno napišite - dr Zoran Živković. To je dobitna kombinacija." Sad kad smo dokazali da sam napisao više tekstova od Šekspira, šta bi mi falilo da i ja odvalim tako nešto? Dosta je bilo skromnoće. Neću se, valjda, dokazivati iz Enciklopedije mrtvih?

Quote from: zakk on 02-06-2015, 14:51:28
Super ide umesto slanine u ovom "biskvitu"

http://www.zloprase.com/dorucak/rastanak-novi-susret-i-hrskavi-biskviti-sa-slaninom/ (http://www.zloprase.com/dorucak/rastanak-novi-susret-i-hrskavi-biskviti-sa-slaninom/)

Aj' ne lupetaj. Slaninica je nezamenljiva! Kad sam ja to pre dvadeset ikusur godina naglašavao, svi su se zgražali. Danas nema kuvara koji će izbeći slaninicu kao osnovnu podlogu za jelo. xfrog

Quote from: scallop on 02-06-2015, 14:52:23
Ti i spremanje sirote mladunčadi? Rasplakaću se.

O, pa nikako ne želim da odraslog čoveka dovedem do suza. Ništa, ješćeš neke vegetarijanske palačinke kad prebrojimo sve reči svih tvojih napisa.  :lol:

Quote from: Linkin Uroborni on 02-06-2015, 14:39:57
S jedne strane, Meho bi trebalo da bude fer i uvaži da je njegova opaska ako ništa bila dezinformatorska, jer brojke su bliske, pa bi prema tome majmunima trebalo praktično vrlo slično vreme da nasumično skuckaju Šekspira kao i scallopa. Nema tu neke razlike, teorijski. Nasumično je nasumično.  xwink2

:-|

Majmuni ne znaju srpski. Oni govore engleski.

Quote from: Meho Krljic on 02-06-2015, 14:56:16
Ništa, ješćeš neke vegetarijanske palačinke kad prebrojimo sve reči svih tvojih napisa.  :lol:

Ne odustaješ od insinuacija? Alo, naučni radovi imaju obaveznu recenziju.

Insinuacija? Kakvih sad to insinuacija? Pričamo o broju reči u svemu što si napisao, uključujući naučne radove, scenarija za stripove, autorske i goustrajtovane prozne uratke itd. Šta sam sad insinuirao, zaboga???

I malo mi je bizarno da misliš da je potrebno da MENI objašnjavaš da naučni radovi moraju da budu recenzirani, uzevši  u obzir da je moj otac objavljivani doktor nauka i profesor univerziteta u penziji.  :lol:

Čik tati pomeni njegove napise.

Pominjem mu ja i gore stvari, al šta će, sad je već svestan da ću u njegovim poodmaklijim godinama ja biti neko na čiju će se ljubaznu pomoć oslanjati za svoje dnevne potrebe, pa gleda da me ne antagonizuje previše  :lol: :lol: :lol:

Šalu na stranu (u realnosti, antagonizuje me kao i uvek) - uopšte nisam imao ikakvu pežorativnu nameru kada sam upotrebio reč "napisi", samo sam time hteo da ouhvatim tvoj prozni, naučni, stripovski i drugi rad i činila mi se kao zgodan krovni termin.

Quote from: zakk on 02-06-2015, 14:51:28
Super ide umesto slanine u ovom "biskvitu"

http://www.zloprase.com/dorucak/rastanak-novi-susret-i-hrskavi-biskviti-sa-slaninom/ (http://www.zloprase.com/dorucak/rastanak-novi-susret-i-hrskavi-biskviti-sa-slaninom/)

Zlo prase  xrofl

Super recept, pravim danas obavezno

Quote from: scallop on 02-06-2015, 14:55:07

Quote from: zakk on 02-06-2015, 14:51:28
Super ide umesto slanine u ovom "biskvitu"

http://www.zloprase.com/dorucak/rastanak-novi-susret-i-hrskavi-biskviti-sa-slaninom/ (http://www.zloprase.com/dorucak/rastanak-novi-susret-i-hrskavi-biskviti-sa-slaninom/)

Aj' ne lupetaj. Slaninica je nezamenljiva! Kad sam ja to pre dvadeset ikusur godina naglašavao, svi su se zgražali. Danas nema kuvara koji će izbeći slaninicu kao osnovnu podlogu za jelo. xfrog

Ok ok, slaninica je čvrsta tačka o koju se može pomeriti svet.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22630243.300-worlds-first-biolimb-rat-forelimb-grown-in-the-lab.html#.VXRP9EaRbEM (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22630243.300-worlds-first-biolimb-rat-forelimb-grown-in-the-lab.html#.VXRP9EaRbEM)

Iris Scanners Can Now Identify Us From 40 Feet Away

(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.iflscience.com%2Fsites%2Fwww.iflscience.com%2Ffiles%2Fstyles%2Fifls_large%2Fpublic%2Fblog%2F%255Bnid%255D%2Fimage-20150521-5921-1gpqr9e.jpg%3Fitok%3Do7xTO5YA&hash=44bd38a8232564d27c3c7d345779cac225c1a687)

http://www.iflscience.com/technology/iris-scanners-can-now-identify-us-40-feet-away (http://www.iflscience.com/technology/iris-scanners-can-now-identify-us-40-feet-away)

Jedan od standardnih parametara za to da li živimo SF ili ne je postojanje personalnih džetpekova u slobodnoj prodaji, jelte (http://lmgtfy.com/?q=where%27s+my+jetpack). E, pa to, vele, će da se desi naredne godine:

The world's first commercial jetpack will cost $150,000 next year  (http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jun/26/worlds-first-commercial-jetpack-next-year)

Quote

Jetpacks could fly out of science fiction and on to the streets carrying first responders and millionaires next year


After 35 years in development, the world's first commercially available jetpack will be available next year for $150,000.


The Martin Jetpack is made from carbon fibre and aluminium. It eschews the traditional rockets of science-fiction jetpacks, which are powerful but difficult to control, and instead uses fans.

A two-litre petrol engine drives two fans either side of the pilot to lift the jet pack and up to 120kgs of human into the air, along with a low-altitude parachute for use should things go wrong.

After initial test flights in 2011, an updated version was shown off recently at the Paris airshow. It could fly for up to 30 minutes at speeds as fast as 74 kilometres per hour. Pilots will be able to reach altitudes of 1,000m taking off and landing vertically, meaning rooftops, gardens and parking lots are all viable launchpads.

In fact, Martin believes that the jetpack's ability to land in confined spaces will be its selling point, not aimed at millionaires as an expensive toy, but the emergency services.

"I think the first responders will see that as a massive improvement to their capability," Peter Coker, chief executive of Martin told Reuters. "Naturally for the ambulance service getting to a point of importance of rescuing people in the shortest possible time [is crucial]."

The jetpack will ship for emergency services in the second-half of 2016, with a personal version scheduled to be released the following year.

New Zealand-based Martin Aircraft recently floated on the Australian stock exchange (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/23/personal-jetpacks-cleared-for-take-off-with-australian-stock-market-listing), seeing a $50m investment from Chinese aerospace company Kuang-Chi Science, valuing Martin at $100m. It began taking orders earlier this year, and has been showing off a simulator of the jetpack at airshows including Paris.

http://youtu.be/i8gncCih7Js (http://youtu.be/i8gncCih7Js)

Komentar čitaoca na sajtu čiji si link dao:

It's not a jetpack, it's a small light aircraft where the pilot is strapped to the outside.

Brate, ovo je pokretljivo k'o helikopter. Samo što, troši više, a nosi manje ljudi. To su mogli pustiti u prodaju i pre 50 godina. 8-)

Ako nije neki hoax, preko žice i kanapa, k'o hoverboard iz Back to the Future. To je još jeftinije da se napravi.  :lol:

(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.martinjetpack.com%2Fimages%2Fphocagallery%2Fthumbs%2Fphoca_thumb_l_unknown-6.jpg&hash=0796e62c4220b057b303d221d3bae781ec1a62b6)

A SpaceX Rocket Just Exploded in Mid-Air (http://gizmodo.com/a-spacex-rocket-just-exploded-in-mid-air-1714454471)

https://twitter.com/NealWiser/status/617501950708424704

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-34085546 (http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-34085546)

3D cameras plan to save monuments from IS threat

Itan Sigel:


How Close Are We To Nuclear Fusion? (http://www.forbes.com/sites/ethansiegel/2015/08/27/how-close-are-we-to-nuclear-fusion/)

A i ovo:


Nasa starts year-long experiment to mimic life on Mars (http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/34095423)

Quote
A team of Nasa recruits has begun living in a dome near an old volcano in Hawaii to mimic what life would be like on Mars.
The isolation experiment, which will last a year starting on Friday, will be the longest of its type attempted.
The experiment is intended to help Nasa prepare for a possible human mission to the Red Planet.
The six-strong team will live in close quarters under the dome, without fresh air, fresh food or privacy.


They closed themselves away at 1am (British time) on Saturday.
A journey outside the dome - which measures only 11 metres in diameter and is 6 metres tall - will require a spacesuit.


A French and a German scientist and four Americans - a pilot, an architect, a journalist and a soil scientist - make up the Nasa team.
The men and women will each have a small sleeping cot and a desk inside their rooms. They will also be given food packets that include powdered cheese and canned tuna.

NASA created a material that can heal itself in seconds—even from bullets (http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2015/09/02/Russia-Belarus-Serbia-conduct-military-drill-to-fight-protesters/4551441199683/)

Meho ponovo destabilizuje region. Evo dobrog linka:

http://www.iflscience.com/watch-amazing-self-healing-material-could-instantly-repair-damaged-spacecraft (http://www.iflscience.com/watch-amazing-self-healing-material-could-instantly-repair-damaged-spacecraft)

Optužiću albanske hakere za ovo što se desilo  :lol: :lol: :lol:

In other news: do kraja godine dobijamo Nike patike iz Povratka u budućnost 2. Not a moment too soon...

http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/did-nike-just-reveal-their-back-to-the-future-shoe-1729595698 (http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/did-nike-just-reveal-their-back-to-the-future-shoe-1729595698)

A in Foks njuz:


World's first head transplant patient schedules procedure for 2017 (http://www.foxnews.com/health/2015/09/10/worlds-first-head-transplant-patient-schedules-procedure-for-2017/)

Researchers create ultrathin invisibility cloak (http://www.rtoz.org/2015/09/18/researchers-create-ultrathin-invisibility-cloak/)

Jedna od stvari koje trenutna generacija VR hardvera ne zna tačno kako da reši je i to što svi kad kažemo "virtuelna realnost" imamo na umu holodek iz Zvezdanih staza, dakle, "pravi" virtuelni prostor kroz koji se krećemo slobodno, prirodno, kao i u životu, a ono što dobijamo bude zapravo par teških naočara koje zakačimo na lice i nekakav trapav sistem kretanja gde ili sedimo u stolici i mrdamo stikove ili hodamo po sobi i molimo se bogu da žena nije razmestila hoklice po njoj čisto da nas zaebava.

Delimično rešenje je na pomolu. Ovo nije baš nešto što će sutra da se prodaje uz Playstation 4 ali je zanimljivo za videti.


http://youtu.be/cJCsomGwdk0 (http://youtu.be/cJCsomGwdk0)

Ja razmišljao o ovome, a oni ga već napravili. Moram sad da razmišljam o nečem drugom..

Da si na vreme zaštitio patent sad bi ih tužakao i valjao se u parama. A lepota američkog USPTO je u tome što patenti koji se danas odobravaju često uopšte nemaju obraloženje kako nešto treba da radi već je dovoljno da kažu šta to nešto treba da radi, tako da si sasvim legitimno mogao ovo da patentiraš bez ulaženja u rešavanje složenih inženjerskih izazova. Dobar broj patenata odobravanih poslednjih godina je maltene ko da ih je pisao Velja Ilić: ona mašina što ima onu ruku koja onako ide pa uvati.

zar ovo nije maltene isti princip kao flight simulator za pilote?

Pretpostavljam da je nekoliko puta jeftinije.

jasno je to, nego pokušavam da pokopam sve macove nade! 8-)

Zavisi šta podrazumevaš pod principom. Ono što ja znam o simulatorima letenja je da su u pitanju kabine pričvršćene za pod, koje mogu malo da se nagnu na svaku stranu, da te dobro prodrmaju, i to je to. Ovo sa kablovima ne može da te prodrma (mogla bi doduše sama okačena kabina da ima neku treskalicu), ali ima više stepeni slobode, i može da ti prevrne stomak, što regularni simulatori ne mogu. Možda može tek neki vojni ili Nasin.

Živimo SF, ili smo na ivici da ga zaživimo, kad se radi o Hajnlajnovom "Čoveku koji je prodao Mesec"

Is Space Mining Legal? (http://www.popsci.com/it-could-soon-be-legal-to-mine-asteroids)

Quote
A controversial bill would give companies the right to own natural resources in space, and it may pass in the Senate by the end of September
 

If mankind is ever to become an interplanetary species, our outward expansion across the solar system probably can't be fueled by NASA funding alone. Why did the first humans venture out of Africa? What made the Europeans sail into the unknown? What drove Americans to expand across the continent? Curiosity and an adventurous spirit, yes, but more importantly: resources--be they riches, food, or fertile farmland.

Similarly, resources may be the only thing that can lure us from the comforts of Earth. Mining for lunar water could make it up to 90 percent cheaper to colonize the moon (http://www.popsci.com/colonizing-moon-may-be-90-percent-cheaper-we-thought). And extracting platinum and other minerals from asteroids could propel mankind to travel beyond low Earth orbit.

At least two companies—Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries—are openly planning to mine asteroids (http://www.popsci.com/tags/asteroid-mining). The former has already launched a simple test vehicle into low Earth orbit (http://www.popsci.com/asteroid-mining-test-vehicle-just-launched-space-station), with more planned.

Both companies have a long way to go before their technologies will be able to visit an asteroid, assess what valuable resources it contains, and then extract those resources (http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-11/how-mine-asteroid) and deliver them back to Earth. First the companies need to clear a major legal obstacle.

The Outer Space Treaty (http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/spacelaw/treaties/outerspacetreaty.html), which the U.S., Russia, and a number of other countries have signed, specifically states that nations can't own territory in space. "Outer space shall be free for exploration and use by all States," the treaty says. "Outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means."

But what does that mean for a private company?

"There is no clear-cut answer as to whether [private mining in space] is legal or not," says Frans von der Dunk, a space law professor at the University of Nebraska. "It depends on your interpretation of certain rather broad statements in the Outer Space Treaty, and it depends on your particular interests."

In May, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would give asteroid mining companies property rights to the minerals they extract from space. Called the Space Act of 2015 (https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/2262/text), the bill now awaits the Senate's decision.

If the decision isn't made by the end of September or shortly thereafter, an expiring moratorium will give the Federal Aviation Administration permission to begin regulating commercial spaceflight—something conservatives have wanted to postpone so that the fledgling industry could have some time to grow.

Von der Dunk predicts the Senate will pass the bill by the end of October. After that, President Obama will have the opportunity to sign it into law or veto it.
The Space Act Of 2015
The bill (which is similar to last year's stalled ASTEROIDS Act (https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/5063)) says that resources extracted from asteroids and other objects in space belong to the person or company who extracts them. It also would require space mining companies to "avoid causing harmful interference in outer space," and allows a company to sue others who cause "harmful interference" to space mining ventures.

"It's a very succinct act," says Von der Dunk. "That is one reason why I don't foresee many complications."

Nonetheless, it's causing a bit of an uproar in the international community, says Michael Listner, lawyer and founder of the consulting firm Space Law and Policy Solutions.
International Concerns
Planetary Resources is pleased with the bill. "The SPACE Act of 2015 is a very good foundation for future asteroid resource activities," a spokesperson told Popular Science. "If the bill passed tomorrow it would explicitly state a government position that has been implied for decades. The law would provide clarity and move this entire industry ahead very quickly."

But not everyone is enthusiastic about it. In an article in the journal Space Policy (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0265964615300102), Fabio Tronchetti, a lawyer at the Harbin Institute of Technology in China, argues that the Space Act of 2015 would violate the Outer Space Treaty. He writes:

States are forbidden from extending their territorial sovereignty over outer space or any parts of it. Despite arguments claiming otherwise this prohibition also extends to private entities.

In essence, Tronchetti argues that if the U.S. passes this bill, it will confer rights to space companies that the U.S. doesn't have the power to give.

Tronchetti also points out that the bill's concept of 'harmful interference' isn't defined, and could potentially be used to create exclusion zones around mining operations. That would go against the nature of the treaty, whose goal was to make sure space remains the "province of all mankind," open for exploration by everyone.

Although von der Dunk says that even though he doesn't see anything in the current version that clearly violates international law, it could still cause concerns overseas.

"Russia and China might consider using this as another example of the economic aggression of the U.S. and going ahead of the international law," he says.

The space mining debate probably should have started with international discussions, Tronchetti and von der Dunk agree, before going to the House and Senate.

But international consensus has been hard to come by in the past. The 1979 Moon Agreement (http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/spacelaw/treaties/intromoon-agreement.html), for example, would have limited mining in space to international governing bodies. Over the years, 16 nations have signed on to the treaty, but none of the major space-faring nations have agreed to it.

Von der Dunk says it's too late for those discussions now. "It would take years and lead to a watered-down version. We're probably going to go ahead with this."
What's The Rush?
Michael Listner has some major qualms with the bill in its current form. It requires the President to assess the international impacts of space mining and set up a regulatory structure for it within 180 days of signing the bill into law, but has no vision beyond those 180 days. "It's a short-term bill," says Listner. "I don't think it goes far enough."

For example, what is the licensing process for a company that wants to mine asteroids? Although issues such as this could be addressed in the President's 180-day report, that report, Tronchetti writes, "might not be a sufficient step to fill in the gap resulting from a near-absolute absence of a national regulatory framework governing private mining activities on asteroids." He goes on:

rather than rushing the adoption of controversial legislation dealing with extraterrestrial property rights, [the United States] should gradually develop a national regulatory framework to manage (non-governmental) activities on celestial bodies, including the establishment of technical and safety standards as well as of licensing procedures.

"There are just too many questions," says Listner. "It conjures rights out of thin air, and has no supporting infrastructure."

If the bill does get through the Senate, there's no guarantee that President Obama will sign it into law. Although he's supported SpaceX's commercial spaceflight ventures, the international ramifications plus Democrats' calls to discuss the implications of space mining in a committee could lead the President to veto this part of the bill. If that happens, Congress would need to drum up a two-thirds majority to override the veto.

Tronchetti notes that the bill has proceeded "in a rather sudden and unexpected fashion." Despite strong opposition from Democrats, the Republican-led House pushed it through without any hearings or expert testimony.

But the bill may be more about gauging the reaction from the legal community than anything else, Listner says. "They could just be throwing mud at walls to see if anything sticks."

What people in 1900 thought the year 2000 would look like (http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/10/04/what-people-in-1900-thought-the-year-2000-would-look-like/)

Electronics for Aliens (http://hackaday.com/2015/10/06/electronics-for-aliens/)

Toronto entrepreneur JulieLynn Wong is building a solar-powered 3D printer that can generate medical devices -- scalpels, splints, etc. -- in remote environments, like rural Canada, and maybe even Mars.
(http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2015/10/05/toronto-doctor-using-3d-printer-to-solve-the-problems-of-space-travel.html)

Pošto nisam po prirodi ciničan dobro sam se oznojio dok se nisam setio ispravne reakcije na gornji post (a pročitao sam samo naslov, da mi bude lakše):

Hoće li da 3D printuje i sterilizatore, jod, gaze i sterilne zavoje ili će to da im se dobaci padobranom?  :lol:

paaa... ja mnijem da će 3D da printuje samo one predmete koji su em odviše teški/kabasti da se nose u ruksaku, em odviše specijalizovani da budu deo obaveznog kita...

Pošto se meni ideja o univerzalnom replikatoru iz Star Trek uvek dopadala, meni se i ovo dopada: kosmonaut na kosmičkoj stanici potrebujenešto i isprinta ga na licu mesta!!!!!!!!!!! Ali sam donekle skeptičan jer mi ne deluje kao da se ovime uspešno štedi. Da bi 3D printer isprintao skalpel (odnosno dršku za isti kako se u tekstu pominje) treba mu šema, u redu, to je virtuelno i to ne zauzima prostor/ nema masu, ali treba mu i materijal. Dakle, nećeš imati "nepotrebne rezervne delove koje nikada ne koristiš" na ISS-u gde je prostor skučen i svaki kubik je dragocen, ali ćeš svejedno imati štek materijala za printer koji će ti taj prostor zauzimati a možda ga nećeš koristiti. Plus, dakako, kada iskoristiš skalpel pa ti više ne treba, on prelazi u kategoriju tih predmeta koji ti zauzimaju prostor a ne koriste se a 3D printer to ne može da reciklira.

Gospodine Krljiću, vi izgleda pomalo beznadežno kaskate za zbivanjima na koje ime topika ukazuje, jer bi u protivnom znali da 3D prineri imaju svoje de-printere, koji rade obrnutu radnju, poznatu kao reciklaža:  razgrađuju (deprintuju) nepotrebne predmete u kompaktni organski materijal (feedstock), koji se, naravno, jelte, koristi za printovanje novih predmeta.   :lol:

Dakle, treba ti još jedna mašina ili to radi sam 3D printer?

Zavisi o samom printeru, odnosno specifikacijama modela i feesdstocka kojeg koristi, naravno, no čika Mekdonald preferiše printer i deprinter striktno odvojene... verovatno zato što mu korisnici deprintera imaju potrebu za kabinama koje osiguravaju... erm... intimnost?   :mrgreen: :lol: :lol:

(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi58.tinypic.com%2F9056pj.jpg&hash=35ba6ceb4cd225150baef46086a882a2158855ef)

 xremyb

Recimo onda samo još ovo: postojanje deprintera podrazumeva neopozivi kraj infrastrukture danas poznate kao kanalizacija.  :twisted:

zauzvrat, svaki isprintani ajtem biće čisto savršenstvo:


She dumps her armful of business suit into the deprinter. The hopper swallows it and reduces the fabric to organic feedstock. Beijaflor, Ariel's familiar, has already picked out her party frock: a 1958 Balenciaga, shoulder straps, asymmetric cut, black floral print on deep grey.

:D

http://gizmodo.com/england-uploads-free-digital-model-of-the-entire-countr-1736479364 (http://gizmodo.com/england-uploads-free-digital-model-of-the-entire-countr-1736479364)

The most disruptive technology of the last century is in your house (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/10/14/the-most-disruptive-technology-of-the-last-century-is-in-your-house/)

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=21750 (http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=21750)

Emoji Dick is a crowd sourced and crowd funded translation of Herman Melville's Moby Dick into Japanese emoticons called emoji.

Each of the book's approximately 10,000 sentences has been translated three times by a Amazon Mechanical Turk worker. These results have been voted upon by another set of workers, and the most popular version of each sentence has been selected for inclusion in this book.

In total, over eight hundred people spent approximately 3,795,980 seconds working to create this book. Each worker was paid five cents per translation and two cents per vote per translation.

The funds to pay the Amazon Turk workers and print the initial run of this book were raised from eighty-three people over the course of thirty days using the funding platform Kickstarter.

Živimo SF i to prilično bukvalno:

Danas je 21 oktobar 2015, što je upravo onaj dan u budućnosti koji su posetili akteri filmskog SF serijala Povratak u budućnost! Scary eh? :|

! No longer available (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fF2jpIhxQmQ#)

Majkl Džej Foks danas dobio svoje samovezujuće najke. Ostali primerci idu na aukciju, a prihod u njegov fond za istraživanje Parkinsonove bolesti.

http://gizmodo.com/as-promised-nike-finally-reveals-sneakers-with-powered-1737898278 (http://gizmodo.com/as-promised-nike-finally-reveals-sneakers-with-powered-1737898278)

Feature: The bizarre reactor that might save nuclear fusion (http://news.sciencemag.org/physics/2015/10/feature-bizarre-reactor-might-save-nuclear-fusion) 

Kliknite da čitate, jer ima slika i grafikona. Alternativno, evo video: 

http://youtu.be/u-fbBRAxJNk (http://youtu.be/u-fbBRAxJNk)

2,000 year old 'computer' discovered: How tech and shipwrecks are rewriting human history (http://www.techrepublic.com/article/2000-year-old-computer-discovered/)   

Quote
Using robots, underwater iPads, 3D printing, and other new tech, scientists are discovering shipwrecks that are rewriting our history. Read the inside story of the Antikythera and two other breakthrough explorations.
Under oceans across the world, hundreds of shipwrecks lie silent and forgotten. Having set sail to discover, trade, or wage war, the boats never reached safe harbour and exist now as time capsules beneath the waves.
          When they took to the seas, some of these vessels were the state of the art, laden with some of the most advanced technology of their era. Now, thanks to the most advanced tech of our time, some long-sought wrecks are finally being found and explored for the first time.
TechRepublic talked to the teams behind some of the most high-profile shipwrecks to be discovered in recent years to find out how they've located the ships and uncovered their secrets—including a 2,000 year old device that may have been the world's first computer. The AntikytheraIf you thought the computer era started with the Colussus (http://cryptomuseum.com/crypto/colossus/index.htm), or even with Babbage's designs (http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects/computing_and_data_processing/1878-3.aspx), you'd be wrong. The advent of computing began before the birth of Christ, with a small bronze mechanism that was lost under the sea off Crete for over a thousand years.
Thought to have been built at the end of the second century BCE, the Antikythera mechanism is considered the first programmable computer. Thanks to an intricate series of gears and dials, the mechanism could be used as a calendar, to track the phases of the moon, and to predict eclipses. It's an object out of time: no other artefact as complex was built during the thousand years after the mechanism's creation—that we know of.
The Antikythera mechanism was named after the shipwreck on which it was discovered. Having sunk to the bottom of the sea in the first century BCE taking the mechanism with it, the shipwreck lay undisturbed until 1900, when a group of Greek sponge divers discovered it and began bringing its treasures to the surface.
After the death of one diver and two others becoming paralysed, operations to recover the artefacts were brought to a halt, but not before statues, ceramics, and the mechanism itself were brought up.
In 1953 and 1976, marine explorer Jacques Cousteau led the next expeditions to the wreck, bringing an assortment of objects, including more statues, coins, and gemstones. Due to the depth of the wreck and the diving technology of the period, divers could only spend a handful of minutes investigating the ship at a time or risk the bends that proved fatal to the first expedition.
Now, after time and technology has moved on, the Greek government invited a team from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (http://www.whoi.edu/) (WHOI), headed by Dr. Brendan Foley, to begin the first significant excavation of the wreck since the Frenchman's over 40 years ago. If Cousteau and his team made sprints to the Antikythera, the WHOI exploration is set to be more of a marathon. "We've been taking this steady incremental approach to the shipwreck, building the foundation of knowledge about it, then posing specific research questions, trying to answer them, and seeing what the next phase brings. When we first got to Antikythera in 2012, one of the questions we had was, does the island hold a whole lot of submerged cultural resources or is this the only shipwreck out there?" Foley said.
Investigators had only scratched the surface of the Antikythera in the last nearly two thousand years. A second wreck—mentioned in passing by Cousteau's team but never really explored—had been keeping the first, better-explored ship company all these years, practically untouched.
Foley team set about circumnavigating the island of Antikythera, off whose coast the wreck lay, carrying out technical dives over a period of eight days, where they mapped everything human-made from the sea's surface down to its floor, 45 meters below.
When Cousteau's team had spotted the second wreck, they saw amphorae that looked probably Roman in origin—meaning the wreck could date from any time up to the fourth century BCE.
"We were the first archaeologists to see this [second] site and immediately we recognised that it had the exact same ceramics as the treasure wreck just up the coast" where the mechanism had been found, said Foley. The similarities between the two wrecks raised questions. Was the second wreck, dubbed Antikythera B, another ship that had sunk around the same time as the first Antikythera wreck? A second ship travelling in convoy with the Antikythera? Or something else entirely?
The debris trail stretching the 300 meters between the two ships looked to be continuous, suggesting that the two wreck sites were part of one larger ship that had split into two parts. Foley's team will be testing the hypothesis over the next few visits to the site, using technology to help them determine the true origins of the second wreck.
As it has every year since since 2012, the team returned to Antikythera this summer to probe the wreck further, examining the area between the two wrecks and using both human divers and robots.
The team is using an autonomous underwater vehicle equipped with stereo cameras. Using an algorithm called SLAM (simultaneous localisation and mapping), the imagery from the stereo cameras can be knitted together to make an extremely precise map of the seafloor. During a few days in June, the robot created 10,500 square meters of map, with a resolution of 2mm. A separate remotely operated vehicle (ROV) carrying metal detecting equipment is also being used to spot hints of bronze or iron-carrying objects lying in the water.
Information from the ROV will be overlaid on top of the data from the 3D map generated by the autonomous underwater vehicle to build up a heat map of where the team should direct their excavation efforts when they return to the site later this summer.
By focusing excavation efforts on areas that show a higher density of metal, the excavations could potentially turn up more fragments of the Antikythera mechanism (only half of the system has been recovered to date). While such a discovery would generate headlines, tiny flecks of lead may have equally fascinating stories to tell.
If any lead artefacts are recovered, the team will take microscopic samples from them and send them away for spectroscopic analysis. By comparing the lead's isotope profile to other samples from around the world, the researchers will be able to hone in on where the ship was built, or where it sailed from.

Potentially, more of the bronze statues recovered on previous trips—hands, feet and other fragments have been found and are on display in the National Museum in Athens—could be identified through the metal heat map.
Finding more of the statues "would be quite a big contribution to art history and culture but we also expect that in amongst the fragments of the statues will be other amazing things. What kind of things? We can't even imagine. The possibilities are boundless. This ship sank carrying the finest material that was available in the entire eastern Mediterranean in the first century BC," Foley said.
Like the mechanism that it carried, the Antikythera is unique for its time period. Its hull planks are some of thickest seen in antiquity, indicating the true size of the ship could be over 200 feet in length, putting it in the same ballpark as HMS Victory, the warship commanded by Admiral Lord Nelson during the Battle of Trafalgar—some 1700 years after the Antikythera sailed.
Why was the Anitkythera so large? The only other known ships of the era that were larger were the pleasure barges that the Roman emperor Caligula used to cruise across Lake Nemi. The Antikythera, however, may have been built for a mix of business and pleasure.
One hypothesis is that the Antikythera may both have carried early tourists and freight, thanks to the huge bronze and marble statues it transported as cargo.
If the ship had to carry statues, some up to three meters tall, they'd have to be packed well to prevent damage in transit. It's been posited that sand or straw could be used as the packing material, but Foley suggests grain could be a more likely candidate: not only would the statues be protected but the grain could be sold on at the Antikythera's destination, making it a far more economical option.
"The ancient grain carriers weren't just cargo ships, they were more like RMS Titanic. They were more like luxury cruise liners," Foley said.
"The couple of extant literary references to grain carriers refer to these floating palaces: mosaic floors, libraries, and amazing cabins, well appointed for the passengers—the 200 or 300 passengers that could be aboard from Rome to Egypt or the Black Sea. They would be sort of the world's first tourists. As the ship was loaded up with grain, which could take a couple of months, they would tour around and then get back on the ship at the end of the season."

Any artefacts, such as mosaic pieces, would lend credence to the theory, but more evidence could come from the bones of passengers that died when the ship sank.
"There's other circumstantial evidence that points to this being the first grain carrier ever discovered, and that's the luxury goods that were carried onboard and also the presence of skeletal remains of a young woman," said Foley.
Remains of four people on the wreck have been found so far, and more may still be on the wreck. Should other bones be recovered, they will be subject to a vigorous recovery procedure to make sure there's no DNA cross-contamination between the dive workers and the bones themselves. All workers on the boat will give cheek swabs to make sure their genetic material can be identified if it ends up on the bones accidentally.
WHOI is now looking for a company that can work with it to analyse the DNA from the bones, perhaps hinting at where those on the ship—be they sailors, high-roller tourists, or slaves—originated from.
The WHOI scientists have already got a handle on other aspects of the travellers' lives, from their hygiene habits to their diets, thanks to the ceramic storage vessels found on the wreck site. The first Antikythera wreck has already yielded amphora, the "55 gallon drum of antiquity", table jugs known as lagynos, and unguentaria—the small bottles that would hold medicines, cosmetics or perfumes.
"With all of these types of ceramic artefacts, they're empty now, but we can take swabs and using police forensic techniques we can pull ancient trace DNA from the ceramic matrix of the original contents, down to the species level," Foley said.
It's not uncommon to find ancient ready meals in some of the jars—mixes of legumes or meats, herbs and spices—but the information from the jars can be far more valuable, giving an indication of what commodities were being traded between what locations, enabling archaeologists to get a better insight into the economy of a region than historical sources alone can provide.
"It's fun for us," said Foley, "because we feel like we've opened up a whole new vista on the past, and we can generate hard data on these early economies. What are they actually importing and exporting, what are they producing, what are they consuming? And it's all right there in these ostensibly empty jars."
Even traces of the ancient grain may still be hidden in the sands around the wrecks for those with the right tech to find it. While the grain is long gone, it will have decomposed to leave characteristic starches and structures called phytoliths, which can be detected with a powerful enough microscope.
WHOI's team returned to the wreck site in the summer of 2015 with their metallic heat maps to begin the process of finding out if the Antikythera has more secrets go give up.

"We're always analysing the data and updating the data, so this year, those wonderfully precise data from the maps produced by the robots, we'll have those on iPads. Those iPads will be in housings and we'll have interactive maps with us as we're diving on the site," Foley said.
The divers move through the water, iPad in hand, looking for the points of interest from the heat maps, and checking their position against those locations as they go. They carry handheld metal detectors too, to spot any metal artefacts buried under the seafloor surface, and are accompanied by professional photographers and videographers, as well as using the iPad cameras to gather snaps too.
"All those data at the end of the day are incorporated into the maps. In the best vision we have of this, we'll have have a data manager incorporating everything we're doing daily," said Foley. "One of the goals will be to virtually excavate and re-excavate the site in the computer afterwards, by using our series of images over the trench we're digging to be able to take it down and refill it in the computer afterwards, so we make sure we're absolutely documenting every action we take."
The divers use rebreathers to allow them to investigate the wrecks at depths that would normally prove fatal to humans in a matter of minutes. By keeping the gases they breath in and out inside a closed loop, adding oxygen where necessary and cleaning out the carbon dioxide, divers are able to spend a far longer time on site than they would be able to with conventional scuba gear.
"Putting humans in the water is always the option of last resort because we have to eat, we have to poop, we get tired and we're really not that efficient underwater. With the rebreather, we increase that efficiency, but it's still we're only want to put people down when there's no other way to do the job," Foley said.
That's why today's underwater excavations will typically rely heavily on robots. They can spend far longer underwater and go to far deeper depths than humans. However, often they're used as observers, with the most difficult work still done by humans.
Last year, WHOI experimented with a fusion of the two: an Iron Man-like exosuit. The exosuit is a small wearable submarine that keeps the diver's air at the same atmospheric pressure as it is in the water.
While the WHOI team didn't use the experimental suit for any work on the wreck site, it was tested out on the vicinity of the Antikythera, and the organisation is now considering whether to plough ahead with a development program.
"You can stay for hours and hours doing work or observing work, and then be winched right back up to the surface," said Foley. "You won't have to pay a decompression penalty. You just jump out of the suit and go have a cup of coffee."
Foley called the oragnisation's August 2015 diving and excavating trip "the most intensive period of activity on the Antikythera ever." The results of the landmark excavation (http://www.whoi.edu/news-release/antikythera-shipwreck-excavation) are still being revealed.The HMS ErebusThe 19th century saw the birth of polar exploration, as maritime nations rushed to stake their claim on the unknown winter continents.
In 1845, two ships left Kent bound for the Arctic, tasked with being the first to navigate the Northwest Passage, a hoped-for trade route between Europe and Asia through the Arctic Ocean.
The ships never returned to England.
It's thought the two vessels, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, were abandoned when they became icebound, leaving the crew to begin a trek on foot across Canada in the hope of finding supplies, or human settlements along the way. The crewmen never made it to safety, and subsequent investigations of remains, found over 100 years later, found traces of starvation, lead poisoning, scurvy, pneumonia, and cannibalism among the party.
The history of the Erebus and Terror has been built up piecemeal since the ships were lost, using testimony from local Inuit, the objects left behind by the crew on their desperate journey, and even notes written by the acting captains following the death of Sir John Franklin, the expedition's captain.
The Inuit reported seeing one of the ships go down off the coast of King William island in around 1850, and they would be the last humans to lay eyes on the vessels for the century and a half that followed.In 2008, Parks Canada, the Canadian Hydrographic Service, and the government of the Arctic territory of Nunavut began a fresh expedition to find the Erebus and the Terror—the latest in a long line of recovery missions that stretches back to Victorian times.
Over the years, the expedition had narrowed down its search to two areas, one in the Victoria Strait, another in Queen Maud Gulf, prompted by testimony from local Inuits who reported going aboard the vessel after its desertion by Franklin's men.
The Parks Canada returned every year, surveying the two areas for traces of the lost vessels. With ice making the areas inaccessible for much of the year, the archaeologists had only a handful of weeks at a time to hunt for the missing ships.
In 2011, the searchers drafted new technology to aid the search: aircraft equipped with lidar symmetry, which could scan the shore areas to a depth of around 20 meters. While the lidar systems weren't expected to be able to pick up signs of a wreck, they could help the team put together better maps of the region, which is still largely uncharted even today. The Canadian Space Agency also joined the project, providing satellite map data from the Radarsat I and II satellites, allowing the team to better delineate the shoreline and the low tide marks.
"Even the maps for the coastline of this area weren't terribly accurate. They were off by about 4km. if you're trying to steer a survey line and not run into an island, 4km is fairly significant," said Ryan Harris, who led the Parks Canada team. With better maps, the team could use side-scan sonar and multibeam echosounding, which can build up a picture of the seafloor, without risk of damage to the environment or to their equipment.
After what Harris describes as "six very long, monotonous years staring at the sonar waterfall display cascading down the screen, often for very, very long hours—sometimes 16 hours a day—bobbing around on the ocean, turning a little bit green as we concentrated on the data all the while," in September last year, an image loomed out of the sonar data.
A shipwreck.
The team knew had almost certainly found one of Franklin's ships. Due to its remoteness, very few ships have sunk in the region, and those that have are generally a matter of public record. Unless a whaling ship had made it up to the Queen Maud Gulf without being noticed, the team were likely to be the first people to see either the Erebus or the Terror in over 160 years.
The team changed its survey grid, aligning it with the axis of the ship, shortening the range of the sonar and boosting its resolution. The telltale details of the ship emerged.
"We could see, for example, a herringbone pattern of diagonally-laid upper decking, which is a laminate construction, sort of a second layer of decking laid over the first. It's absolutely typical of royal navy dockyard modifications for Arctic service," said Harris.
However, without any scuba gear on the survey boat, the first up close look went to a robot, the Saab SeaEye falconer remotely operated vehicle (ROV).
"That's when we saw the two brass six-pounder cannons," said Harris. "They were one of the first things we saw as we crept over the seafloor to the site. Everything was just so picture perfect. You couldn't have scripted it better, almost everything you looked at was just so remarkable."
When the scuba gear arrived, human divers were able to see the site for the first time. A gale had stirred up sediment under the water, but a mix of luck and judgment allowed Harris and his divemate to find enter the water near a timber that Harris could follow "hand over hand" to the wreck proper.
"Out of the gloom on the seafloor loomed this stately shipwreck site, standing bolt upright. It was that phenomenal feeling of making contact with this icon of maritime history," said Harris. "It was absolute exhilaration."
While it's common for wrecks to be found broken and battered, much of the ship—later confirmed as the Erebus—was still intact. The weather deck, upper deck, and quarterdeck were all still identifiable, and although the upper deck had been ruptured by ice, the holes allowed the two Parks Canada divers to peer down into the rooms below. They saw a glass case bottle, a container of spirits reserved for officers, and examined the areas where the ordinary sailors bunked down and the mess table where they would have taken their meals.
The first dive also found the ship's bell, broken free from the belfry but otherwise undamaged, stamped with 1845—the date the two ships had set sail for the Arctic.
While the ice closed over the site and eventually put an end to explorations, the team were able to return to the Erebus in April 2012, carrying a new piece of equipment that would allow them to access the site even in winter.
Defence Research and Development Canada, the military's technology arm, lent the archaeologists a tool that uses a jet of hot water to cut through ice. Using DRDC's 'hot water knife', a two meter section of the ice was removed, allowing the divers to slip beneath the ice and onto the wreck site.
"The advantage of diving in the water is that because of the ice there's no waves," said Harris, "so all of the particulate settles down on the seafloor and you have a really, really good visibility. That's where we're able us to use different technological approaches to document the site that work a lot a better."
As well as documenting the outside of Erebus and its location, the Parks Canada team face the difficulty of navigating within the ship itself, mapping the location of the objects within it and any subtle associations with them.
The team uses stereophotogrammetry for that. Harris said, "It's an extremely important tool for us now. Essentially it uses a whole bunch of still photos, and software is able to determine the three dimensional relationship between subsequent exposures and produces a three dimensional model or a point cloud of what the camera saw, so in just a couple of hours you can aquire a whole bunch of data and produce three dimensional images of the entire wreck site."
The expedition is also experimenting with laser scanning, in partnership with Canadian firm 2G Robotics which makes underwater scanners normally used for detecting damage on oil pipelines. The company developed a longer range scanner for the Franklin expedition, which can map up to a five meter range with millimeter resolution, used to image the outside of the wreck. The expedition also used a smaller machine, with a range of between 50cm and 20cm, for investigating the interior, allowing the team to record the position of small objects, like plates, where they lay within the ship.
The team had another novel piece of technology at its disposal: a 7.5-meter autonomous underwater vehicle, the Arctic Explorer. Unlike the humans that operate it, it can stay underwater for 72 hours, and was packed with all sort of tech: inertial guidance systems and doppler velocity logs to plot the position and speed of the vehicle, as well as an interferometric synthetic aperture sonar (InSAS) system that can record a far wider swathe of radar (630 meters) than the towed side-scan sonar system the survey boat normally uses.
Said Harris, "It can resolve a target the size of your thumb anywhere in that sonar record, because it's using almost like synthetic aperture radar—it's using multiple radars and its synthesising that into one coherent very, very accurate image."
Despite all its technical bells and whistles, the Arctic Explorer had to watch from the sidelines.
"We thought this was going to be the best technology to be used for underwater archaeology because we were hoping that the InSAS system would be able to detect very small, otherwise difficult-to-detect, cultural targets—detached rigging, rope lying on the seafloor, piece of iron plating lying flat on the bottom, any oars, or anything that might be difficult for us to detect with towed sonar," Harris said.
But it was thwarted when the team wanted to take it onto the two search sites last year. In the Victoria Strait search site, there was too much ice to deploy it; in the Queen Maud Gulf, the waters were too shallow for it to be used safely.
The technology may have been some of the best out there, but even it could be bested by Arctic conditions. It's a situation that Franklin and his men would have been familiar with.
Franklin's two ships were some of the first polar vessels to be equipped with steam engines—repurposed railway engines—leaving port with 12 days coal aboard, for example, as well as state-of-the-art Massey double action bilge pumps.
"I've never seen [the Massey pumps] in real life until we were face to face," said Harris. "At the time, that was the very best thing that the Royal Navy could lay their hands on, but the technologies at the time are so short lived because everything was changing so quickly."
The ships that were sent to find Erebus and Terror five years later had already had their bilge pumps upgraded to the newer Daunton model. Harris said, "Things were changing so very quickly in that sort of industrial period that this is like a snapshot of what things were like in 1845."
While Harris and his team continue to gain the Erebus' secrets and discover what other technologies she had onboard, the search will begin afresh for the Terror.
"We'll have five mulitbeam sonar systems pinging away at Victoria Strait trying to locate the second ship. That's important to do," Harris said. "The two ships together are a designated national historic site. To preserve them, protect them, and interpret them for the public, obviously we have know where both of them are. Their stories obviously are intrinsically intertwined, so we hope in the fullness of time to understand what happened to the expedition and find as many clues as possible, and both ships would certainly assist that."The MarsWhen the Mars sank in 1564, it was perhaps the biggest ship in the world—a fearsome vessel with over one hundred guns and 700 men onboard.
The Mars met its end in a bloody sea battle between Sweden, which had built the formidable warship, and the combined armies of Denmark and the German province of Lübeck. During the battle, the Mars caught fire but despite the clear danger, the Mars was still boarded in the last minutes above the waves by enemy forces. The flames ignited the gunpowder stored on the ship causing a huge explosion that blew out the stern of the ship and took her, and the men aboard her—the Swedish sailors and invading forces alike—to the bottom of the ocean.
While the Danish and German soldiers must have known the risks of a ship that was already alight, they still ventured aboard. Why? One suggestion was that they were desperate to recover the thousands of valuable silver and gold coins the ship was said to carry, even if it meant risking—and ultimately losing—their lives.
For over four hundred years, the wreck and its rumoured treasure had slept 75 meters beneath the Baltic Sea. Many attempts had been made to find her since her loss on the first day of the Battle of Öland. The one that was to prove successful, staged by a group of divers known as Ocean Discovery, had been 20 years in the making.
Johan Rönnby, head of the MARIS research institute at Södertörn University set up to study the Mars, said, "Mars is a legendary ship in Sweden, and almost everybody wanted to find it. It was built by the King Erik the XIV, who was son of Gustav Vasa—Vasa is our Tudor dynasty. It's ship a connected to the building of Sweden. Sweden had become a country, and there was an attempt to make Sweden a European superpower and Mars was part of that concept, really. Erik had built maybe the biggest ship in the world in the 1560s, so Mars was a special ship. She was more than 60 meters long and very modern-equipped."
Ocean Discovery's divers had started their search decades ago, upgrading from echosounders to sidescan sonar in 1999. Due to the unreliability of the written sources of the time, the team had been investigating a relatively large area, 15 square miles, and had been hoping to zero in on the Mars using information from local fishermen on where their trawl nets had been caught on the seafloor—a sign that they might have become tangled in the wreck of the Mars.
The conditions in the Baltic Sea—the temperatures and absence of shipworm, which can destroy submerged timber—mean any ships that have sunk in its waters are often well preserved. Over the course of Ocean Discovery's search, the team had found tens of wrecked wooden ships maintained in a good state by the Baltic waters, located using the trawl snag data from the fishermen, but none had been the Mars.
Abandoning the historical data and information from fishermen, the team resorted to doing search passes over the area, dragging the sidescan sonar from east to west.
One day in 2011, the team had been tracking debris from a wreck site for some hours after finding some masts when something out of the ordinary loomed into view on its side scan sonar. "Halfway through, we found a wreck that looked like nothing else," Ingemar Lundgren said. A piece of the ship's hull 40 meters long had appeared, giving the first suggestion that the team had finally stumbled on the flagship of Swedish King Erik the XIV's fleet.
"The first indication [it was the Mars] was the size of the wreck. It was really, really huge on the sea bottom. We could see on the sidescan sonar pictures that this was a big, big wreck. when we saw the first pictures from it, we recognised the ship's [building] techniques...  it was in many ways similar to the Mary Rose. Then we had a good indication it was very likely that it was Mars," Rönnby said. The Mary Rose, a 16th century English warship and the pearl of King Henry VIII's fleet, was sunk ten years before the Mars and salvaged thirty years before it.
A four man team—Richard Lundgren, Fredrik Skogh, Christoffer Modig, Anton Petersson—were on board the ship when it found the Mars, and sent a picture of the scan to Ingemar Lundren, who was processing images from the vessel onshore. "I said it could well be the Mars, because it looked so different."
It took some time to confirm the exact identity of the wreck after its initial discovery, however. "The sidescan sonar is the best technology available, but it's not so detailed that you can see cannon and things," said Lundgren. "It's more technology for locating, not for marine archaeological survey."
Having spotted the wreck, the team sent down an ROV for a closer look. "The camera quality on the ROV is quite poor. We did see the intact hull side but we didn't see any gun ports. We were filming for an hour but we didn't see any cannons. Navigating an ROV on a complex wreck site like that is hard. It's very three dimensional, there's wood sticking up, and the umbilical from the ROV can get tangled. The ROV surveying couldn't prove it was the Mars, it could only prove it was a large warship," Lundgren added.
Absolute confirmation would require human divers. A three-man team, comprised of the two Lundgren brothers and Skogh, went in to investigate.
As they swam over the wreck, gradually distinctive cannons began to appear: first just one, caught in the beam of a single diver's flashlight, then five, six, seven piled up on top of each other.
Still it was not enough to put the wreck's identity beyond doubt: another 16th century Swedish warship, the Svärdet, had sank in the same region as the Mars and not long after. Was it the Svärdet they had found?
Further dives in the weeks following after the discovery of the wreck were used to map the wreck's guns, and found that some bore the Vasa coat of arms. Locating a wrought-iron breech-loaded cannon, however, was enough to put the identity of the ship beyond doubt.
Having found the Mars after a two-decade search, Ocean Discovery found that they weren't the only wreckhunters who were in the region. Using a satellite system called AIS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_Identification_System), which allows ships to know the location of nearby ships, Ocean Discovery could see a rival team from underwater survey business Marin Mätteknik (MMT) were also nearby and looking for the warship. In three or four days, they would be on top of the wreck before Ocean Discovery had had time to register the discovery as its own.
"We tried to distract them. We know they could follow us on AIS," Ingemar said, "so we set up a search pattern away from the wreck site and we made it look like we had found something. We stopped in one place and deployed an ROV. They took the bait and came over." Ocean Discovery had won enough time to confirm the identity of the Mars and record it with the authorities.
The former rivals are now friends: Ocean Discovery,  MMT, and the University of Södertörn formed a joint project to investigate the wreck.
Among the techniques used to research the Mars was photogrammetry: divers took hundreds of normal digital still photos of the site from many angles, which is then sewn together by photogrammetry software to create a two-dimensional map of the site.
"In 2012, we made a photo mosaic of the whole site with 600 pictures put together. It's at 70 meters depth, it's totally, totally dark in the Baltic Sea. It's a tricky case to work on. You need to take diving technology and rebreathers and a lot of lamps, of course," said Rönnby.
Thousands more photos have been added since, and divers will carry on adding more, thanks to funding from both National Geographic North European Fund and Waitt Institute.
Using sidescan sonar and multibeam sonar, the project began to build up a high-resolution three-dimensional picture of the wreck too.
Multibeam sonars can be either mounted on the underside of a ship or on an ROV and, by emitting sound waves and recording how long and from what direction they bounce off a surface and return, can build up a 3D picture of the sea floor.
Multibeam sonar, provided by MMT, gives highly accurate georeferencing, so archaeologists known where the wreck is and where each object can be found. The multibeam sonar and photogrammetry are used in concert. If an object located on a 2D image is worthy of further scrutiny, its location can be found using the multibeam, and a diver sent down to precisely the right place.
The project is also working with a BlueView sonar scanner from MMT, which when positioned on the seafloor can gather 60 million measurement points in 15 minutes. Combined with the million photos taken by divers, a map that's precise to two millimeters has been built up—higher resolution than the multibeam. In time, however, the BlueView point cloud will be merged with that from the multibeam sonar so the two technologies can fill in any gaps from each other.
Thanks to the photogrammetry, BlueView, and multibeam sonar imagery of the wreck, the Mars can now be explored in great detail without putting divers tens of meters down in the freezing Baltic.
"A lot of people have said to us, 'Oh, a new Vasa ship, how should we be able to pay for the conservation and everything?' and we said no, we're not going to do that, we're going to salvage as much information as possible from the wreck instead and leave it on the sea bottom. It's what we call the future of maritime archaeology to be able to do that. That has been an important part of the whole technology development to do that," Rönnby said.
Much of the coming archaeology of the Mars will be done on dry land, using a computer, rather than by divers. Due to the resolution of the 3D model—and the relative lack of sediment in the environment—archaeologists will be able to explore the wreck in fine-grained detail. Those that have already been exploring the photo mosaic have been doing so at their desks, looking for artefacts or other elements the divers may have missed.
Those dry-land archaeologists have managed to pinpoint much of the treasure, including thousands of those rumoured silver coins. "On the 3D photo we can zoom in and see the coins laying there all around the sea bottom," said Rönnby. "It looks like a chest exploded with silver coins."
Even the few bones around the wreck can give up their secrets without being moved. A PhD student is studying the 3D mosaic, finding out the physical characteristics of the person—their height, whether they had certain diseases—and even how they died by studying fractures or burns on the bones.
While two silver coins and a couple of cannon have been salvaged and brought to the surface with the help of an ROV, the plan is to leave as much of the wreck in situ, so the excavations won't ultimately affect the wreck in any destructive way. As well as images, the technology gathers the precise position of artefacts and other elements, so no need to pin out grids on the site either.
That's not to say that the Mars won't be seen above water in future, though. The detailed way the way the wreck has been mapped means that it can be brought to the surface in a new way: with 3D printing.
"You can dive on the wreck from the computer, you can zoom into details, you can see artefacts, you can turn them around and then most fantastic thing you can do—you can even print them. You can print parts of the structures or you can print artefacts with 3D printers."
So far, a not-to-scale section of the hull and one of the guns have been printed out. In future, perhaps, museums around the world could take advantage of such techniques. Multiple museums could print out copies of the same object from the wreck, giving them to visitors to touch or academics to study, and not have to worry about how to maintain the right conditions for conservation. The imagery could equally be used to build a 3D visualisation that visitors could manipulate and explore themselves, putting themselves at the heart of history.
In the next few years, would-be marine archaeologists will have yet another way to explore the Mars without getting their feet wet: the hope is to create a virtual reality version of the wreck, that individuals can explore through an Oculus Rift headset.
According to Rönnby, Mars offers "the possibility to come so close to the middle of battle."
"A lot of ships timbers are still black and you can see the explosion," he said. "There are guns still sitting in wood, and cannonballs have penetrated into the hull. You are really close to the battlefield. In the end, that's what I think is the purpose of archaeology is: to study general things about humans, in this case, why we are fighting, how we fight, and how people behave in war situations. I would like to use Mars as part of a general humanistic discussion about warfare and people in war."

U Finskoj se već priprema predlog "osnovnog prihoda" za građane, drugim rečima, modela davanja svim građanima određene redovne sume da ne moraju da brinu za egzistenciju. Živimo SF!!!!!




Kela to prepare basic income proposal (http://yle.fi/uutiset/kela_to_prepare_basic_income_proposal/8422295)

QuoteThe Finnish Social Insurance Institution is to begin drawing up plans for a citizens' basic income model. The preparation's director Olli Kangas says that full-fledged basic income would net Finns some 800 euros a month.

The Finnish Social Insurance Institution (Kela) will soon begin work on a presentation for basic income, regional news group Lännen Media reports. Once implemented, the model could revolutionise the Finnish social welfare system.
If implemented, the so-called basic income would replace other benefits people currently receive, and would therefore be rather high, Kela's Research Department Manager Olli Kangas told Lännen Media.
Under basic income all Finnish citizens would be paid an untaxed benefit sum free of charge by the government. Kangas says the model would see Finns being paid some 800 euros a month in its full form, 550 euros monthly in the model's pilot phase.
The basic income model's full-fledged form would make some earnings-based benefits obsolete, but in the partial pilot format benefits would not be affected. The partial model would also retain housing benefits and income support packages.
Kela says it will prepare the basic income proposal by November, 2016. The government's nationwide basic income trial will be based on the finished proposal.

Ekipa College Humora očigledno ne smatra da u dovoljnoj meri živimo SF.  :( :cry:

! No longer available (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4LI_EqnJq8#)

Addressing 4 billion people in three words (http://www.mondaynote.com/2015/11/30/addressing-4-billion-people-in-three-words/)

Quote

If you can't be located, you're nobody. What3Words, a London startup, tackles one of the developing world's most critical challenges: providing a universal address for people who don't have a physical one.  (Part of a series on technology and global development.)

Last week in New York, at the Next Billion conference organized by Quartz, Chris Sheldrick, the CEO of What3Words, captured his audience with strong arguments: 75% of the earth population, i.e. four billion people, "don't exist" because they have no physical address. This cohort of "unaddressed" can't open a bank account, can't deal properly with an hospital or an administration, let alone get a delivery. This is a major impediment to global development.

Governments, the Word Bank and various NGOs have poured millions of dollars to launch addressing programs. A country like Ghana tried four times without success. In Brazil, this portion of Rio de Janeiro with its its sparse network of roads and streets looks like an empty land:

This is one of the world's largest slums in the world, the Rocinha favela: 355 acres (143 hectares) of intertwined sheds hosting 70,000 people. Translated into density, this amounts to a staggering 120,000 persons per square mile (48,000 per km2). Go figure how to deliver a package or simply how to provide the most basic administrative assistance such as monitoring health or education.

The developing world is not the only one to suffer from poor addressing.

Decades or urbanizations are have not necessarily been associated with discipline when it comes to building a reliable address system. This blog, maintained by a British computer scientist named Michael Tandy, compiles an outstanding series of absurd occurrences in global addressing systems. Here is just one example, an address in Tokyo.

〒100-8994 (zip code), 東京都 (Tokyo-to, i.e. Tokyo prefecture or state) 中央区 (Chuo-ku, i.e. Chuo Ward) 八重洲一丁目 (Yaesu 1-chome, i.e. Yaesu district 1st subdistrict) 5番3号 (block 5 lot 3), 東京中央郵便局 (Tokyo Central Post Office).

Messy addressing systems have measurable consequences. UPS, the world's largest parcel delivery provider, calculated that if its trucks merely drove one mile less per day, the company would save $50m a year. In United Kingdom, bad addressing costs the Royal Mail £775m per year.   

One might say latitude and longitude can solve this. Sure thing. Except that GPS coordinates require 16 digits, 2 characters (+/-/N/S/E/W), 2 decimal points, space and comma, to specify a location of the size of a housing block. Not helpful for a densely populated African village, or a Mumbai slum.

In his previous job, Chris Sheldrick (now 33) had his epiphany when organizing large musical events around the world. Tons of material had to be shipped at a specific location and date/time. After several mishaps, he too tried using GPS coordinates to make dozens of flight cases converge at the right time and place. But people got confused with lat/long, sometimes mixing ones and sevens, etc. After a dramatic mistake that almost ruined a large wedding party in the Italian countryside, he vented his frustration to a mathematician friend who then suggested the following: why not replacing GPS coordinates with actual words that anyone can understand and memorize? Sheldrick's mathematician pal came up with a simple idea: a combination of three words, in any language, could specify every 3 meters by 3 meters square in the world. More than enough to designate a hut in Siberia or a building doorway in Tokyo. Altogether, 40,000 words combined in triplets label 57 trillion squares. Thus far, the system has been built in 10 langages: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Swahili, Portuguese, Swedish, Turkish and, starting next month, Arabic... All together, this lingua franca requires only 5 megabytes of data, small enough to reside in any smartphone and work offline. Each square has its identity in its own language that is not a translation of another. The dictionaries have been refined to avoid homophones or offensive terms, short terms being reserved for the most populated area. And, unlike the GPS lat/long system, What3Words has an autocorrect feature that proposes the right terms if words are misspelled, or even mispronounced since the system is to be used in a voice-recognition navigation system.

For now, What3Words Ltd. has solid funding. It just completed a $3.4m second round of financing from Intel Capital and Li Ka-Shing's Horizons Ventures, adding to $2m already raised through angels investors. Enough to develop additional languages, make the mapping system accessible by voice and make it embeddable into third party navigation devices —and organize the vast marketing effort required to scale the mapping system.

What3Words' monetization relies on accessing its API (the software layer that connects to its addressing system) and its application Software Development Kit (SDK). Hence two models: non-profit for NGO's or local services such as this one delivering medicine in a South African Township. To many humanitarian organizations, What3Words' features could be invaluable in solving crucial problems such as delivering supplies in uncharted areas (such as a refugee camps), or improving medical aid by identifying every patient's location.

On the for-profit side, What3Words is inevitably catching the attention of a vast array of corporations that struggle with bad addressing. As explained by W3W's marketing director Giles Rhys Jones (a former Ogilvy UK executive), examples range from an oil company doing prospection in a remote region, to a construction company building an infrastructure project. Among the companies that have fully integrated What3Words are Navmii which gathered 24 million users in 90 countries, or the Norwegian mapping provider Kartverket (anyone who drove in empty Norwegian land can understand the benefits), and a Brazilian delivery provider. For What3Words, the decisive boost will come from its integration in major mapping suppliers such as Google Maps or Waze.

при-крајм је близу (http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2015/12/pre-crime-arrives-in-the-uk-better-make-sure-your-face-stays-off-the-crowdsourced-watch-list/), насмешите се, фејсвоч вас гледа а неофејс вас препознаје...а кад се то још интегрише у фејсбук/инстаграм/твитер...

Quote
As you may know, we're big fans of CCTV in the UK. At the last count there was around 6 million CCTV cameras in the UK, or about one for every ten people living here. Most of these cameras are passive: they don't actually do anything, except for constantly recording to a tape or hard drive.
The big exceptions are real-time police and intelligence cameras, such as the the UK's automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) system. Here, in addition to storing the data on hard drives, number plates are actively interrogated and matched against a database of missing vehicles and wanted people.
The UK's police and intelligence agencies probably have similar real-time matching abilities with other private and public CCTV networks, though that information is obviously hard to come by. Most recently, though, the Metropolitan Police asked for access to Transport for London's ANPR network so that it can carry out real-time facial recognition on all motorists entering London.
Which brings us neatly onto today's interesting bit of news. Facewatch is a system that lets retailers, publicans, and restaurateurs easily share private CCTV footage with the police and other Facewatch users. In theory, Facewatch lets you easily report shoplifters to the police, and to share the faces of generally unpleasant clients/drunks/etc with other Facewatch users. The BBC reports that Facewatch is currently used at around 10,000 premises. The Facewatch website is full of positive testimonials from shop owners and police forces alike; it does seem to work as intended.
Now, however, Facewatch has been updated so that it can be integrated with real-time face recognition systems, such as NEC's NeoFace. Where previously a member of staff had to keep an eye out for people on the crowdsourced Facewatch watch list, now the system can automatically tell you if someone on the watch list has just entered the premises. A member of staff can then keep an eye on that person, or ask them politely (or not) to leave.

Pre-crime

In the film Minority Report, people are rounded up by the Precrime police agency before they actually commit the crime. In the movie this pre-crime information is provided by "pre-cognition" savants floating in a goopy nutrient bath who can apparently see the future.
Replace those gibbering pre-cog mutants with Facewatch, and you pretty much have the same thing: a system that automatically tars people with a criminal brush, irrespective of dozens of important variables.
Facewatch lets you share "subjects of interest" with other Facewatch users even if they haven't been convicted. If you look at the shop owner in a funny way, or ask for the service charge to be removed from your bill, you might find yourself added to the "subject of interest" list.
Or what if you have been convicted, but have since come out of the criminal justice system a reformed person? Or what if you were convicted of some completely unrelated crime, but still find yourself stalked by a security guard every time you visit Tesco? Or what if you ended up on the watch list because you walked past McDonald's during a democratic protest against the government or police, and then find yourself ushered out of every shop, restaurant, and pub you visit henceforth?
Pre-crime is potentially an awesome idea with the right safeguards, but to put that kind of power in the hands of private citizens and without significant oversight and code review is quite insane and open to egregious abuse.
The creator of Facewatch, Simon Gordon, told the BBC that the effectiveness of face recognition systems is increasing, while the price of such systems is falling rapidly. "Probably by the end of next year, it will be almost like having a mobile phone," he said. Jolly good.

Phu, ne znam kolko je realtime prepoznavanje lica ostvarivo i ekonomski dostupno, ako neko zna nek da detalje...

Ali čak i bez toga, "preventive policing" izgleda postaje...stvar.
https://aeon.co/essays/do-we-really-want-to-use-predictive-policing-to-stop-crime

(i sad sve je to možda ok, samo nigde nema javne debate o bilo čemu a trebalo bi da bude)

Da, pre-crime je postao prilično popularan koncept. Recimo:



The age of 'pre-crime' has arrived (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/12/01/the-age-of-pre-crime-has-arrived/)

Quote
The headline reads (http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2015/11/26/la-city-council-considers-sending-dear-john-letters-to-homes-of-men-who-solicit-prostitutes/), "LA City Council Considers Sending 'Dear John' Letters To Homes Of Men Who Solicit Prostitutes," but what they're considering is quite a bit worse than that.

Los Angeles is considering sending "Dear John" letters to the homes of men who solicit prostitutes hoping the mail will be opened by mothers, girlfriends or wives.
Privacy advocates are slamming the idea. The plan would use automated license plate readers to generate the letters, which would be aimed at shaming "Johns," the Los Angeles Daily News reported.
The city council voted Wednesday to ask the City Attorney's office to examine sending so-called "John Letters," the Daily News reported.
Council member Nury Martinez, who represents a San Fernando Valley district that has a thriving street prostitution problem, introduced the plan.
Martinez has said many of the prostitutes are children, or women being exploited.
In a statement issued by her office Wednesday, Martinez said, "If you aren't soliciting, you have no reason to worry about finding one of these letters in your mailbox. But if you are, these letters will discourage you from returning. Soliciting for sex in our neighborhoods is not OK."

I'm personally of the "what consenting adults do on their own time is none of the government's business" camp. The line about children and exploited women is odd, too. We're now to the point where we're passing laws aimed at potential johns suspected of soliciting prostitutes, simply because they were seen in an area where prostitutes are known to work, all because it's possible that the theoretical prostitutes those suspected johns might have been soliciting are potentially underage or might have been forced in to sex work involuntarily.
But even if you support laws against prostitution, this is a pretty awful way to enforce them. True, no one is going to jail. You're just potentially ruining lives. And as Nick Selby writes at Medium (https://medium.com/@nselby/los-angeles-just-proposed-the-worst-use-of-license-plate-reader-data-in-history-702c35733b50#.pfch4n97e), Martinez is wrong. One needn't have actually solicited a prostitute to get one of these letters.

Have Ms. Martinez and the Los Angeles City Council taken leave of their senses? This scheme makes, literally, a state issue out of legal travel to arbitrary places deemed by some  —  but not by a court, and without due process  —  to be "related" to crime

in general, not to any specific crime.
There isn't "potential" for abuse here, this is a legislated abuse of technology that is already controversial when it's used by police for the purpose of seeking stolen vehicles, tracking down fugitives and solving specific crimes.
It is theoretically possible that a law enforcement officer could observe an area he understands to be known for prostitution, and, upon seeing a vehicle driving in a certain manner, or stopping in front of suspected or known prostitutes, based on his reasonable suspicion that he bases on his analysis of the totality of these specific circumstances, the officer could speak with the driver to investigate. This is very uncommon, because it would take a huge amount of manpower and time.
The City Council and Ms. Martinez seek to "automate" this process of reasonable suspicion (reducing it to mere presence at a certain place), and deploy it on a massive scale. They then seek to take this much further, through a highly irresponsible (and probably illegal) action that could have significant consequences on the recipient of such a letter  —  and they have absolutely no legal standing to write, let alone send it. There are grave issues of freedom of transportation and freedom of association here.
Guilt by association would be a higher standard.

Worse, they seek to use municipal funds to take action against those guilty of nothing other than traveling legally on city streets, then access the state-funded Department of Motor Vehicle registration records to resolve the owner data, then use municipal moneys to write, package and pay the United States Postal Service to deliver a letter that is at best a physical manifestation of the worst kind of Digital McCarthyism.

I'd add one more awful consequence to this policy: It's essentially stating that there are some neighborhoods where a person's mere presence is indicative of criminal activity — that the only reason one would visit these areas is to solicit sex for money. Think about what that says to the people who live and work in those areas. It's also a pretty surefire way to prevent these neighborhoods from ever improving. Why would anyone travel to or through an area designated a "prostitution zone" to, say, offer job training, counseling, medical care or other services if doing so means their name winds up in a database of suspected johns?

The L.A. City Council is still considering the policy. But as the CBS Los Angeles article linked above points out, cities such as Minneapolis, Des Moines and Oakland, Calif., are already sending letters. Just wait until they start trying to take these people's cars (http://krqe.com/2014/09/15/police-roll-out-measure-aimed-at-prostitution-solicitors/), too.

Quote from: zakk on 18-12-2015, 11:23:55
Phu, ne znam kolko je realtime prepoznavanje lica ostvarivo i ekonomski dostupno, ako neko zna nek da detalje...

ево ти из чланка неколико линкова везано за фејсвоч и неофејс технологију
као и директни линкови ка 'производима' где се мање више објашњава коришћена технологија

Quote
http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2015/07/uk-police-to-get-real-time-access-to-photos-of-drivers-entering-london/ (http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2015/07/uk-police-to-get-real-time-access-to-photos-of-drivers-entering-london/)
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35111363 (http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35111363)
https://www.facewatch.co.uk/cms (https://www.facewatch.co.uk/cms)
http://www.nec.com/en/global/solutions/safety/face_recognition/NeoFaceWatch.html (http://www.nec.com/en/global/solutions/safety/face_recognition/NeoFaceWatch.html)

но, ја не видим да је потребно много било чега (новца и времена) за препознавање физиономија у реалном времену...нисам баш сигуран шта те ту буни

Da nema Boba Živkovića ne bih ni znao, ali prvi stepen rakete Falcon 9 se vratio i uspešno prizemljio pošto je otposlao drugi stepen sa satelitima u orbitu. Živimo u interesantnim vremenima.

45 minuta originalnog prenosa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5bTbVbe4e4 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5bTbVbe4e4)

Poletanje je u 22:45 (https://youtu.be/O5bTbVbe4e4?t=22m45s), sletanje u 31:25 (https://youtu.be/O5bTbVbe4e4?t=31m25s) (sa malo uvodne priče da bude zanimljivije).

Glavnih par minuta odvojeno
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqcPqJfuzG4 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqcPqJfuzG4)

This Guy Just Spent 48 Hours in Virtual Reality (http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/blog/48-hours-in-vr)

Živimo SF, u ovom slučaju 1984. Džordža Orvela.

  Samsung Warns Customers To Think Twice About What They Say Near Smart TVs (http://theantimedia.org/samsung-warns-customers-to-think-twice-about-what-they-say-near-smart-tvs/)

QuoteIn a troubling new development in the domestic consumer surveillance debate, an investigation into Samsung Smart TVs has revealed that user voice commands are recorded, stored, and transmitted to a third party. The company even warns customers not to discuss personal or sensitive information within earshot of the device.
This is in stark contrast to previous claims by tech manufacturers, like Playstation, who vehemently deny their devices record personal information, despite evidence to the contrary, including news that hackers can gain access to unencrypted streams of credit card information.
The new Samsung controversy stems from the discovery of a single haunting statement in the company's "privacy policy," which states:
"Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party."
This sparked a back and forth between the Daily Beast and Samsung regarding not only consumer privacy but also security concerns. If our conversations are "captured and transmitted," eavesdropping hackers may be able to use our "personal or other sensitive information" for identity theft or any number of nefarious purposes.
There is also the concern that such information could be turned over to law enforcement or government agencies. With the revelation of the PRISM program — by which the NSA collected data from Microsoft, Google, and Facebook — and other such NSA spying programs, neither the government nor the private sector has the benefit of the doubt in claiming tech companies are not conscripted into divulging sensitive consumer info under the auspices of national security.
Michael Price, counsel in the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law, stated:
"I do not doubt that this data is important to providing customized content and convenience, but it is also incredibly personal, constitutionally protected information that should not be for sale to advertisers and should require a warrant for law enforcement to access."
Responding to the controversy, Samsung updated its privacy policy, named its third party partner, and issued the following statement:
"Voice recognition, which allows the user to control the TV using voice commands, is a Samsung Smart TV feature, which can be activated or deactivated by the user. The TV owner can also disconnect the TV from the Wi-Fi network."
Under still more pressure, Samsung named its third party affiliate, Nuance Communications. In a statement to Anti-Media, Nuance said:
"Samsung is a Nuance customer. The data that Nuance collects is speech data. Nuance respects the privacy of its users in its use of speech data. Our use of such data is for the development and improvement of our voice recognition and natural language understanding technologies. As outlined in our privacy policy, third parties work under contract with Nuance, pursuant to confidentiality agreements, to help Nuance tailor and deliver the speech recognition and natural language service, and to help Nuance develop, tune, enhance, and improve its products and services.
"We do not sell that speech data for marketing or advertising. Nuance does not have a relationship with government agencies to turn over consumer data.....There is no intention to trace these samples to specific people or users."
Nuance's Wikipedia page mentions that the company maintains a small division for government and military system development, but that is not confirmed at this time.
Despite protestations from these companies that our voice command data is not being traced to specific users or, worse, stored for use by government or law enforcement agencies, it seems that when it comes to constitutional civil liberties, the end zone keeps getting pushed further and further down the field.
For years, technologists and smart device enthusiasts claimed webcam and voice recording devices did not store our information. While Samsung may be telling the truth about the use of that data, there are countless companies integrating smart technology who may not be using proper encryption methods and may have varying contractual obligations to government or law enforcement.
Is it really safe for us to assume that the now exceedingly evident symbiotic relationship between multinational corporations and government agencies does not still include a revolving door for the sharing of sensitive consumer data?

Ou jea, konačno:

Scientists have discovered how to 'delete' unwanted memories (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/12152337/Scientists-have-discovered-how-to-delete-unwanted-memories.html)

Quote from: Meho Krljic on 17-02-2016, 07:24:14
Ou jea, konačno:

Scientists have discovered how to 'delete' unwanted memories (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/12152337/Scientists-have-discovered-how-to-delete-unwanted-memories.html)

:? Horror

Kakvi horor, sve što mi pomaže da Mad Maxa gledam ponovo po prvi put je blagoslov!!!!!!!!!!!!

Pa dobro, kome se jos nije desilo da pozeli da nesto zaboravi, narocito losa iskustva, koja kako naucnici kazu ostaju bolje, detaljnije urezana u nasa secanja.

"Negative events may edge out positive ones in our memories, according to research by Kensinger and others.It really does matter whether [an event is] positive or negative in that most of the time, if not all of the time, negative events tend to be remembered in a more accurate fashion than positive events," Kensinger said."

Kad smo vec kod secanja eto podsetila me ova prica na EKV
"Hocu da zaboravim,
Ovaj dan i prosli dan ..."

http://youtu.be/KIQ1sa1CkqY (http://youtu.be/KIQ1sa1CkqY)

Do sada smo kvantno teleportovanje informacije prihvatali malko stisnutih zuba i gunđali da je to u redu jer to nije prava fizika i ko zna šta je stvarno ta kvantna upletenost i možda nas ti naučnici uostalom lažu, pa kako bismo uopšte mogli da proverimo itd. Ali eto vraga, sad su u Nemačkoj teleportovali informaciju bez silaska na kvantni nivo, dakle u okvirima "normalne" njutnovske fizike:




German scientists successfully teleport classical information (http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2016/03/04/German-scientists-successfully-teleport-classical-information/8341457118688/?spt=su&or=btn_fb)

QuoteJENA, Germany, March 4 (UPI) -- Using a series of laser beams, a pair of German scientists successfully teleported classical information without the transfer or matter or energy.
Researchers have previously demonstrated local teleportation within the world of quantum particles. But the latest experiment successfully translates the phenomenon for classical physics.
"Elementary particles such as electrons and light particles exist per se in a spatially delocalized state," Alexander Szameit, a professor at the University of Jena, explained in a press release (http://www.uni-jena.de/en/Research+News/FM160304_Teleportation_en.html).
In other words, these particles can be in two places at the same time.
"Within such a system spread across multiple locations, it is possible to transmit information from one location to another without any loss of time," Szameit said.
By coupling the properties of classical information, researchers were able to use quantum teleportation for classical teleportation. Classical information is coupled using a process called "entanglement."
"As can be done with the physical states of elementary particles, the properties of light beams can also be entangled," said researcher Marco Ornigotti. "You link the information you would like to transmit to a particular property of the light."
Researchers used polarization to encode information within a laser beam, enabling the teleportation of information instantly and in its entirety without loss of time.
Whereas quantum information and quantum systems describe particle properties that are inferred, classical information describes physical properties directly measured.
The first-of-its-kind demonstration was detailed this week in the journal Laser & Photonics Reviews (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/lpor.201500252/abstract;jsessionid=AC13CBE04D37901365DF2ECCCFF7584E.f01t02).

ansible  :)

http://www.sciencealert.com/a-biotech-company-has-been-given-permission-to-try-and-bring-dead-brains-back-to-life (http://www.sciencealert.com/a-biotech-company-has-been-given-permission-to-try-and-bring-dead-brains-back-to-life)

Važno je samo da smo ovo raščistili:


A 29-Year Study Has Found No Link Between Brain Cancer and Cellphones (http://gizmodo.com/a-29-year-study-has-found-no-link-between-brain-cancer-1775038908)

Star Wars skoro da je tu:




US Air Force will have first combat lasers on large C-17 and C-130s and then later miniaturized for F-16 and F-35 fighter jets  (http://nextbigfuture.com/2016/05/us-air-force-will-have-first-combat.html)

Elon Musk nije samo sneno meditirao kad je pre par godina pričao o hyperloopu:



  Hyperloop One technology tested successfully in Nevada desert (http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/hyperloop-one-test-1.3577182) 

Quote
Hyperloop One, a Los Angeles company working to develop futuristic transportation technology, conducted a successful test of its high speed transportation technology Wednesday in the desert outside Las Vegas.
The seconds-long, outdoor demonstration by Hyperloop One featured what appeared to be a blip of metal gliding across a small track before disappearing into a cloud against the desert landscape.

This high speed train can speed up to 1,200 km/h. Read more about the Hyperloop One:

https://t.co/j2tst2QoM2 (https://t.co/j2tst2QoM2)https://t.co/ou71CQMjUP (https://t.co/ou71CQMjUP)
— @CBCNews (https://twitter.com/CBCNews/status/730567366438854658)

A fully operational hyperloop would whisk passengers and cargo in pods through a low pressure tube at speeds of up to 1,207 km per hour (750 miles per hour). That could make it possible to travel from Montreal to Toronto in half an hour or Toronto to Vancouver in just three.
Maglev technology would levitate the pods to reduce friction in the city-to-city system, which would be fully autonomous and electric powered.
Brogan Bambrogan, a former engineer with Elon Musk's SpaceX company, said he was happy with the results of the test.
"That's what it was supposed to do. So we always like it when engineering tests go that way," said Bambrogan, Hyperloop One's co-founder and chief technology officer. "Technology development testing can be a tricky beast, so you never know on a given day if things are going to work exactly like you want."
A day earlier, the company had announced the closing of $80 million in financing and said it plans to conduct a full system test before the end of the year. It also announced that it was changing its name from Hyperloop Technologies to Hyperloop One.

Hyperloop One builds off a design by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who has suggested it would be cheaper, faster and more efficient than high speed rail projects (http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/hyperloop-ultra-fast-travel-system-unveiled-1.1380221), including the one currently being built in California.
Speaking on the eve of the first demonstration test of the propulsion in the Las Vegas desert, Hyperloop One CEO Rob Lloyd tried to dispel criticism that the technology is unproven and better suited for science fiction than practical use.
"It's real, it's happening now, and we're going to demonstrate how this company is making it happen," he said at a press conference.
He likened hyperloop technology to the emergence of the U.S. railroad system and the era of prosperity it ushered in.
Policy problems  The idea has skeptics, including professor James Moore II, director of the University of Southern California's Transportation Engineering Program.
He credited Musk for the new idea on how to move objects through tubes, but said backers would face myriad public policy issues before it's installed on a large scale, including questions about safety, financing and land ownership.
Such roadblocks are keeping self-driving vehicles off the road decades after the idea was born, he said.
"I would certainly not say nothing will come of hyperloop technology," Moore said. "But I doubt this specific piece of technology will have a dramatic effect on how we move people and goods in the near term."
Competition for location Lloyd also announced a competition to determine where the first Hyperloop One system should be built, with an announcement expected next year.
Early applications could centre around ports — possibly replacing the trucks and trains that carry cargo from ships to
factories and stores.
New investors include 137 Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Fast Digital, Western Technology Investment (WTI), SNCF, the French National Rail Company, a force behind high speed rail in Europe, and GE Ventures.

BamBrogan said the company's engineering team is focused on finding efficiencies to reduce the cost of building a hyperloop.
"We want to deliver all the value that hyperloop can deliver — the safe, the efficient, the on demand, the fast. But, we want to deliver it at a cost basis that is absolutely transformative," he said.
Hyperloop One has competition in the space, including Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, a crowdsourced company that last month signed an agreement with the Slovakian government to build a hyperloop connecting Slovakia with Austria and Hungary.

 Face recognition app taking Russia by storm may bring end to public anonymity  (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/17/findface-face-recognition-app-end-public-anonymity-vkontakte)

Quote
FindFace compares photos to profile pictures on social network Vkontakte and works out identities with 70% reliability


If the founders of a new face recognition app get their way, anonymity in public could soon be a thing of the past. FindFace, launched two months ago and currently taking Russia (http://www.theguardian.com/world/russia) by storm, allows users to photograph people in a crowd and work out their identities, with 70% reliability.
It works by comparing photographs to profile pictures on Vkontakte, a social network popular in Russia and the former Soviet Union, with more than 200 million accounts. In future, the designers imagine a world where people walking past you on the street could find your social network profile by sneaking a photograph of you, and shops, advertisers and the police could pick your face out of crowds and track you down via social networks.

In the short time since the launch, Findface has amassed 500,000 users and processed nearly 3m searches, according to its founders, 26-year-old Artem Kukharenko, and 29-year-old Alexander Kabakov.
Kukharenko is a lanky, quietly spoken computer nerd who has come up with the algorithm that makes FindFace such an impressive piece of technology, while Kabakov is the garrulous money and marketing man, who does all of the talking when the pair meet the Guardian.
Unlike other face recognition technology, their algorithm allows quick searches in big data sets. "Three million searches in a database of nearly 1bn photographs: that's hundreds of trillions of comparisons, and all on four normal servers. With this algorithm, you can search through a billion photographs in less than a second from a normal computer," said Kabakov, during an interview at the company's modest central Moscow office. The app will give you the most likely match to the face that is uploaded, as well as 10 people it thinks look similar.
Kabakov says the app could revolutionise dating: "If you see someone you like, you can photograph them, find their identity, and then send them a friend request." The interaction doesn't always have to involve the rather creepy opening gambit of clandestine street photography, he added: "It also looks for similar people. So you could just upload a photo of a movie star you like, or your ex, and then find 10 girls who look similar to her and send them messages."
Some have sounded the alarm about the potentially disturbing implications. Already the app has been used by a St Petersburg photographer to snap and identify people (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/14/russian-photographer-yegor-tsvetkov-identifies-strangers-facial-recognition-app) on the city's metro, as well as by online vigilantes to uncover the social media profiles of female porn actors and harass them.


The technology can work with any photographic database, though it currently cannot use Facebook, because even the public photographs are stored in a way that is harder to access than Vkontakte, the app's creators say.
But the FindFace app is really just a shop window for the technology, the founders said. There is a paid function for those who want to make more than 30 searches a month, but this is more to regulate the servers from overload rather than to make money. They believe the real money-spinner from their face-recognition technology will come from law enforcement and retail.
Kukharenko and Kabakov have recently returned from the US, and Kabakov was due to travel to Macau and present the technology to a casino chain. The pair claim they have been contacted by police in Russian regions, who told them they started loading suspect or witness photographs into FindFace and came up with results. "It's nuts: there were cases that had seen no movement for years, and now they are being solved," said Kabakov.
The startup is in the final stages of signing a contract with Moscow city government to work with the city's network of 150,000 CCTV cameras. If a crime is committed, the mugshots of anyone in the area can be fed into the system and matched with photographs of wanted lists, court records, and even social networks.
It does not take a wild imagination to come up with sinister applications in this field too; for example authoritarian regimes able to tag and identify participants in street protests. Kabakov and Kukharenko said they had not received an approach from Russia's FSB security service, but "if the FSB were to get in touch, of course we'd listen to any offers they had".
The pair also have big plans for the retail sector. Kabakov imagines a world where cameras fix you looking at, say, a stereo in a shop, the retailer finds your identity, and then targets you with marketing for stereos in the subsequent days.
Again, it sounds a little disturbing. But Kabakov said, as a philosophy graduate, he believes we cannot stop technological progress so must work with it and make sure it stays open and transparent.
"In today's world we are surrounded by gadgets. Our phones, televisions, fridges, everything around us is sending real-time information about us. Already we have full data on people's movements, their interests and so on. A person should understand that in the modern world he is under the spotlight of technology. You just have to live with that."

Ko je ikada pokušao da upotrebi JuTjubove automatske titlove sigurno će se grohotom nasmejati na ovo:



   Groundbreaking gadget claims to fit in your ear and translate foreign languages in real-time  (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/05/17/groundbreaking-gadget-claims-to-fit-in-your-ear-and-translate-fo/) 

Movie written by algorithm turns out to be hilarious and intense (http://arstechnica.com/the-multiverse/2016/06/an-ai-wrote-this-movie-and-its-strangely-moving/) 

Na linku ima i ceo film i tekst o njemu.

Quote from: Meho Krljic on 12-06-2016, 07:45:26
Movie written by algorithm turns out to be hilarious and intense (http://arstechnica.com/the-multiverse/2016/06/an-ai-wrote-this-movie-and-its-strangely-moving/) 

Na linku ima i ceo film i tekst o njemu.

Nista nisam ukapirala.

I ne treba da se kapira. AI je sastavio neke rečenice koje je povadio iz drugih scenarija. Ljudima se svidelo, iako je besmisleno, pa su napravili filmić od toga.

Kolumnist Vošington posta tvrdi da je ubrzani plejbek video materijala ključ za budućnost:



I have found a new way to watch TV, and it changes everything (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/22/i-have-found-a-new-way-to-watch-tv-and-it-changes-everything/)

QuoteGame of Thrones. The Bachelor. House of Cards. It's now possible to watch everything. How? It's the future of storytelling.



IHAVE a habit that horrifies most people. I watch television and films in fast forward. This has become increasingly easy to do with computers (I'll show you how) and the time savings are enormous. Four episodes of "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" fit into an hour. An entire season of "Game of Thrones" goes down on the bus ride from D.C. to New York.
I started doing this years ago to make my life more efficient. Between trendy Web shows, auteur cable series, and BBC imports, there's more to watch than ever before. Some TV execs worry that the industry is outpacing its audience. A record-setting 412 scripted series ran in 2015, nearly double the number in 2009.
"There is simply too much television," FX Networks CEO John Landgraf said last year. (http://variety.com/2015/tv/news/tca-fx-networks-john-landgraf-wall-street-1201559191/) Nonsense, responded Netflix content chief Ted Sarandos (http://variety.com/2015/tv/news/netflix-ted-sarandos-john-landgraf-fx-too-much-tv-hrts-1201619086/), who has been commissioning shows at a startling rate. "There's no such thing as too much TV," he said.
So here we are, spending three hours a day on average, scrambling (http://www.adweek.com/news/television/how-millennials-consume-tv-depends-which-stage-life-theyre-170393) to keep up with the Kardashians, the Starks, the Underwoods, and the dozens of others on the roster of must-watch TV, which has exploded in the age of fragmented audiences. Nowadays, to stay on the same wavelength with your different groups of friends — the ones hating on "Meat Chad (http://www.vulture.com/2016/06/bachelorette-chad-is-playing-a-deeper-game-than-you-realize.html)" and the ones cooing over Khaleesi — you have to watch in bulk.


This is where the trick of playing videos at 1.5x to 2x comes in — the latest twist in the millennia-old tradition of technology changing storytelling. The concept should be familiar to many. For years, podcast and audiobook players have provided speedup options, and research shows that most people prefer listening to accelerated speech.
In recent years, software has made it much easier to perform the same operation on videos. This was impossible for home viewers in the age of VHS. But computers can now easily speed up any video you throw at them. You can play DVDs and iTunes purchases at whatever tempo you like. YouTube allows you select a speedup factor on its player. And a Google engineer has written a popular Chrome extension (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/video-speed-controller/nffaoalbilbmmfgbnbgppjihopabppdk?hl=en) that accelerates most other Web videos, including on Netflix, Vimeo and Amazon Prime.
Over 100,000 people have downloaded that plug-in, and the reviews are ecstatic. "Oh my God! I regret all the wasted time I've lived before finding this gem!!" one user wrote.
But speeding up video is more than an efficiency hack. I quickly discovered that acceleration makes viewing more pleasurable. "Modern Family" played at twice the speed is far funnier — the jokes come faster and they seem to hit harder. I get less frustrated at shows that want to waste my time with filler plots (http://abc.go.com/shows/marvels-agents-of-shield) or gratuitous violence (http://www.hbo.com/game-of-thrones). The faster pace makes it easier to appreciate the flow of the plot and the structure of the scenes.
  Wonkblog writer Jeff Guo watches all his television shows at 160% speed. This clip from ABC's Modern Family will give you an idea of what that looks like. (ABC)  As I've come to consume all my television on my computer, I've developed other habits, too. I don't watch linearly anymore; I often scrub back and forth to savor complex scenes or to skim over slow ones. In other words, I watch television like I read a book. I jump around. I re-read. Sometimes I speed up. Sometimes I slow down.
I confess these new viewing techniques have done something strange to my sense of reality. I can't watch television in real-time anymore. Movie theaters feel suffocating. I need to be able to fast-forward and rewind and accelerate and slow down, to be able to parcel my attention where it's needed. The most common objection I hear is that this ruins the cinematic experience. Annette Insdorf, a film professor at Columbia, told me: "Sometimes watching a movie is like lovemaking: Isn't a sustained seduction more gratifying than momentary thrills?"
But the more I've learned about the history and the science of media consumption, the more I've come to believe this is the future of how we will appreciate television and movies. We will interrogate videos in new ways using our powers of time manipulation. Maybe not everyone will watch on fast-forward like I do, but we will all be watching on our own terms.
In a way, what's happening to video recalls what happened to literature when we stopped reading aloud, together, and started reading silently, alone. Beginning in the Middle Ages, people no longer had to gather in groups to hear tales or learn the news or study religion. They could be alone with a text and their own thoughts, an unprecedented freedom that led to political and religious turmoil and forever changed intellectual life.
With computers, video consumption is also becoming a solitary, self-paced act — and maybe a more analytical act, as well. If you believe, as I do, in the artistic potential of television and film, then perhaps we are on the brink of another cultural transformation — viewers finally seizing control of this medium. And the medium will be better for it.
FOR a very long time, life was limited by the rate at which we spoke. Although we have had writing systems for millennia, early texts were designed to be read aloud, meaning that literature unfolded at the pace of human speech.
Many ancient Greek and Roman documents, for instance, lacked punctuation, spaces or lowercase letters, making it challenging for people to understand them without sounding out the words syllable by syllable. "A written text was essentially a transcription which, like modern musical notation, became an intelligible message only when it was performed orally to others or to oneself," historian Paul Saenger writes (http://www.brepolsonline.net/doi/abs/10.1484/J.VIATOR.2.301476?journalCode=viator).
There are physical limits to how quickly we can form sounds, as anyone who has attempted a tongue-twister can attest. Mouths need time to move into position for the next vowel or consonant. A good estimate (http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/content/11/1/90.abstract) for the natural rate of speech in English is 200 to 300 syllables per minute, which translates into 150 to 200 words per minute.
According to Audible (http://audible-acx.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/6477/c/3550), the audiobook company, the typical book recording is performed at 155 wpm. A 1990 study (http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/content/11/1/90.abstract) found that radio broadcasts run at 160 wpm on average, while everyday conversations, which use shorter words, occur at about 210 wpm.


For much of human history, this was the sound barrier for communicating ideas.
It's not that silent reading was impossible in antiquity. It was just very difficult. There exist tales of scholars who seemed to absorb books silently; in the fourth century, Saint Augustine told of an odd monk who read without forming the words with his mouth. "When he read," Augustine wrote (https://books.google.com/books?id=guvT6FGNoVwC&pg=PA144&lpg=PA144&dq=his+eyes+scanned+the+page+and+his+heart+sought+out+the+meaning,+but+his+voice+was+silent+and+his+tongue+was+still.&source=bl&ots=VQ3vioPt87&sig=Gw5_MQ3mF37kc17AthWQzDtBzrs&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjH79vhkqjNAhWIth4KHd2dBdYQ6AEIPTAE#v=onepage&q=his%20eyes%20scanned%20the%20page%20and%20his%20heart%20sought%20out%20the%20meaning%2C%20but%20his%20voice%20was%20silent%20and%20his%20tongue%20was%20still.&f=false), "his eyes scanned the page and his heart sought out the meaning, but his voice was silent and his tongue was still."
Historians debate whether these silent readers were regarded as freaks or the practice was merely unusual. Reading was still a group activity in the fifth and sixth centuries. One person read aloud while others listened. Even for scribes who copied manuscripts in solitude, the act of reading was intertwined with the act of speaking. Many early medieval monks who had taken vows of silence were still allowed to mumble as they read, Saenger writes (http://www.brepolsonline.net/doi/abs/10.1484/J.VIATOR.2.301476?journalCode=viator), because mumbling was considered part of the reading process.
During the Middle Ages, scribes began introducing spacing and punctuation into texts, which made silent reading much easier for everyone. The practice began in monasteries around the 10th century and slowly spread (http://users.manchester.edu/FacStaff/SSNaragon/Kant/LP/Readings/Chartier.html) to university libraries a few hundred years later, and finally to the European aristocracy by the 14th and 15th centuries, according to historian Roger Chartier.
The technique of silent, solitary reading released people from the sluggishness of the spoken word — as well as from the judgment of their peers. Reading in private gave people room to engage with a text, the freedom to think critically and sometimes heretically. Opinions too controversial for group reading could be disseminated and consumed in private. The result, historians say, was an intellectual, scientific — and spiritual — blossoming in Europe.
"Silent, secret, private reading paved the way for previously unthinkable audacities," Chartier writes (https://books.google.com/books?id=OoUYAoSNMFMC&pg=PA126&dq=%22Although+the+invention+of+printing+was+indeed+a%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjisriwpajNAhUEbSYKHe6sBtUQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=%22Although%20the%20invention%20of%20printing%20was%20indeed%20a%22&f=false). "In the late Middle Ages, even before the invention of the printing press, heretical texts circulated in manuscript form, critical ideas were expressed, and erotic books, suitably illuminated, enjoyed considerable success."
Chartier called silent reading the "other revolution" — together with the printing press and mass literacy, these developments created both the demand and the supply for a vast quantity of writing. The faster pace of silent reading accelerated the spread of new ideas and vaulted Western society toward religious and political schism.
"This 'privatization' of reading is undeniably one of the major cultural developments of the early modern era," Chartier argued (https://books.google.com/books?id=OoUYAoSNMFMC&pg=PA126&dq=%22Although+the+invention+of+printing+was+indeed+a%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjisriwpajNAhUEbSYKHe6sBtUQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=%22Although%20the%20invention%20of%20printing%20was%20indeed%20a%22&f=false).
WHAT silent reading also revealed was that the rate of human thought far outstrips the rate of human speech.
Broadcasters speak at about 160 wpm, but college students can comfortably devour a text at 300 wpm, which also seems (http://www.jstor.org/stable/40016440?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents) to be the most efficient speed for reading comprehension, on average.
Some people, of course, read slower, and others read much, much faster. The beauty of text is that we absorb it at our own pace. Not so for audiovisual recordings, at least not for much of the 20th century. If you play back a tape or a phonograph record too quickly, the voices turn squeaky and unintelligible. Recordings remained difficult to skim until the 1950s, when researchers made a set of discoveries about human speech.
It turns out that sounds of the spoken word are vastly redundant. Vowels and consonants drag on longer than necessary for us to understand them. In the late 1940s, Harvard researchers discovered (http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/nbradley/afrl/PAPERS/IntelligibilityOfInterruptedSpeech.pdf) they could cover up more than half of a speech recording without damaging a listener's comprehension. The trick was to rapidly mute and unmute the audio. These silent gaps were brief enough that people's minds could fill them in easily. Words sounded choppy, but they remained perfectly intelligible.
"It is much like seeing a landscape through a picket fence," the researchers wrote. "The pickets interrupt the view at regular intervals, but the landscape is perceived as continuing behind the pickets."


The Harvard researchers rapidly muted and unmuted audio recordings. The top picture shows the original sound wave. The bottom picture shows the resulting sound wave, which has silent bits. Even though half of the sound wave has been destroyed, the researchers found that people could still understand it. (Miller and Licklider, 1950.)
A team of engineers at the University of Illinois soon had another idea: Instead of leaving the gaps in, why not cut them out (http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=1163770&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fiel6%2F8340%2F26161%2F01163770.pdf%3Farnumber%3D1163770) and stitch the remaining slivers of audio together? For instance, deleting every other millisecond of audio would cause the recording to play in half the time. This new way of speeding up sound, which became known as the sampling method, had the benefit of not making people sound like chipmunks.
In the 1960s, a blind psychologist named Emerson Foulke began experimenting with this technique to accelerate speech. A professor at the University of Louisville, Foulke was frustrated with the slowness of recorded books for the blind, so he tried speeding them up. The sampling method proved surprisingly effective. In Foulke's experiments (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1968.tb00070.x/abstract), speech could be accelerated to 250-275 wpm without affecting people's scores on a listening comprehension test.


These limits were suspiciously close to the average college reading rate. Foulke suspected that beyond 300 wpm, deeper processes in the brain were getting overloaded. Experiments showed that at 300-400 wpm, individual words were still clear enough to understand; except at that rate, many listeners couldn't keep up with rapid stream of words, likely because their short-term memories were overtaxed.
Some, of course, fared better than others. Just as people naturally read at different rates, subjects varied in how well they could understand accelerated speech. Further studies found a connection to cognitive ability. Those (https://archive.org/stream/proceedingsoflou1966emer#page/16/mode/2up) with higher intelligence, as well as faster readers, were more adept at understanding sped-up recordings. (The NSA once considered (https://www.nsa.gov/news-features/declassified-documents/cryptologic-quarterly/assets/files/The_Use_of_Compressed_Speech.pdf) using tests involving accelerated speech to screen for people who could become morse code operators.)
The most startling discovery, though, was that people actually enjoy listening to accelerated audio. Foulke and his colleagues noticed that college students preferred recordings that had been sped up by 30 percent, from 175 wpm to 222 wpm. More recent (http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED347988.pdf) studies (http://psychsocgerontology.oxfordjournals.org/content/54B/3/P199.full.pdf) find (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1968.tb00078.x/abstract) that (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563208000423), given the choice, people will increase playback rate by about 40 to 50 percent on average — a 1.4 to 1.5x speedup.
This tendency extends to video as well, as experiments (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08886504.1995.10782138) with video lectures (http://designer.50g.com/docs/Salt_2004.pdf) and even Discovery Channel shows have shown. Increasing the tempo of a recording seems to stave off boredom and help people stay engaged. "With the slower pace, my attention span actually wavered, and I focused on too much detail," one subject told researchers at Microsoft (http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=303017).
Sometimes, people don't even notice that they are watching on fast-forward. Cable companies will slightly speed up shows to make room for more ads (http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2015/03/04/tv_shows_sped_up_to_make_room_for_ads_can_you_tell_the_difference_a_quiz.html), but the difference can be hard to detect — in part because the brain adapts to the higher speeds.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the Defense Department began investigating compressed speech as a way to boost learning. Military-funded experiments (http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=buy.optionToBuy&id=1965-11241-001) showed that people can be trained (http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1985-16026-001) to better understand accelerated recordings. Just a few weeks of regular exposure seemed to alter how people perceived and processed language, causing them to prefer faster and faster listening rates.
Some of those changes happen within minutes. An experiment in 1997 (http://psycnet.apa.org/?&fa=main.doiLanding&doi=10.1037/0096-1523.23.3.914) found that listening to just five sentences of accelerated speech boosted subsequent comprehension rates by 15 percent. This process may be related (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811909007964#articles) to how our brains adjust to unfamiliar accents. Have you ever noticed that it becomes easier and easier to talk to someone with a foreign accent? It's not them. It's your brain making short-term adaptations (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15658715).
Our brains also make long-term adaptations (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0047099) to accelerated speech. Continued training increases people's accuracy rates and their comfort with sped-up recordings. Functional MRI scans show changes in how their brains respond to speech (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1388245715003351). Anecdotally, many subjects found that repeated exposure to accelerated speech caused speech at regular speeds to sound strange.
This seems to have happened to me as well. After watching accelerated video on my computer for a few months, live television began to seem excruciatingly slow. Ilya Grigorik, the Google engineer who invented the Chrome extension, had a similar experience. He regularly watches videos at double speed, adjusting the pace up or down depending on how complex the ideas are.
"Whenever I describe it to people, I get a very weird look," he said. "Then I actually convince them to try it. It's uncomfortable for them at first, but once they get into it, they really get into it."
WE all chart our own paths through a text. I rarely read a book straight through from start to finish. I take detours, I backtrack, and I always scan the plot summary on Wikipedia to learn what's coming next. Psychologists at the University of California, San Diego have found (http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/archive/newsrel/soc/2011_08spoilers.asp) that people enjoy a story more if the ending has already been spoiled. Suspense, it seems, is overrated.
The Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov believed that re-reading was the only way to truly enjoy a novel. Not until the second or third go-around can we perceive a novel's grand schemes and secrets. Of the initial encounter, he once said (https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/01/21/nabokov-on-what-makes-a-good-reader/): "When we read a book for the first time, the very process of laboriously moving our eyes from left to right, line after line, page after page, this complicated physical work upon the book, the very process of learning in terms of space and time what the book is about, this stands between us and artistic appreciation."
There's no one right way to enjoy a book. Literary theorist Roland Barthes encouraged us not to treat novels so literally or linearly, but to traipse around in search of our own meanings. Why, then, do we still watch television straightforwardly? Why do we relinquish ourselves to the pace set by a film's director? Can't we find more interesting ways to be a couch potato?
For a long time, the answer was that the technology did not allow it. But with the rise of computer viewing, everyone can take charge of how they travel through a video. I often consume reality programs at double speed or faster because the idioms of these shows are so familiar. For me, watching "The Bachelorette" is like shucking a crab. I know where the juicy bits are, and I know which parts are inedible.
Accelerated speeds make it easier to perceive the structure of a story; slower speeds allow me to savor the details of the filmmaking. These alternative styles of viewing are no less illuminating. At double speed, the Red Wedding scene from "Game of Thrones" crosses the threshold from high drama to high farce. You start to see how the directors strained to create a moment of maximum trauma, how the death scenes are overacted, how the massacre operates like the mechanical gnashings of a meat-processing plant.
  Wonkblog writer Jeff Guo watches all his television shows at 160% speed. This clip from HBO's Game of Thrones will give you an idea of what that looks like. (HBO)  I recently described my viewing habits to Mary Sweeney, the editor on the cerebral cult classic "Mulholland Drive (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000IEXVCC?ie=UTF8&tag=thewaspos09-20&camp=1789&linkCode=xm2&creativeASIN=B000IEXVCC)." She laughed in horror. "Everything you just said is just anathema to a film editor," she said. "If you don't have respect for how something was edited, then try editing some time! It's very hard."
Sweeney, who is also a professor at the University of Southern California, believes in the privilege of the auteur. She told me a story about how they removed all the chapter breaks from the DVD version of Mulholland Drive to preserve the director's vision. "The film, which took two years to make, was meant to be experienced from beginning to end as one piece," she said.
I disagree. Mulholland Drive is one of my favorite films, but it's intentionally dreamlike and incomprehensible at times. The DVD version even included clues from director David Lynch to help people baffled by the plot. I advise first-time viewers to watch with a remote in hand to ward off disorientation. Liberal use of the fast-forward and rewind buttons allows people to draw connections between different sections of the film.
I found something of a sympathetic ear in Peter Markham, who teaches directing at the American Film Institute Conservatory. "This notion of privacy, of watching privately and forming your own cathedral of narrative — that's interesting," he said. "But that, I think, is mostly an intellectual or cerebral experience. The thing about dramatic narrative is that it creates an emotional, visceral, subconscious experience. That stuff has its own rhythm, its own insistence."
Markham argued that film is more than a stream of dialogue or a sequence of events. The timing of the images imprints on our brains in a special way. "If you speed up Hitchcock, if you speed up "Rear Window (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002RSU9PY?ie=UTF8&tag=thewaspos09-20&camp=1789&linkCode=xm2&creativeASIN=B002RSU9PY)," you won't get the same experience," he said. "It's like trying to speed up a Beyoncé track. It's already at the perfect speed."
IT didn't occur to me until later, of course, that people do mess with Beyoncé all the time. DJs chop her up, stretch her over new beats, snatch bits of her vocals to craft new songs. Today's cinema fans also engage in forms of creative remixing. They assemble montages (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsJSRP7cZVo) of their favorite characters. They create entirely original shows by re-editing scenes from ones.  The actor Topher Grace, for instance, famously made his own unauthorized version of the "Star Wars" prequel movies called "Episode III.5: The Editor Strikes Back." Those who have seen it say it's a masterful recombobulation of those three flawed films. (http://www.slashfilm.com/topher-grace-edited-star-wars-prequels-85minute-movie/)
Henry Jenkins, a media theorist at the University of Southern California, reminded me that creative repurposing has been happening in fan communities for decades. Throughout his career, Jenkins has studied the rise of "participatory culture" — ways in which fans take control of favorite stories through fanzines, fan art, fan fiction, and more recently, fan videos. "Fans reject the idea of a definitive version produced, authorized, and regulated by some media conglomerate," Jenkins wrote over a decade ago (https://books.google.com/books?id=RlRVNikT06YC&pg=PA256&lpg=PA256&dq=Instead,+fans+envision+a+world+where+all+of+us+can+participate+in+the+creation+and+circulation+of+central+cultural+myths&source=bl&ots=9B7Glx0BOp&sig=DVe943voUoJtNOM99sqw7uim0yk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiI2ZTdsrbNAhVBHh4KHQRBDQUQ6AEIHjAA#v=onepage&q=Instead%2C%20fans%20envision%20a%20world%20where%20all%20of%20us%20can%20participate%20in%20the%20creation%20and%20circulation%20of%20central%20cultural%20myths&f=false). "Instead, fans envision a world where all of us can participate in the creation and circulation of central cultural myths."
Perhaps fan culture offers the most optimistic vision for the future of media consumption. The power of the auteur is diminishing, but our appreciation for the art form is increasing. More and more, we will watch TV on our computers, on own terms, creating our own meanings and deriving our own, private pleasures.
"I think your experience is very similar to my own," Jenkins said. "I do treat television more and more like a book. I totally get that analogy, and it's a good way to think about the degree of control we now have over what we watch — which has been building up over time, with VCRs, then DVRs, and now streaming and digital distribution. We're learning to think about television in a different way."
"I'm fully convinced that everything is better in a box set," he added.


Netflix, which is essentially the motherlode of box sets, has made this kind of careful viewing much easier. That's one reason that serialized shows have become so popular in recent years. Since audiences can easily catch up on missed episodes — many of them are bingewatching anyway — show-runners can tell longer, more complicated stories with less repetition. The rewind button allows television to be a little more sophisticated. If you didn't understand the first time, just watch again.
But the spread of solitary, customized viewing will not mean the demise of television culture — quite the opposite. People will watch an episode and dissect it on Twitter; they will share their favorite scenes and watch them on repeat. "While viewing is becoming a more solitary, personal activity, the flip side is that fan communities have grown stronger," Jennifer Holt, a media scholar at the University of California at Santa Barbara, told me. "People still want to connect. They still want that social experience, only now it's all happening online."
This practice has expanded the dialogue between the makers and the consumers of television. "Show creators, writers and directors are now extremely sensitive to what the blogosphere is saying about their shows," Paris Barclay, the president of the Directors Guild of America, said (https://books.google.com/books?id=oxveAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA178&lpg=PA178&dq=Show+creators,+writers,+and+directors+are+now+extremely+sensitive+to+what+the+blogosphere+is+saying+about+their+shows&source=bl&ots=79yzibawno&sig=CdQWa0DPlb8np7q0eAs2sfP9SSc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiE0tbNs7nNAhVIcj4KHXl2DyEQ6AEIHjAA#v=onepage&q=Show%20creators%2C%20writers%2C%20and%20directors%20are%20now%20extremely%20sensitive%20to%20what%20the%20blogosphere%20is%20saying%20about%20their%20shows&f=false) a few years ago. Barclay, who has worked on shows such as "Glee," "Empire" and "Scandal," was wary of this development. "Some shows have become increasingly dull because taking risks with the show is discouraged," he said. "Audiences generally want to see a different version of the show that they love. They don't really want to see it become something else."
But as Jenkins, the media theorist, points out, creators have always adapted their work to suit who was listening. "Storytelling is a bardic medium," he said. "Bards like Homer would tell a story to a roomful of people and he would be attentive to what they liked and what they didn't like. The same was true of Dickens, whose novels were published serially. He changed plot points and characters on the fly."
Now that tools are making it increasingly easy to alter the flow of how we watch films and television, viewers will also have power to change the plot and the characters of a show to suit their own tastes. We should look forward to a future that involves more cross-pollination, more crazy fan-theories, more creative misunderstandings, all of it enabled by new ways of consuming television, whether that means binge-watching, surfing clips on social media or even watching on fast-forward. We risk transforming, perhaps permanently, the ways in which our brains perceive people, time, space, emotion. And isn't that marvelous?

Tja, mislim da već mnogi upotrebljavaju tu taktiku. Osim toga, većina ljudi će isto tako pročitati ovaj tekst.

What Air Conditioning Can Teach Us About Innovation and Laziness (http://motherboard.vice.com/read/what-air-conditioning-can-teach-us-about-innovation-and-laziness)




A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium (http://tedium.co/), a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail.

The 1902 invention of air conditioning has long been hailed as one of the most important inventions of the 20th century, one that has forever changed the way we live.
But as we hit an era when robots become more human than ever (https://twitter.com/ShortFormErnie/status/747951455693381636) and try to steal our jobs, I find myself wondering—what can we learn from the additional freedom that air conditioning gave us?
Sure, it improved our society by making temperature something that we can control, but what about the problems that came with this cool breeze?
(To start with, the heavy energy use: Roughly 5 percent of US energy use can directly be attributed to air conditioning, according to Energy.gov (http://energy.gov/energysaver/air-conditioning). Roughly two-thirds of homes in the U.S. have some form of air conditioning, but globally, we've tended to be the exception ... until recently, that is, thanks to countries like China and India (http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/08/12/increased-air-conditioning-usage-threatens-global-energy-supply) jumping on the trend within the past decade.)
Did it make us lazier or less capable as human beings. Did it make it so that we tend to cut corners a little more often?
And, considering we're on the cusp of society changing technologies with similar effects, can we prevent that from happening again?
Let's put this in architectural terms.

Air conditioning gave us skyscrapers, but did air conditioners make architects lazy?In a 2012 piece honoring the 110th anniversary of Willis Carrier's invention of air conditioning, Architect magazine honored the invention, but sounded a bit contrite about what Carter wrought (http://www.architectmagazine.com/technology/air-conditioning-a-boon-and-a-burden-1_o?o=0). The piece featured an interview with The Land Institute's Stan Cox, who had recently written a book highlighting the technology's failings, and included this passage in the piece:>"We have become conditioned to air conditioning, to manufactured weather, and have abandoned the strategies that undeveloped and developing countries in hot climates still use. This is for good, certainly, or mostly: air conditioning makes for better economic productivity, and certainly helps preserve lives during heat waves. But in forgetting the ways that we used to cope with high temperatures, we may now be dependent on Carrier."There's a lot of good that came out of the ability to regulate the temperature of a room. We wouldn't have skyscrapers, clean rooms for building advanced computer chips, shopping malls, or multiplexes without air conditioning. But on the other hand, we might've had a little more creativity in our home and office design had we not kept it around.
See, prior to the air conditioner reaching homes around the country, architects had to think more creatively about keeping people cool when options were more limited. This meant taking advantage of breezes, room design, and dimensional layout (http://www.oldhouseweb.com/how-to-advice/how-air-conditioning-changed-america.shtml) in a way that maximized the heat when it was necessary kept things cool when it wasn't.
And it meant taking advantage of foliage around the home to build in some natural shade, as well as to build porches, which were often much cooler than the insides of homes during warm days.
A good example of architectural strategy in action is Thomas Jefferson's Monticello (https://www.monticello.org/), perhaps the world's most famous building forged on passive cooling techniques. Built on a hilltop, the building took advantage of the natural breezes the location offered by having large windows and an open floor plan. And while the heat of the Virginia summer might have been sweltering, the building's brick design helped to keep the heat out of the home until the latter part of the day, when things were starting to cool down.


The American Institute of Architects, in a 1979 article published in its quarterly magazine (http://www.aia.org/aiaucmp/groups/aia/documents/pdf/aiab082771.pdf), cited Jefferson's work as inspiring for modern architects, who essentially needed to be reintroduced to Jefferson's ideas a scant 35 years after air conditioning became common in homes.
"What is most remarkable about Monticello, though, is not that Jefferson's cooling strategies worked but the fact that they stand up so well today," author Kevin Green wrote. "Jefferson came by his cooling intuitively, not scientifically."
The fact that passive cooling needed to be reintroduced to architects in the first place sticks in the craw of some critics of modern air conditioning. Lloyd Alter, who has become perhaps one of the most famous critics of air conditioning as TreeHugger's managing editor, frequently pulls out a quote (http://www.treehugger.com/sustainable-product-design/the-deluded-world-of-air-conditioning-revisited.html) from Cameron Tonkinwise of Carnegie Mellon's School of Design that takes architects to task for this legacy of simplistic thinking:
"The window air conditioner allows architects to be lazy," Tonkinwise is quoted as saying. "We don't have to think about making a building work, because you can just buy a box."
Tonkinwise, and by extension Alter, have a point on this matter, and it can largely be seen in the design of modern homes compared to those from earlier generations. In the era of the McMansion, high ceilings, porches, and ample plantlife ultimately lose out.


— Steven Anderson, a former general, arguing to NPR (http://www.npr.org/2011/06/25/137414737/among-the-costs-of-war-20b-in-air-conditioning) that the U.S. government spent $20.2 billion on air conditioning in the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan. Anderson's creative accounting, which first surfaced in 2011, included a lot of additional steps that most people who crank up the AC don't—including the building of infrastructure to get the fuel for the air conditioner where it needs to be. The Pentagon quickly denied Anderson's claims, and emphasized that its annual energy use was a much more modest $15 billion per year for the entire world, a cost that isn't limited to AC.Air conditioning and the philosophy of taking the easy way outThese days, the era of sustainable design is helping to bring back the ideas some of the earlier technology used—if you wanted to, you could take a free online course from Big Ass Fans right now (https://www.aecdaily.com/course.php?node_id=1813451) that discusses the importance of air flow.
But it's important to note that it took us a while to get back to this point. Generations, in fact. A lot of the reason why it came back up as an issue in the first place is because of the need to fix some of the problems the original solution caused—particularly, the waste of energy and the fact that running an AC all the time costs a lot of money.
Considering that, I'd like to ponder an idea—what if we attempted to solve these larger problems created by new a new form of technology before it went into wide use? What if we thought these damn problems through?
In a lot of ways, it's arguably because something may be so groundbreaking that it represents the easy way out. There's a term for this, cognitive laziness, and it tends to explain a whole heckuva lot.
Blogger Michael Michalko, the author of the book Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques and an expert on this kind of stuff, put this in some pretty stark terms in a 2012 blog post.
"One of the many ways in which we have become cognitively lazy is to accept our initial impression of the problem that [we encounter]. Once we settle on an initial perspective we don't seek alternative ways of looking at the problem," he wrote (http://creativethinking.net/cognitive-laziness-inhibits-creative-thinking/). "Like our first impressions of people, our initial perspective on problems and situations are apt to be narrow and superficial. We see no more than we expect to see based on our past experiences in life, education and work."
In other words, if we feel that we've found a solution to a problem, we're predisposed to putting that issue back on the shelf, as if it's not longer a big thing. It takes the exposure of completely different problems for us to even consider that the solution might be imperfect.
We bend to the will of the obvious solution.


This translates in a lot of contexts. For example, if you're signing up for a social network for the first time, and your options are to read the end user license agreement or hit the OK button. I don't know about you, but I'm probably OK with passing up on the opportunity to read a bunch of random stuff that separates me from some wacky new filters on my phone.
So it's hard to even get mad at architects who chose simple efficiency over complexity, or (to highlight a contemporary example) early carmakers that went with gasoline instead of something better for the environment. Because of human nature, it just makes sense that despite all the other advantages that came with air conditioning, the more challenging things that came with the invention—the fact that conservation and efficiency still have their place—didn't initially get their due.
Around this time last year, leading air conditioning critic Lloyd Alter, who I highlighted above, wrote a mea culpa on TreeHugger, making room for life with the air cranked up. Rather than arguing that air conditioning makes us lazy, he argued that living without air conditioning in the modern era was pretty much impossible in many places because of climate change.
"I have written before that air conditioners are like cars; they have changed our lives and we have built our cities around them," he wrote in a piece (http://www.treehugger.com/resilience/our-society-built-around-air-conditioning-now-we-can-still-try-use-less-it.html) that frequently challenged his previous thinking on the issue. "Our houses and modern apartments are designed in such ways that they would be uninhabitable without air conditioning, as uninhabitable as our suburbs are without cars. The climate is changing and just making it hotter and harder to live without AC."
When CBC caught up with Alter soon after (http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/why-the-anti-air-conditioning-guy-changed-his-mind-1.3172372), he admitted that maybe his hard-line stance was off, especially considering the fact that building design has made it very hard to live any other way. "I realized I was being a hypocrite," he said.
He's right. After more than a hundred years of air-conditioned buildings, it's going to be very hard to change course, even if we wanted to at this point.
Let's face it: Deeply rooted innovation has a way of weakening our resolve, even in the best of us.

https://youtu.be/SObhSqYglvQ

Tech 'utopia is creepy,' according to Nicholas Carr (http://www.cio.com/article/3105499/innovation/tech-utopia-is-creepy-according-to-nicholas-carr.html)

Quote
Fully automated, self-driving cars are likely decades away from being a reality, says Nicholas Carr, the author whose books about technology and culture seek to curb the heady enthusiasm regarding the digitalization of everything.


"I think a lot of the visions of total automation assume that every vehicle will be automated and the entire driving infrastructure will not only be mapped in minute detail but will also be outfitted with the kind of sensors and transmitters and all of the networking infrastructure that we're going to need," Carr tells CIO.com. Autonomous car proponents and technology enthusiasts in general will certainly disagree with Carr (http://www.driverless-future.com/?page_id=384).
No surprise there. In May 2003, the Harvard Business Review published Carr's book "IT Doesn't Matter (http://www.roughtype.com/?p=644)," which raised the ire of technology luminaries such as Bill Gates and Carly Fiorina by challenging the notion that IT infrastructure provided enterprises with a strategic advantage. Most CIOs didn't care for it either, feeling as though their roles were being denigrated at a time when CEOs were beginning to understand that some technology, well, does matter. Carr has long since been vindicated. The utility computing model Carr described in 2003 became known as cloud computing. And with each SaaS app an enterprise CIO implements, software as a service becomes commoditized a bit more.
[ Related: Nicholas Carr: The Internet is Hurting Our Brains (http://www.cio.com/article/2417448/social-media/nicholas-carr--the-internet-is-hurting-our-brains.html) ] Now Carr is back with a new book, "Utopia is Creepy: And Other Provocations (http://buy.geni.us/Proxy.ashx?TSID=14162&GR_URL=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FUtopia-Creepy-Provocations-Nicholas-Carr%2Fdp%2F0393254542)," which W.W. Norton & Co. is releasing on Sept. 6 (http://books.wwnorton.com/books/detail.aspx?ID=4294992099). It's a compendium of essays, from "Is Google Making Us Stupid," to "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Privacy." Software may be eating the world, but one thing that perpetually eats at Carr is the irrational exuberance espoused by Silicon Valley, which preaches that technology is the answer to everything. Apps will usher in world peace and end world hunger. At the very least, they'll enable us to take a nap while tooling around in our API and lidar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidar)-fueled motor vehicles. Well, one of these decades, anyway.
CIO.com: What is the premise of "Utopia is Creepy?"
Nicholas Carr: Utopia is Creepy is a collection of pieces that I've written and posted to my Rough Type blog over the last dozen years. This is kind of Rough Type's greatest hits, as well as some essays that I wrote at the same time, including "Is Google Making Us Stupid," (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/306868/) which is probably the best-known of those. When Rough Type hit its 10th anniversary in 2015 I started going back through the posts and I realized there were a lot of pieces that had some resonance.
I also started to see was that I'd given a blow-by-blow description of what was going on in the tech world, particularly the rise of what used to be called Web 2.0 and is now known as social media and social networking. It was also a critique of the Silicon Valley ideology -- the sense that the internet and social media was bringing down the barriers to self-expression, freeing people up and if we place our trust in Silicon Valley and the programmers there it would lead to a kind of utopia. It's a collection but one with a theme that runs through it. CIO.com: What are a couple of examples of this Silicon Valley irrational exuberance that comes to mind?
Carr: When we saw the resurrection of the internet after the big dot-com bust, there was this sense that the walls of old media and the gatekeepers were coming down and there was golden age of people in control of their own expression and what they read. This was a strong theme back then. There was Wired cover story called "We are the web (http://www.wired.com/2005/08/tech/)" that presented this as a whole new world opening up. What we've seensince then has been very different. The old gatekeepers, to the extent they were gatekeepers, have been replaced by companies like Facebook and Google and companies that really now have become the new media companies and are very much controlling the flow of information.
If anything we're more deeply in the grip of the new media companies than we ever have been. Another example is a sense that we human beings need to get out of the way and let algorithms and robots take over because in some fashion -- at least this is how it's presented -- robots are more reliable and more perfect and faster than human beings. This is translated by Silicon Valley and others that we're all going to be freed up and won't have to work anymore and that by handing off our jobs to machines and computers and robots that we'll have all of this time and we'll be more creative.
CIO.com: What I'm hearing out of MIT, other academia and from analysts at Gartner and Forrester is that robots will augment and support humans in their work, rather than replace them outright.
Carr: There is a well-argued counter philosophy to this sense that ultimately artificial intelligence and robots will take over the bulk of labor. I still think that's a common theme coming out of Silicon Valley from people like Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen, who quite explicitly say it may take a little time but ultimately, as Andreessen puts it, software is eating the world and we're going to figure out what happens in the post-work environment.
This is a dream that's been around since the Industrial Revolution -- that machines are going to take over -- and it never panned out. Which is not to say there aren't huge technological shifts in the labor force -- there are – but I think it's an expression of faith in computers to solve in a magical way these difficult problems that we're always going to be dealing with. The danger here is that often as a society we're prone to buying into this sense that if we just automate, for example, healthcare suddenly we'll have an efficient system and that will cure a lot of ills. And it has the effect too often of generating complacency, that we don't have to struggle with these things because technology is going to solve these problems.
CIO.com: I can see that. Every time we have a major machine learning breakthrough – the computer beating a human in Go comes to mind (http://fortune.com/2016/03/12/googles-go-computer-vs-human/) – the excitement fades as we're reminded of how far we are from true AI.
Carr: You have to suspend your disbelief when you're interacting with your computers or your smartphone or Siri to not recognize how far away we are [from AI]. Which is not to downplay our enormous advances. If you look at self-driving cars, particularly when Google announced (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/science/10google.html?_r=0) in 2010 that it had a car running on well-mapped highways that was pretty darn good, that announcement came at a time when people said driving is one thing that computers could never take over because it's all of these tacit skills and instinct and intuition built up. Even there I think we're still further than most people think away from a fully automated vehicle. But nevertheless it if truly amazing what has happened.
CIO.com: If you listen to Google, Tesla and others the self-driving technology is far closer than the political reality. How far away are we from fully automated cars?
Carr: I think we can get up to 99 percent [of the technology necessary for fully autonomous vehicles] pretty quickly but is that going to be enough? I don't think it is. Because driving has so many uncertainties. It seems to me that in order to get to the point of full automation you're going to have all sorts of infrastructural changes. You're going to have to deal with the fact that the automotive fleet is very long lasting. It takes many years to turn over the cars that people drive, which means you're going to have fully automated vehicles, semi-automated vehicles and human-driven vehicles on the road at the same time and that becomes very, very complicated.
I think a lot of the visions of total automation assume that every vehicle will be automated and the entire driving infrastructure will not only be mapped in minute detail but will also be outfitted with the kind of sensors and transmitters and all of the networking infrastructure that we're going to need. And it just seems to me that it will take a long time -- decades. Having said that I think you can see areas where you can isolate automated vehicles. You can envision some kind of system where you automate long-haul trucking. And you can see a king of Google car serving as a taxi in certain situations. But I think this dream of everything being automated in the next 10 years is unrealistic. I could see all of these stages en route where different aspects become automated even if the whole system does not.
CIO.com: How do you see the role of the CIO evolving?
I see a dual role for CIOs now. As we move toward an era where you're no longer in control of the IT, such as managing the data center your company runs on, you become the broker between all of the IT capabilities, both in-house and outside – and you become a strategic broker in figuring out how we should get the right mix of capabilities and where they should come from. And I think that you need smart people to do that in companies. The other is a more strategic role of figuring out where we should invest that in a way that will give us competitive distinguish us. That's an important role whether that has to reside in a CIO-type role or it can move to other places in the company I think that's always going to be a certain tension.

EmDrive: Nasa Eagleworks' paper has finally passed peer review, says scientist in the know (http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/emdrive-nasa-eagleworks-paper-has-finally-passed-peer-review-says-scientist-know-1578716)

Quote
An independent scientist has confirmed that the paper by scientists at the Nasa Eagleworks Laboratories on achieving thrust using highly controversial space propulsion technology EmDrive has passed peer review, and will soon be published by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA).
Dr José Rodal posted on the Nasa Spaceflight forum – in a now-deleted comment – that the new paper will be entitled "Measurement of Impulsive Thrust from a Closed Radio Frequency Cavity in Vacuum" and is authored by "Harold White, Paul March, Lawrence, Vera, Sylvester, Brady and Bailey".


There is also a line of text that EmDrive enthusiasts believe could be from the paper's abstract, which reads: "Thrust data in mode shape TM212 at less than 810⁶ Torr environment, from forward, reverse and null tests suggests that the system is consistently performing with a thrust to power ratio of 1.2 +/- 0.1 mN/Kw ()".
Rodal also revealed that the paper will be published in the AIAA Journal of Propulsion and Power (http://arc.aiaa.org/loi/jpp), a prominent journal published by the AIAA, which is one of the world's largest technical societies dedicated to aerospace innovations.
Eagleworks is an experimental lab that is to Nasa essentially what the secretive Google X "moonshot" R&D lab is to Google/Alphabet, and the space agency is not yet ready to place its official stamp of approval on a technology many still believe does not work.
Although Eagleworks engineer Paul March has posted several updates on the ongoing research to the Nasa Spaceflight forum showing that repeated tests conducted on the EmDrive in a vacuum successfully yielded thrust results that could not be explained by external interference (http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/nasa-says-emdrive-does-work-it-may-have-also-created-star-trek-warp-drive-1499098), those in the international scientific community who doubt the feasibility of the technology have long believed real results of thrust by Eagleworks would never see the light of day.
In March, the same Eagleworks engineer announced that their paper was going through the peer review process (http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/emdrive-nasa-eagleworks-confirms-paper-controversial-space-propulsion-under-peer-review-1551210), but they had no idea when it would be published as "peer reviews are glacially slow".
However, it seems that the wait might finally be over, if Rodal, a long-time supporter of the EmDrive who is building his own version of the Nasa aluminium frustum, is to be believed.


Roger Shawyer is the British scientist who first proposed the concept of EmDrive in 1999, and was ridiculed and even accused of fraud by some in the international space community despite his work being funded by the UK government (http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/emdrive-could-microwave-thrusters-be-key-ending-global-energy-crisis-1459997) and licenced by Boeing.How the EmDrive works
The EmDrive is the invention of British scientist Roger Shawyer, who proposed in 1999 that based on the theory of special relativity, electricity converted into microwaves and fired within a closed cone-shaped cavity causes the microwave particles to exert more force on the flat surface at the large end of the cone (i.e. there is less combined particle momentum at the narrow end due to a reduction in group particle velocity), thereby generating thrust.
His critics say that according to the law of conservation of momentum, his theory cannot work as in order for a thruster to gain momentum in one direction, a propellant must be expelled in the opposite direction, and the EmDrive is a closed system.
However, Shawyer claims that following fundamental physics involving the theory of special relativity, the EmDrive does in fact preserve the law of conservation of momentum and energy.Shawyer believes EmDrive could transform the aerospace industry and potentially solve both the energy crisis and climate change, while also speeding up space travel by making it much cheaper to launch satellites and spacecraft into orbit. He is also actively working to test the technology out on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), in the hope of creating feasible flying cars (http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/emdrive-roger-shawyer-paper-describing-space-propulsion-uavs-finally-passes-peer-review-1513223).
He told IBTimes UK that he is as excited as other EmDrive enthusiasts to read the upcoming paper by Nasa Eagleworks, but adds that any thrust measured will be very small, probably equivalent to where Shawyer's research was a decade ago.
Incidentally, the 10-year-long rule about classifying research done for the UK government has now expired, and Shawyer has made four papers publicly accessible on his website (http://www.emdrive.com/) for anyone to read.
"I daresay America will have a lot to say about it, but it's not really new. It's all been done before 10 years ago. If you bother to go through the [declassified] papers, you can see the levels of thrust we achieved are significantly higher than the levels of thrust that Nasa Eagleworks has got," he said.
"People all around the world have been measuring thrust. You've got guys building them in their garages and very large organisations building cavities too. They're all generating thrust, there's no great mystery. People think it's black magic or something, but it's not. Any physicist worth his salt should understand how it works, or if they don't, they should change their profession."


Shawyer is now actively working on the second-generation EmDrive (http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/nasa-validates-emdrive-roger-shawyer-says-aerospace-industry-needs-watch-out-1499141) with an unnamed UK aerospace company and the new device is meant to be able to achieve tonnes of thrust (1T = 1,000kg), rather than just a few grams.
"We're trying to achieve thrust levels that go up by many orders of magnitude, where the q values of the cavities are between 1 x 10⁹ and 5 x 10⁴. Once you reach the levels of thrust we anticipate we will reach, you can apply it anywhere," he told IBTimes UK. "Essentially, anything that currently flies or drives or floats can use EmDrive technology."
Despite the increasing interest in EmDrive, the fact that he will soon be vindicated and how in July 2015 his own paper describing space propulsion on drones passed peer review (http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/emdrive-roger-shawyer-paper-describing-space-propulsion-uavs-finally-passes-peer-review-1513223), Shawyer does not plan to release anymore papers for quite a while.
"The work we're doing is difficult and expensive and the people paying for it don't necessarily want to give it away to the rest of the world, but EmDrive will make a huge impact and a lot of people have thought of a lot of things to apply it to," he said.
Recently, several scientists including Dr Mike McCulloch of Plymouth University and Dr Arto Annila from the University of Helsinki have been using exotic physics (http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/emdrive-british-scientists-new-physics-theory-accidentally-proves-controversial-space-1556098) to try to explain why the EmDrive works, and they have seen that the thrust detected in experiments by Shawyer and other scientists matches their theoretical calculations (http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/emdrive-finnish-physicist-says-controversial-space-propulsion-device-does-have-exhaust-1565673).
IBTimes UK has contacted AIAA for a statement, but had received no response as of press time.

China Confirms Its Space Station Is Falling Back to Earth (http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/satellites/a22936/tiangong-falling-to-earth/)

Quote
In a press conference on Wednesday (http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2016-09/14/c_135687885_2.htm), Chinese officials appear to have confirmed what many observers have long suspected: that China is no longer in control of its space station.
China's Tiangong-1 space station has been orbiting the planet for about 5 years now, but recently it was decommissioned and the Chinese astronauts returned to the surface. In a press conference last week, China announced that the space station would be falling back to earth at some point in late 2017.
Normally, a decommissioned satellite or space station would be retired by forcing it to burn up in the atmosphere. This type of burn is controlled, and most satellite re-entries are scheduled to burn up over the ocean to avoid endangering people. However, it seems that China's space agency is not sure exactly when Tiangong-1 will re-enter the atmosphere, which implies that the station has been damaged somehow and China is no longer able to control it.
This is important because it means Tiangong-1 won't be able to burn up in a controlled manner. All we know is it will burn up at some point in late 2017, but it is impossible to predict exactly when or where. This means that there is a chance debris from the falling spacecraft could strike a populated area.
Fortunately, it's unlikely anyone will be injured. Most of the parts of the space station will burn up in the atmosphere, and the few that do make it to the ground probably won't land in any populated areas. (It's a big planet.) Still, watch the skies late next year. You never know what could be falling down on you.

Šta padne na moju njivu, moje je!

Samo da ne zapali žito.

QuoteŠta padne na moju njivu, moje je!

Ua, zemljoposednici...

Коме год упадне доћи ће му министар стефановић са специјалцима.

The oldest computer (not) on Earth (https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2016/oct/03/one-governments-oldest-computers-isnt-earth/)

Will you become a citizen of Asgardia, the first nation state in space?  (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/oct/12/will-you-become-a-citizen-of-asgardia-the-first-nation-state-in-space)

Tomorrow's Wars Will Be Livestreamed (http://motherboard.vice.com/read/tomorrows-wars-will-be-livestreamed-mosul)

Quote
Hundreds of thousands of people around the world watched the start of the invasion of Mosul, a city held by ISIS in Iraq, live on Facebook and YouTube this morning.
The most popular stream—there were several, some of which are still live—was shared by Kurdish outlet Rudaw (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wcKAD5bUPw) and re-posted by outlets like the Washington Post (https://www.facebook.com/washingtonpostworld/videos/10154216171474565/?tid=sm_tw_pw) and Channel 4 (https://www.facebook.com/Channel4News/videos/10154155702846939/?hc_ref=NEWSFEED) in the UK. While some viewers commented on the merits of the offensive, for others, the livestream itself was the most startling thing. As angry cartoon faces and "Wow!" emoticons floated over top of live images of war, viewers noted that it all seemed like a bit too much like a sci-fi fever dream (https://twitter.com/broderick/status/787980258754588676) about a war-obsessed culture.
For most English-language viewers watching these streams, there was no explanation, no given context, no subtitles or translation—merely images of a mostly-barren foreign landscape peppered with men and trucks, idling and standing around, sparsely punctuated by violence. And in this void, commenters cried, "WHY THERE IS NO SHOOTING, EXPLOSION. I WANT TO WATCH A WAR," cue the smiley face.
Read More: Autoplay Is for a G-Rated World (http://motherboard.vice.com/read/autoplay-is-for-a-g-rated-world)
But which war? Perhaps the many fictionalized encounters in movies, videogames, and television, in places with names real and imagined, not that it really matters if the latest Call of Duty takes place in Afghanistan or outer space (http://motherboard.vice.com/read/call-of-duty-infinite-warfare-is-a-sci-fi-space-shooter)?
"War is 99 percent boredom and one percent sheer excitement and/or terror," David Axe, war correspondent and editor of news site War Is Boring (http://motherboard.vice.com/tag/War+Is+Boring), wrote me in an email. "You hurry up and wait, move slowly, advance, hold ground, resupply, update your plan and intel, rest, eat, refuel, advance again, etc., etc. It can be tedious. Until the fighting starts. And then it's not tedious at all. But in reality, war is in the inverse of action movies."
The effect of watching the livestream of the Mosul offensive without any context or explanation is similar to what I felt when I watched Werner Herzog's 1992 film Lessons of Darkness (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lessons_of_Darkness). In it, Herzog shows the viewer slow-tracking footage of burning Kuwaiti oil fields after the Gulf War, the outcome of the army retreat's "scorched earth" policy.
But Herzog doesn't give us any political or historical context; he doesn't say it's in Kuwait, or even on Earth. "The film has not a single frame that can be recognized as our planet, and yet we know it must have been shot here," he said of the film (https://books.google.ca/books?id=6MqJAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA181&lpg=PA181&dq=The+film+has+not+a+single+frame+that+can+be+recognized+as+our+planet,+and+yet+we+know+it+must+have+been+shot+here&source=bl&ots=qYm7kr_K_o&sig=m6aA3PnglJ0jziGPkSQsS9ueRHM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjG0cjyl-LPAhWEGB4KHX1bDDsQ6AEIHjAA#v=onepage&q=The%20film%20has%20not%20a%20single%20frame%20that%20can%20be%20recognized%20as%20our%20planet%2C%20and%20yet%20we%20know%20it%20must%20have%20been%20shot%20here&f=false). His intention was to present conflict in metaphysical terms, and to probe deeper than newscasts do despite a nightly deluge of facts and minutiae. From the semantic void of images that could be from any war emerges a deeper understanding about the nature of war itself.
But in 2016, decades after Lessons of Darkness was completed and on social media instead of in a darkened arthouse theatre, the void spits out something other than deep, metaphysical understanding about human nature. Instead, in the comments, people ask for money. They talk about porn. They quote Green Day lyrics (https://twitter.com/sam_kriss/status/788020075060232192). They call people "cucks." (https://twitter.com/sam_kriss/status/788022156013760512)
To be fair, however, not everyone reacted this way. But a lot of people did.
"There's journalistic value in the livestream," Axe wrote, and noted that it's generally good practice to ignore the comments anywhere on the web.
But as the 2016 election cycle has shown us, a messy comments section come to terrifying life isn't a bad descriptor of the current US body politic.
In the end, livestreaming a war—if one judges by the live comments—looks a lot like livestreaming a concert or any other event. Does the low overhead of sharing someone else's stream on your outlet's page coupled with the high viewer payoff almost ensure that we're going to see it again? "Absolutely yes," Axe wrote.

Jedna od velikih prednosti hibridnih i električnih automobila je što je nivo i zvučnog zagađenja u njihovom slučaju osetno niži nego kod klasičnih vozila koja gore dinosauruse (copyright by Scallop). Naravno, ništa što je lepo nije i večno (sem Nine Hartley) pa se već pripremaju propisi po kojima će ova vozila morati da imaju izvor glasnog zvuka kada idu malim brzinama kako pešaci zagledani u svoje telefone ili generalno nedovoljno pažljivi ne bi ginuli u jatima. (http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-autos-regulations-idUSKBN13923M)

Nešto prošla pored mene i vest da negde uvode i zvučnu saobraćajnu signalizaciju za zablentavljene pešake (tipa ULICA, STANI, MAJMUNE). Ne znam...

 For the first time, living cells have formed carbon-silicon bonds  (http://www.sciencealert.com/for-the-first-time-living-cells-have-formed-carbon-silicon-bonds) 

Quote
   Scientists have managed to coax living cells into making carbon-silicon bonds, demonstrating for the first time that nature can incorporate silicon - one of the most abundant elements on Earth - into the building blocks of life.
While chemists have achieved carbon-silicon bonds before - they're found in everything from paints and semiconductors to computer and TV screens - they've so far never been found in nature, and these new cells could help us understand more about the possibility of silicon-based life elsewhere in the Universe.
  After oxygen, silicon is the second most abundant element (http://antoine.frostburg.edu/chem/senese/101/periodic/faq/what-element-is-most-abundant.shtml) in Earth's crust, and yet it has nothing to do with biological life.
Why silicon has never be incorporated into any kind of biochemistry on Earth has been a long-standing puzzle for scientists, because, in theory, it would have been just as easy for silicon-based lifeforms to have evolved on our planet as the carbon-based ones we know and love.
Not only are carbon and silicon both extremely abundant in Earth's crust - they're also very similar in their chemical make-up.
One of the most important features carbon and silicon share is the ability to form bonds with four atoms at the same time. This means they're capable of linking together the long chains of molecules needed to form the basis of life as we know it - proteins and DNA.
And yet, silicon-based lifeforms do not exist outside the Star Trek universe (http://www.startrek.com/database_article/horta) - as far as we know.
"No living organism is known to put silicon-carbon bonds together, even though silicon is so abundant, all around us, in rocks and all over the beach," says one of the researchers, (https://www.caltech.edu/news/bringing-silicon-life-53049) Jennifer Kan from Caltech.
  To be clear, Kan and her team played a big role in getting living cells to achieve carbon-silicon bonds - this was not something that the cell could have easily done on its own.
But the experiment is proof that these bonds can be formed in nature - so long as you have the right conditions.
The researchers started by isolating a protein that occurs naturally in the bacterium Rhodothermus marinus, which thrives in the hot springs of Iceland (http://www.sciencealert.com/iceland-is-attempting-to-drill-the-hottest-hole-in-the-world).
They liked this protein, called cytochrome c enzyme, because while its main role is to transport electrons through the cells, lab tests revealed that it could facilitate the kinds of bonds that could attach silicon atoms to carbon.
After isolating the protein, they inserted the gene for it into some E. coli bacteria to if it could facilitate the production of carbon-silicon bonds inside its living cells.
The first iteration of these silicon-engineered bacteria didn't do much, but the team continued to mutate the protein gene within a specific region of the E. coli genome until something very cool happened.
"After three rounds of mutations, the protein could bond silicon to carbon 15 times more efficiently than any synthetic catalyst," Aviva Rutkin reports for New Scientist. (https://www.newscientist.com/article/2114054-engineered-protein-bonds-elements-that-dont-get-on-in-nature/)
The fact that this bacterium has been engineered to produce carbon-silicon bonds more efficiently than chemists can in the lab is exciting for two reasons. First, it offers up a better way to produce the carbon-silicon bonds we need to make things like pharmaceuticals, agricultural chemicals, and fuels.
"This is something that people talk about, dream about, wonder about," Annaliese Franz from the University of California, Davis, who wasn't involved in the research, told New Scientist. (https://www.newscientist.com/article/2114054-engineered-protein-bonds-elements-that-dont-get-on-in-nature/)
"Any pharmaceutical chemist could read this on Thursday and on Friday decide they want to take this as a building block that they could potentially use."
Secondly, it signifies that a lifeform could potentially be at least partially based on silicon, and if the researchers continue to grow these kinds of bacteria, we could get a better understanding of what they could look like.
"This study shows how quickly nature can adapt to new challenges," one of the team, Frances Arnold, said in a press statement. (https://www.caltech.edu/news/bringing-silicon-life-53049)
"The DNA-encoded catalytic machinery of the cell can rapidly learn to promote new chemical reactions when we provide new reagents and the appropriate incentive in the form of artificial selection. Nature could have done this herself if she cared to."
The research has been published in Science. (http://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6315/1048) 

do androids dream of ... electric hearts? :lol:

holly shit, ovi napreduju!

http://youtu.be/-D_XrRo0h20

Baš živimo SF:
UN: Key Action on 'Killer Robots' (https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/12/16/un-key-action-killer-robots)

Quote(Geneva) – An agreement on December 16, 2016, at an international disarmament conference in Geneva could set the course toward a ban on "killer robots (https://www.hrw.org/topic/arms/killer-robots)," fully autonomous weapons that would strike without human intervention, Human Rights Watch said today.


At their five-year review conference in Geneva, the 123 nations that are part of the intenational  Convention on Conventional Weapons, agreed to formalize their efforts next year to deal with the challenges raised by weapons systems that would select and attack targets without meaningful human control. The conference participants also agreed to discuss international regulations on incendiary weapons, which severely burn people and set buildings aflame, and are causing devastating harm to civilians in Syria.

"The governments meeting in Geneva took an important step toward stemming the development of killer robots, but there is no time to lose" said Steve Goose (https://www.hrw.org/about/people/stephen-goose), arms director of Human Rights Watch, a co-founder of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots (https://www.stopkillerrobots.org/). "Once these weapons exist, there will be no stopping them. The time to act on a pre-emptive ban is now."   The countries agreed by consensus in Geneva to bring together a group of governmental experts on lethal autonomous weapons systems at the United Nations in 2017, a major step toward negotiations for a ban. These weapons have not yet been developed, but technology is moving rapidly toward increasing autonomy.   For the first time, China said in Geneva it sees a need for a new international instrument on lethal autonomous weapons systems. The group of nations endorsing the call to ban these weapons expanded to 19 with the additions of Argentina, Guatemala, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela. India's disarmament representative, Ambassador Amandeep Singh Gill, will chair the killer robots work in 2017.   Governments at the Review Conference also took steps toward addressing the humanitarian problems posed by incendiary weapons. They collectively condemned the use of these weapons against civilians and civilian objects and, for the first time since 1980, agreed to discuss the law governing them.   Incendiary weapons (https://www.hrw.org/topic/arms/incendiary-weapons) cause excruciatingly painful burns that are difficult to treat. A protocol to the Convention on Conventional Weapons on incendiary weapons has loopholes undermining its ability to prevent the weapons' harm to civilians.   "Existing law must be strengthened urgently to better protect civilians from the cruel effects of these barbaric weapons," Goose said. "Governments should act before it is too late for civilians living in towns and cities attacked by Syrian government forces with incendiary weapons."

A možda živimo i u sitkomu?  :-? To... bi dosta toga objasnilo.

Mislim, ne znam šta je smešnije u ovom tekstu, to što USA Today pravi članak od nekoliko tvitova Elona Muska koji se nervira zbog saobraćaja i kaže da ima da osnuje firmu koja će da prokopa te neke "tunele" kroz koje bi onda saobraćaj mogao da ide, jelte, pod zemljom, ili je smešnije što vizionarski tehnološki genije izgleda nije upoznat sa konceptom metroa. Da nije odrastao u Beogradu???  :shock:

Next big thing from Elon Musk? It could be 'boring' (http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/12/18/next-big-thing-elon-musk-could-boring/95583764/)

sitkom ili idiocracy je najbliži opis al računam da su sve generacije tako počinjale da misle kad su ulazile u te neke, hm, starije godine. ni mi nismo imuni!  :lol:

I've seen the future of SF and it's called Mrkonjić!

Quote from: Meho Krljic on 02-09-2016, 08:35:52
EmDrive: Nasa Eagleworks' paper has finally passed peer review, says scientist in the know (http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/emdrive-nasa-eagleworks-paper-has-finally-passed-peer-review-says-scientist-know-1578716)

Sad se i Kina javlja:

EmDrive: China claims success with this 'reactionless' engine for space travel (http://www.popsci.com/emdrive-engine-space-travel-china-success)

Na kraju ćemo da odemo u PM za džabe.

Ja ne smem Kineske gaće da kupim, a kamoli s nečim njiovim da letim!

Ovo nije o novom i naročito uzbudljivom izumu — svi znamo za CCTV kamere i za strimovanje preko interneta. Ali svejedno mi je bio dirljiv ovaj članal Grejama Smita; privlači me ta ideja, a on nudi i predloge u članku.

prelep tekst.

btw, Sehnsucht je, uz Fremdscham, reč koja savršeno opisuje određeno stanje, nemački ima neka baš lepa rešenja.

pa kako smo dosad živeli bez ovog gedžeta?  nas-rofl

http://youtu.be/kK5o1sTMDTI

Ali evo sada druge strane življenja u budućnosti:

Norway to switch off FM radio in risky, unpopular shift to digital (http://www.reuters.com/article/us-norway-radio-idUSKBN14P1TH)

Quote
 
Norway is set to become the first nation to start switching off its FM radio network next week, in a risky and unpopular leap to digital technology that will be closely watched by other countries considering whether to follow suit.
Critics say the government is rushing the move and many people may miss warnings on emergencies that have until now been broadcast via the radio. Of particular concern are the 2 million cars on Norway's roads that are not equipped with Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) receivers, they say.Sixty-six percent of Norwegians oppose switching off FM, with just 17 percent in favor and the rest undecided, according to an opinion poll published by the daily Dagbladet last month.Nevertheless, parliament gave the final go-ahead for the move last month, swayed by the fact that digital networks can carry more radio channels.Switzerland plans a similar shift from 2020, and Britain and Denmark are among those also considering such a switch. A smooth transition to DAB, which is already beamed across Norway, could encourage these countries to move ahead.The shutdown of the FM (Frequency Modulation) network, introduced in the 1950s, will begin in the northern city of Bodoe on Jan. 11.

By the end of the year, all national FM broadcasts will be closed in favor of DAB, which backers say carries less hiss and clearer sound throughout the large nation of 5 million people cut by fjords and mountains."We're the first country to switch off FM but there are several countries going in the same direction," said Ole Joergen Torvmark, head of Digital Radio Norway, which is owned by national broadcasters NRK and P4 to help the transition.Torvmark said cars were the "biggest challenge" - a good digital adapter for an FM car radio costs 1,500 Norwegian crowns  ($174.70), he said.

One member of the ruling coalition was scathing, however, voicing concerns similar to those expressed by thousands of elderly and drivers in surveys and elsewhere."We are simply not ready for this yet," Ib Thomsen, an MP from the Progress Party, a partner in the Conservative-led government, told Reuters."There are 2 million cars on Norwegian roads that don't have DAB receivers, and millions of radios in Norwegian homes will stop working when the FM net is switched off. So there is definitely a safety concern," he said. For the same cost, digital radio in Norway allows eight times more radio stations than FM. The current system of parallel FM and digital networks, each of which cost about 250 million crowns ($29 million), saps investments in programs.Among other nations, Britain plans to review the need for a switchover once digital listening reaches 50 percent. That could be reached by the end of 2017 on current trends, Digital Radio UK spokeswoman Yvette Dore said. ($1 = 8.5861 Norwegian crowns)

I druge druge strane. Ispostavlja se da konverzacije sa softverom nisu ono što ljudi zaista žele.


Alexa and Google Assistant have a problem: People aren't sticking with voice apps they try (https://www.recode.net/2017/1/23/14340966/voicelabs-report-alexa-google-assistant-echo-apps-discovery-problem)

Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit

David Graeber

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/of-flying-cars-and-the-declining-rate-of-profit

Where, in short, are the flying cars? Where are the force fields, tractor beams, teleportation pods, antigravity sleds, tricorders, immortality drugs, colonies on Mars, and all the other technological wonders any child growing up in the mid-to-late twentieth century assumed would exist by now? Even those inventions that seemed ready to emerge—like cloning or cryogenics—ended up betraying their lofty promises. What happened to them?

EM drive će nam omogućiti dosta toga navedenog. A i medicina lepo napreduje.

Ja ponekad imam utisak da postoji nekakva vanzemaljska tehnologija, koju neko tajno analizira, pa onda informacije o tome kontrolisano cure u javnost. Ovaj EM drajv je primer. Neko se dosetio da ga napravi, a da teorijska podloga po kojoj bi uređaj radio još nije otkrivena. I sad skoro baš čitam da možda eto sad imamo teorijsku podlogu za EM drajv, i da ta teorija može da objasni i sijaset drugih misterija u astronomiji (umesto uvođenja tamne materije). Neko je dakle napravio nešto fundamentalno novo, a da nije baš potpuno znao kako to uopšte može da funkcioniše (iako tvrdi da je znao, ali ne dajte se zavarati).

Možda taj princip funkcioniše odavno, pa su sva ta predviđanja zapravo samo bila previše optimistična u vremenu potrebnom da se završi analiza napredne tehnologije, ali tehnologija je tu negde, dobro čuvana tajna.

'обрнути инжињеринг' је теорија завере живахна још од инцидента у розвелу

QuoteWhere, in short, are the flying cars? Where are the force fields, tractor beams, teleportation pods, antigravity sleds, tricorders, immortality drugs, colonies on Mars, and all the other technological wonders any child growing up in the mid-to-late twentieth century assumed would exist by now? Even those inventions that seemed ready to emerge—like cloning or cryogenics—ended up betraying their lofty promises. What happened to them?

Upravo! Kad pogledas recimo Blejd Ranera koji je smesten u nase vreme...cesto sam se ovo pitala.

Tekst mi je baš lego, spojio sf, hladni rat, ekonomiju, realna dešavanja sa zaustavljanjem tehnološkog razvoja. Interesantno.

Mac, pa objašnjenje stoji u tekstu, ta emdrajv kanta ne mijenja stvari! Čitaj!

 Ali valjda je jasno da leteća kola, ili video telefon ne postoje ne zato što tehnologija ne može da ih napravi, nego zato što zapravo  za njima ne postoji stvarna tržišna potreba. Leteća kola bi zahtevala temeljitu reorganizaciju urbanog prostora i temeljito unapređenje obuke koju vozač mora da dobije, a što bi zahtevalo izuzetno veliko ulaganje, a čini se da će zapravo automobil koji se sam vozi da bude ono što će se nametnuti kao sledeći stepen razvoja i ne samo kreirati bezbedniji saobraćajni prostor već istovremeno i promeniti način na koji se percipira potreba za vlasništvom nad automobilom pa preko toga i pitanja parking-prostora. Isto kao što video-telefon izgleda do jaja na filmu a zapravo u životu niko ni sa kim ne priča koristeći objektivno postojeću (i posedovanu) tehnologiju video-telefoniranja jer je ona naprosto neudobnija u odnosu na običan razgovor glasom. Što se tiče traktorskih zraka i energetskih polja – ponovo, ovo su rešenja za probleme koje smo već rešili. Sajla i čekrk su jeftiniji od traktorskih zraka i ne zahtevaju složene mikroprocesore da se koriste, plus imaju mnogo manje delova koji mogu da se pokvare. Energetsko polje kao barijera se čini kao ekstravagantno rešenje za nešto što u 90% slučajeva daleko jeftinije rešavaju cigla i malter a u ostalih 10% klizna staklena ili pleksiglas vrata...

Ne mogu da čitam, na poslu sam. Objasni u par rečenica, ako može.

Tehnološki razvoj nije zaustavljen, ali ekonomski principi diktiraju progres tog razvoja. Imamo editovanje gena, što ranije nismo imali, ali je postalo popularno tek kad je postalo ekonomski dostupno. Imamo i omasovljenje transporta, skupljanja i skladištenja energije, imamo lekove za bolesti za koje ranije nismo ni znali da postoje, ali samo za one za koje ima dovoljno kupaca. Imamo mašine na Marsu, ali ne i ljude, jer šta bi pa ljudi radili tamo što mašine ne mogu?

Pa nisi na poslu čitav dan, nedjelju, mjesec.

Baš uprošćen sažetak: Sovjeti gurali SAD u razvoj, i nakon sletanja na Mjesec smanjen je gas, dok su Sovjeti i dalje eksperimentisali...

Edit
Šo znači slično što i Meho reče, da se tržišni kapitalizam pokazuje kao neplodan za življenje sf-a i treba ga mijenjati!

Tekst doduše ne spominje da Tramp sprema da stigne rusku vojnu tehnologiju i da tu može biti svašta, ali generalno tačno pogađa da kapitalizam nema inovaciju u svojoj srži.

Zgodno. Živimo SF jer neko negde napravi nešto prvi put. Ekonomija nije pogon nego gorivo. I gospod Bog je bio anlaser, a ne motor.

moj :)
http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/d163/

E, a kad kupiš taj kišobran, moći ćeš da se provozaš Hajperlupom. Barem ako si u Nevadi:

First full-scale Hyperloop system is almost ready for takeoff (http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/615511/first-full-scale-hyperloop-system-almost-ready-takeoff/)

kišobran je naravno u posedu (zar ne piše gore: moj? :lol: ), a problem sa hyperloopom je što je mnogo nezgodan čim se pojavi vertikalna oscilacija terena (i neisplatljiviji od letećeg auta :) ). ergo, igraju se na ravnom terenu. neće to za mog vakta.

https://youtu.be/Pi-BDIu_umo (https://youtu.be/Pi-BDIu_umo)

The smartphone is eventually going to die, and then things are going to get really crazy (http://www.businessinsider.com/death-of-the-smartphone-and-what-comes-after-2017-3)

Quote

One day, not too soon — but still sooner than you think — the smartphone will all but vanish, like beepers and fax machines before it. 

Make no mistake, we're still probably at least a decade away from any kind of meaningful shift away from the smartphone. (And  if we're all cyborgs by 2027 (http://www.businessinsider.com/neil-harbisson-cyborg-future-2016-11), I'll happily eat my words. Assuming we're still eating at all, I guess.)

Yet, piece by piece, the groundwork for the eventual demise of the smartphone is being laid by  Elon Musk (http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-neuralink-connect-brains-computer-neural-lace-2017-3), by Microsoft, by Facebook, by Amazon, and a countless number of startups that still have a part to play.

And, let me tell you: If and when the smartphone does die, that's when things are going to get really weird for everybody. Not just in terms of individual products, but in terms of how we actually live our everyday lives and maybe our humanity itself.

Here's a brief look at the slow, ceaseless march towards the death of the smartphone — and what the post-smartphone world is shaping up to look like. 
  The short term 
People think of the iPhone and the smartphones it inspired as revolutionary devices — small enough to carry everywhere, hefty enough to handle an increasingly large number of our daily tasks, and packed full of the right mix cameras and GPS sensors to make apps like Snapchat and Uber uniquely possible. 

But consider the smartphone from another perspective. The desktop PC and the laptop are made up of some combination of a mouse, keyboard, and monitor. The smartphone just took that model, shrunk it down, and made the input virtual and touch-based. 

So take, for example, the  Samsung Galaxy S8 (http://www.businessinsider.com/samsung-galaxy-s8-plus-photos-hands-on-2017-3), unveiled this week. It's gorgeous with an amazing bezel-less screen and some real power under the hood. It's impressive, but it's more refinement than revolution.

Tellingly, though, the Galaxy S8 ships with  Bixby (http://www.businessinsider.com/bixby-samsung-galaxy-s8-assistant-issues-shortcomings-2017-3), a new virtual assistant that Samsung promises will one day let you control every single feature and app with just your voice. It will also ship with a new version of the Gear VR virtual reality headset, developed in conjunction with Facebook's Oculus.

The next iPhone, too, is said to be shipping with upgrades to the Siri assistant, along with  features aimed at bringing augmented reality into the mainstream (http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-integrating-augmented-reality-iphone-camera-app-2016-11). 

And as devices like the  Amazon Echo (http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-echo-dot-fire-stick-shipping-dates-after-christmas-2016-12),  Sony PlayStation VR (http://www.businessinsider.com/sony-playstation-vr-review-2016-10), and the  Apple Watch (http://www.businessinsider.com/siri-is-coming-to-apple-watch-apps-2017-1) continue to enjoy limited but substantial success, expect to see a lot more tech companies large and small taking more gambles and making more experiments on the next big wave in computing interfaces. 
  The medium term 
In the medium-term, all of these various experimental and first-stage technologies are going to start to congeal into something familiar, but bizarre. 

Microsoft, Facebook, Google and the  Google-backed Magic Leap (http://www.businessinsider.com/magic-leap-photo-leak-prototype-2017-2) are all working to build standalone augmented reality headsets, which project detailed 3D images straight into your eyes.  Even Apple is rumored to be working on this, too (http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-versus-google-microsoft-augmented-reality-and-voice-2017-3).

Microsoft's Alex Kipman recently told Business Insider (http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-alex-kipman-hololens-2017-2) that augmented reality could flat-out replace the smartphone, the TV, and anything else with a screen. There's not much use for a separate device sitting in your pocket or on your entertainment center, if all your calls, chats, movies, and games are beamed into your eyes and overlaid on the world around you. 

Meanwhile, gadgetry like the Amazon Echo or Apple's own AirPods (http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-w1-bluetooth-chip-2017-1) become more and more important in this world. As artificial intelligence systems like Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa, Samsung's Bixby, and Microsoft's Cortana get smarter, there's going to be a rise not just in talking to computers, but having them talk back.

In other words, computers are going to hijack your senses, more so than they already do, with your sight and your hearing intermediated by technology. It's a little scary. Think of what Facebook glitches could mean in a world where it doesn't just control what you read on your phone, but what you see in the world around you (http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-fake-news-and-virtual-reality-2016-12).

The promise, though, is a world where real life and technology blend more seamlessly. The major tech companies promise that this future means a world of fewer technological distractions and more balance, as the physical and digital world become the same thing. You decide how you feel about that.
  The really crazy future 
Still, all those decade-plus investments in the future still rely on gadgetry that you have to wear on you, even if it's only a pair of glasses. Some of the craziest, most forward-looking, most unpredictable advancements go even further — provided you're willing to wait a few extra decades, that is.

This week, we got  our first look at Neuralink, a new company cofounded by Elon Musk (http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-neuralink-connect-brains-computer-neural-lace-2017-3) with a goal of building computers into our brains by way of "neural lace," a  very early-stage technology (http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21719774-do-human-beings-need-embrace-brain-implants-stay-relevant-elon-musk-enters) that lays on your brain and bridges it to a computer. It's the next step beyond even that blending of the digital and physical worlds, as man and machine become one. 

Assuming the science works — and  lots of smart people believe that it will (https://www.wired.com/2017/03/elon-musks-neural-lace-really-look-like/) —  this is the logical endpoint of the road that smartphones started us on. If smartphones gave us access to information and augmented reality puts that information in front of us when we need it, then putting neural lace in our brains just closes the gap.

Musk has said that this is because the rise of artificial intelligence — which underpins a lot of the other technologies, including voice assistants and virtual reality — means that humans are going to have to augment themselves just to keep up with the machines. If you're really curious about this idea,  futurist Ray Kurzweil is the leading voice on the topic (http://www.businessinsider.com/kurzweil-brain-exponential-thinking-problem-2016-3). 

The idea of man/machine fusion is a terrifying one, with science fiction writers, technologists, and philosophers alike having very good cause to ask what even makes us human in the first place. At the same time, the idea is so new that nobody really knows what this world would look like in practice.

So if and when the smartphone dies, it'll actually be the end of an era in more ways than one. It'll be the end of machines that we carry with us passively and the beginning of something that bridges our bodies straight into the ebb and flow of digital information. It's going to get weird. 

And yet, lots of technologists already say that smartphones give us superpowers with access to knowledge, wisdom, and abilities beyond anything nature gave us. In some ways, augmenting the human mind would be the ultimate superpower. Then again, maybe I'm just an optimist.

I Stared Into the Political Heart of the Hyperloop (http://gizmodo.com/i-stared-into-the-political-heart-of-the-hyperloop-1794092181)

op op op

http://www.danas.rs/zivot.1140.html?news_id=343519&title=NASA%3a+Na+Saturnu+i+Jupiteru+odr%C5%BEiv+%C5%BEivot

An artificial womb successfully grew baby sheep — and humans could be next (http://www.theverge.com/2017/4/25/15421734/artificial-womb-fetus-biobag-uterus-lamb-sheep-birth-premie-preterm-infant)

The intelligent intersection could banish traffic lights forever (https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/05/the-intelligent-intersection-could-banish-traffic-lights-for-ever/)

Quote from: Meho Krljic on 21-12-2016, 09:10:09
A možda živimo i u sitkomu?  :? To... bi dosta toga objasnilo.

Mislim, ne znam šta je smešnije u ovom tekstu, to što USA Today pravi članak od nekoliko tvitova Elona Muska koji se nervira zbog saobraćaja i kaže da ima da osnuje firmu koja će da prokopa te neke "tunele" kroz koje bi onda saobraćaj mogao da ide, jelte, pod zemljom, ili je smešnije što vizionarski tehnološki genije izgleda nije upoznat sa konceptom metroa. Da nije odrastao u Beogradu???  :shock:

Next big thing from Elon Musk? It could be 'boring' (http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/12/18/next-big-thing-elon-musk-could-boring/95583764/)

Ali pošto ipak živimo SF:


Elon Musk has made a 120mph electric sled for blasting cars through underground tunnels (http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/elon-musk-has-made-120mph-electric-sled-blasting-cars-through-underground-tunnels-1621372)

kako je planirana tranzicija tockovi-sled? linearno: ide se pravo putem, pa usporavanje kao pred naplatnom kucicom, digne se rampa i eto te na sledu ili "nelinearno": na mnogo mesta se moze iskljuciti s puta, tamo gde postoje stanice za "silazak"? e sad kako te stanice treba da izgledaju, a la podzemne garaze? morbidna kruzna rampa koja vodi u skalameriju koja stavlja aute na saonice (odakle dolaze saonice?)...nekakav jos aprijatniji lift? kakva to glomazna infrastruktura mora biti? kako spreciti zakrcenja?

nece to da bidne da moze u iole razgranatoj konfiguraciji, previse mi je komplikovano i "invazivno"

Evo objašnjenja u videu

https://youtu.be/u5V_VzRrSBI

aaa platforma lifta je ujedno i sled...zgodno (i ocigledno :()
naredno pitanje koje mi se nameće je poreklo onih sledova koji su "prekobrojni" jer ako ima dvesta otvora u jednom gradu od milion stanovnika (super!), to znaci da u jednom momentu u tom gradu moze da se vozi dvesta auta (smesno!)...znaci odnekle ce morati da se izbacuju dodatne platforme. za to ipak treba zesca masinerija, tipa nekoliko velikih postrojenja-stanica koje distribuiraju prazne platforme po gradu, da popune "rupe", u suprotnom jedan lift bi opsluzivao toliko auta dnevno da bi se investicija samo u njega isplatila za vec jedno 10.000 godina

btw ovo je mozda malo glupo pitanje, ali kad se spusti platforma i ostane bukvalno rupa-ambis sta onda? nece valjda biti zjapeci krater usred grada (deca pijanci vandali teroristi manijaci samoubice izvolte)? jedino racionalno u ovom momentu mi je da kada se spusti jedna platforma druga platforma izadje da zapti otvor i onda onda platforma ostaje "zakljucana" dok ne dodje zamena (sluzi kao obican poklopac i za to vreme auto moze da stoji na njoj i da kulira, sto sve ne moze realno trajati duze od par minuta). ako je zamena u vidu platforme sa autom koji se iskljucuje na tom punktu, onda auto dole mora da saceka da se ovaj gore spusti, da bi se on podigao...ili se gornja platforma sa sve autom na njoj "otvori" (pomeri unazad)...znaci svaki punkt bi morao da "barata" sa najmanje dve platforme u isto vreme. i vec to je zasigurno jedan ne-naivan mehanizam.

edit: pogledao sam ponovo video, propusio sam da primetim da na svakom punktu postoje dva lifta. da, to je isto ocigledno ( :() ali ne resava problem decouvlačećih jama

 Scientists Achieve Direct Counterfactual Quantum Communication For The First Time  (http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-achieved-direct-counterfactual-quantum-communication-for-the-first-time)

Hyperloop One reveals its plans for connecting Europe (https://www.engadget.com/2017/06/06/hyperloop-one-reveals-its-plans-for-connecting-europe/)

NASA is looking for someone to protect Earth from aliens — and the job pays a six-figure salary (https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/02/nasa-is-looking-for-someone-to-protect-earth-from-aliens--and-the-job-pays-a-six-figure-salary.html)

Da li je neko malo više upućen u ovo?

http://fakti.org/globotpor/quo-vadis-orbi/facebook-stopirao-vestacku-inteligenciju-koja-je-uspela-da-stvori-sopstveni-jezik (http://fakti.org/globotpor/quo-vadis-orbi/facebook-stopirao-vestacku-inteligenciju-koja-je-uspela-da-stvori-sopstveni-jezik)

Facebook стопирао вештачку интелигенцију која је успела да створи сопствени језик ПОЈАВЉУЈУ се неочекивани проблеми са вештачком интелигенцијом.
        Facebook је објавио да је био принуђен да стопира један од својих система вештачке интелигенције због нечега сасвим непредвиђеног.
        Открио је да су његови истраживачи утврдили да је тај систем почео да ,,комуницира" на језику који му није био задат и који они нису могли да разумеју и дешифрују.
        Додатно је објаснио да су такозвани ,,агенти вештачке интелигенције - ботови" - који су били створени ради разговора са људима - прво међусобно комуницирали на упрошћеном енглеском, али да су после неког времена створили сопствени језик.
        Тај језик је разумела само вештачка интелигенција, а не и њени творци.
        Из ове околности је извучен очекивани и упозоравајући закључак:
        ,,Ако агенти вештачке интелигенције могу да разговарају на језику који су сами створили, онда им људи и њихово посредовање више нису ни потребни".
        Facebook је признао да је ,,повукао ручну" управо зато што његови сарадници нису били у стању да схвате и разумеју шта говоре и мисле агенти вештачке интелигенције коју су створили.
        Ово је, највероватније, тек почетак сличних проблема.
        Својеврсно прво алармно звоно.

Pa da, isto kao što je onomad onaj tviter bot brzo prešao na alt-right retoriku, jer je tako dobijao najviše reakcije. To je čak i bilo moguće predvideti, da su imali nekog komunikologa u timu.

Što je sistem kompleksniji to je više vremena potrebno da se shvati šta će biti krajnji rezultat. A kompjuteri upravo i služe da skrate to vreme do krajnjeg rezultata.

Elon Musk's Hyperloop Is Doomed for the Worst Reason (https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-03/elon-musk-s-hyperloop-is-doomed-for-the-worst-reason)

kao što znamo, Hyperloop je a pipe dream (sorry for the pun, pipes, tunnels) :)

plus, Elon nije idiot. zna on da neće dobiti odobrenja. ovo je bio super cheap PR za firmu i njega.

Роботи к'о судија Дред

Quote
OVO NEMA NI AMERIKA, PRVI PUT U SVETU: Roboti na kineskim ulicama izdaju naloge za hapšenje i presuđuju na licu mesta

Kina je uposlila hiljade robota da izdaju naloge za hapšenje kineskim državljanima

Skoro 15 000 pravnih slučajeva su pregledali roboti uposleni od prošlog septembra, rekli su zvaničnici na konferenciji za štampu održanoj ove nedelje.

Oni su primetili probleme i ispravili greške kod više od polovine slučajeva, a 541 presuda je bila smanjena.

Roboti su pomogli prilikom upravljanja slučajevima iz sedam gradskih opština i više od 30 nižih vlasti u Jiangsuu. Mnogi od tih slučajeva su saobraćajni prekršaji.

Roboti se kreću uz pomoć točkova i imaju torzo nalik ljudskom, bez ruku. Oni imaju digitalni ekran umesto lica koji prikazuje oči i usta, kao i informacije o slučaju.

Jiangsu se ubrzano razvija u jednu od najmodernijih kineskih provincija nakon otvaranja brojnih proizvođača komponenti visoke tehnologije u toj oblasti.

Jedna fabrika u elektronskoj četvrti Kunšana, grada u Jiangsuu, je prošle godine izjavila da će otpustiti 60 000 radnika i zameniti ih robotima.

Zvaničnici koji upravljaju legalnim robotima su namerili da otklone strahove da bi netačna analiza mogla prouzrokovati nepravedno suđenje za osumnjičenog, govoreći da mašine ,, ne sude subjektivno."

Međutim, čini se da će biti malo mesta za fleksibilnost kod suđenja kontrolisanih komunističkom partijom u Kini gde je skoro savršena stopa osuđivanosti, odnosno gde je više od 99% osuđivanih proglašeno krivim.

http://webtribune.rs/ovo-nema-ni-amerika-prvi-put-u-svetu-roboti-na-kineskim-ulicama-izdaju-naloge-za-hapsenje-i-presuduju-na-licu-mesta/

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Russia's Rostec Develops New Technology to Fight Wildfires With Artificial Rain

Russia's Rostec State Corporation has developed a new technology that induces rain in a designated place to fight wildfires, the corporation said on Friday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The technology implies firing squibs filled with silver iodide at clouds, which causes rain to start at least 30 minutes later.

"The Rostec state corporation created means of active intervention in the hydrometeorological processes. The technology is aimed at causing precipitation and will be used in agriculture as well as to fight wildfires. Serial production is going to start in the fourth quarter of 2017," Rostec said in a statement.

The Rostec's manufacturers have already been producing several means of intervention in the hydrometeorological processes, such as Alazan anti-hail rockets, PV-26 munitions causing precipitation, and Nuris anti-avalanche complexes.

https://sputniknews.com/science/201708111056387249-rostec-technology-fight-fire-artificial-rain/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYNdiLrvwzA

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'Until a reboot do us part': Japanese guys are marrying VR brides (VIDEO)

Japanese men are tying the digital knot with Virtual Reality brides – and the ceremony is just as strange as it sounds.

Footage from a bizarre ceremony in Tokyo Friday shows a suited Japanese groom exchanging vows with his cartoon VR girlfriend.

The 'couple' exchange vows and gaze into each other's eyes via VR headset before engaging in a remarkably awkward first kiss as husband and wife in front of their equally 'real' wedding guests.

The concept stems from the anime video game 'Niitzuma Lovely x Cation' in which players can develop and foster relationships with virtual girlfriends.

For players in particularly committed relationships with their anime paramours, the game's creators developed a way for the couples to be joined together in virtual matrimony.

No update as of yet on how the couple spent their first night as husband and wife. On a separate note, VR sex suits are now a thing.

https://www.rt.com/viral/394916-virtual-reality-brides-japan/

(https://img.rt.com/files/2017.07/original/59577f5efc7e934e358b4567.jpg)

(https://l3apq3bncl82o596k2d1ydn1-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/vr-wedding-japan-810x456.jpg)

(https://l3apq3bncl82o596k2d1ydn1-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/vr-wedding-japan2.jpg)

(https://l3apq3bncl82o596k2d1ydn1-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/vr-wedding-japan5.jpg)

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Kina će koristiti veštačku inteligenciju (AI) kako bi gledali u budućnost i pomogli policiji da predvidi zločine čak pre nego što se i dogode.

Slično kao u filmu "Suvišni izveštaj, vlasti u zemlji istočne Azije žele da uhvate kriminalce pre nego što počine bilo kakve prekršaje.

Policija u državi je u nadgledanju uvrstila pomoć AI da odredi ko će počiniti zločin pre nego što se to dogodi.

Li Meng, zamenik ministra za nauku, je rekao: "Ako dobro koristimo naše pametne sisteme i pametne objekte, možemo znati unapred... ko bi mogao biti terorista, ko bi mogao učiniti nešto loše."

Jedan od načina na koji se Kina nada da će zaviriti u budućnost je sa firmom za prepoznavanje lica "Cloud Walk," koja ima probni softver koji prikuplja podatke o tome gde se ljudi nalaze i šta rade.

Na primer, ako je građanin posetio prodavnicu oružja, onda ova firma može ukombinovati to sa drugim podacima kako bi procenila mogućnost te osobe da počini zločin.

Portparol "Cloud Walk-a," Fu Siaolong, je rekao: "Policija koristi sistem za rangiranje velikih podataka kako bi ocenili visoko sumnjive grupe ljude na osnovu toga gde idu i šta rade."

On je dodao da rizik raste ako osoba "često posećuje transportne centre i odlazi na sumnjiva mesta poput prodavnice noževa."

Drugi način na koji policija može koristiti AI da predvidi zločine je kroz algoritme koji koriste "analizu gomile" da otkrije "sumnjive" obrasce osobe kako bi utvrdili da li je ona lopov, na primer.

Takođe se može koristiti i za praćenje lokacija "velikog rizika," kao što su prodavnice noževa i čekića.

Gospodin Fu je dodao: "Naravno, ako neko kupi kuhinjski nož, to je u redu, ali ako ta osoba takođe kasnije kupi vreću i čekić, ta osoba postaje sumnjiva."

Vlasti su takođe spremne da koriste softver za "ličnu reidentifikaciju" kako bi pronašli nečiju identifikaciju čak i ako je na potpuno novoj lokaciji i pokušava da se prikrije.

Leng Biao, profesor za telesno prepoznavanje na Pekinškom univerzitetu za aeronautiku i astronautiku, je rekao: "Možemo kroristiti reidentifikaciju da pronađemo ljude koji izgledaju sumnjivo po tome što se odlaze i vraćaju se na isto područje, ili koji nose maske."

"Sa reidentifikacijom je takođe moguće i ponovo sastaviti nečiji trag širom velikog područja."

http://webtribune.rs/kina-koristi-tehnologiju-da-predvidi-zlocine-pre-nego-sto-se-dese/

verovatno postoji bolji topik za ovu vest, al da ne propustimo. elon mask se igra kako bismo mi voleli da možemo. :lol:

https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2017/8/14/16143306/spacex-falcon-9-rocket-launch-ground-landing-nasa-iss

I nastavlja da se igra:


Elon Musk proposes city-to-city travel by rocket, right here on Earth (https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/29/16383048/elon-musk-spacex-rocket-transport-earth-travel)

The first 'nation in space' has officially left Earth (https://www.cnet.com/news/asgardia-1-space-kingdom-nasa-orbital-atk-launch-nation/)

Ali evo kontrasta:

Payphones Still Make Millions of Dollars (https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/59y4z5/payphones-still-make-millions-of-dollars-crtc-report-canada)

Study Finds SpaceX Investment Saved NASA Hundreds of Millions (http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/rockets/a28995/study-finds-spacex-a-bargain-for-nasa/)

I want one! Sad još pare da zaradim. :lol:

https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-truck-revealed/

Nije specifičan izum, ali lep članak od Bri Koud:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-11-06-a-future-i-would-want-to-live-in

Graphene running shoes will hit the market next year (https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/09/graphene-running-shoes-will-hit-the-market-next-year/)

Emotion analytics may expose your true feelings to HR (http://searchhrsoftware.techtarget.com/feature/Emotion-analytics-may-expose-your-true-feelings-to-HR)

Your car may soon serve you ads — how about a pizza? (http://www.siliconbeat.com/2018/01/05/your-car-may-soon-serve-you-ads-how-about-a-pizza/)

Men Try to 'Redefine' Sexual Consent With Blockchain (https://gizmodo.com/men-try-to-redefine-sexual-consent-with-blockchain-1821964907)



(https://i.imgur.com/jH56mhX.jpg)

Ovo nije "živimo SF", jer ne može da zaživi, jer žene neće dozvoliti. Rešenje za continual consent je verovatno nekakva Alexa/Cortana koja je svedok celog seksualnog čina.

Čuj, ti to kažeš kao da je to ikako bolje. U oba slučaja je rešenje za osiguravanje pristanka totalni nadzor. A to je "živimo SF".

Blockchain pristup nije totalni nadzor, jer se dešava samo na početku, i zapravo ništa ne nadzire. I zato i jeste nedelotvorno. Trenutni problem je što imamo dva svedoka, koji će u slučaju prestupa biti na suprotnim stranama tužbe. Potreban je treći svedok.

нема тужбе ако обоје/обојица/оба/обоа свајпују пристанак и тиме сервер/софтвер учиниtи сведоком њихове будуће конгрегације, а гарантујем ти да ће бар један мушкарац и једна жена (или то/оно) свајповати, и тиме оправдати ове бизарне вести на овом топику.
ко што рече мац, блокчејн је управо супротан од тоталног надзора

Kako bre suprotan kad je vezan za konkretnu osobu i beleži sve?

Šta sve? Evo citata, "an app, LegalFling, which in theory could allow about-to-bone partners to log what they are and are not okay with before they bone. " To nije sve, nego samo anketa koju popuniš pre samog seksa. Možda je mnogim muškarcima to dovoljno, ali mnogim ženama nije. Tako i piše u ostatku teksta. Sigurno nas ima koji želimo slobodu da odustanemo od seksa u bilo kom trenutku. Ovaj blockchain nema veze s tim, ali ima muškaraca (nazovimo ih silovatelji) koji nisu spremni da pristanu na prekid seksa tokom samog seksa. Pošto ovaj blockchain ne beleži odluku žene da odustane od seksa tokom samog seksa onda ne beleži "sve".

Pa beleži sve njene pristanke i odustanke od početka pa zauvek.

Ali nije tačno to što pričaš. Ili ako je tačno onda nije praktično. Znači žena pre seksa zabeleži da želi seks sa određenim muškarcem. Tokom seksa s tim muškarcem predomisli se i ne želi više seks. Recimo da je blockchain omogućava ovo (meni se čini da ne omogućava, ali sam možebiti u krivu), to znači da žena mora da dohvati svoj mobilni i odsvajpuje muškarca, i to znači da od tog trenutka muškarac ne sme više da je dira. Ali šta ako muškarac sakrije njen telefon, ili joj prosto ne da da ga dohvati? Što se blokchaina tiče ona još uvek daje pristanak. Ili šta ako žena krišom odsvajpuje muškarca, ali nastavi da bludniči s njim? Muškarac će biti u pravnom problemu. Blockchain nije rešenje, upravo jer ne omogućuje totalni nadzor.

Zloupotreba je veran pratilac upotrebe. Ima sira ali ima i rupa.

мехо претпостављена апликација или штагод бележи заштагод је направљена, рецимо убер апликација бележи све твоје интеракције са убером (итд итд)...и то нема никакве везе са блокчејном
мац, управо си горе написао сценарио у коме неко ко је наручио убер жели да изађе из возила зато што је возач патуљак (колико год то било неправедно) али ће платити оно што је потписао свајповањем...хоћу рећи, ако обоје свајпују пристанак, пристали би на све уговорне одредбе, које, ако би претендовале да буду озбиљне (читај - адвокатски тим развојног тима би их
брижљиво саставио да обухвате све ситуације које сам развојни тим и кориснике апликације могу ставити у 'незгодну' и незгодну ситуацију), треба да имају разноврсне клаузуле у себи рачунајући и ону о прекинутом коитусу, и не сумњам да ће их имати (или их већ имају, нисам сигуран)...право питање је зашто се користи блокчејн технологија за нешто што би могла да одради обична апликација...мој тип је управо због немогућности надзора 3. лица...

други тип, само блокчејн технологија може да обезбеди учесницима у размени телесних флуида да буквално зараде својом интеракцијом...

Jeste li primetili da se sve završi kao advokatski pazar? Hajde, abortirajte temu.

Ja sam i hteo da kažem da je ovo besmisleno tehnološko "rešenje" za nešto što je socijalni problem i da podrazumeva složen sistem praćenja interakcija a koji na kraju dana ne rešava problem, iako pravi permanentni, neizmenjivi zapis nečijeg seksualnog života (ma koliko netačan bio).

али можеш да зарадиш од тога...то је прилично интересантан 'селинг поинт' за друштво у којем живимо - ко епизода блек мирора  xrofl

Ja nisam iz teksta na Gizmodou shvatio da je ovaj konkretni blokčejn povezan sa nekom kriptovalutom, ali to ne znači da neko neće da uzme ovu tvoju ideju i spoji lepo i korisno.  :lol:

Sad ćeš opet da se isfuljavaš iz onog šta si zabrljao?

Sigurno mi ni sad nećeš verovati kad ti kažem da nemam pojma šta sam ja to sad zabrljao i kako se isfuljavam???

Nemoj da se lažeš s nama.

Možda to da si na temu Živimo SF stavio link koji neće ni zaživeti, a bogami nije ni SF.

Pa, šta ja znam, za mene jeste živimo SF vest da se planira tehnološko rešenje koje je neraskidivo i neizmenjivo vezano za ličnost kako bi se obezbedilo da u seksualnom životu nema nasilja (a pritom i ne radi), ali naravno da dopuštam da sve to nije dovoljno "naučnofantastično".

Ali sumnjam da je Skalop na to mislio.

Naravno da nije. Scallop živi normalan život.

Живимо 1984.

Acoustic tractor beams could lead to levitating humans (https://www.engadget.com/2018/01/22/acoustic-tractor-beams-levitating-humans/)

Uz zvuke Jerihonskih truba.

:)

Bra'o!
De se setiiiii!

Quote from: Ugly MF on 23-01-2018, 10:32:26
:)

Bra'o!
De se setiiiii!

Sam si rek'o da se pravim pametan. :lol:

Samo ti nastavi da se pravis!
Meni mlogo zabavno!!!

We Are Truly Fucked: Everyone Is Making AI-Generated Fake Porn Now (https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/bjye8a/reddit-fake-porn-app-daisy-ridley)

Opet neko ne zna šta je AI?

Nije da se od Vicea očekuje da ulaze u fine detalje mašinskog učenja, umjetne inteligencije itd. Nisu oni neka preozbiljna publikacija. Kakogod, AI na stranu, meni je u ovome zanimljivo to što ulazimo u svet koji je Gibson opisao u Virtualnoj Svetosti, samo što su tamo lica u porno filmovima bila ubacivana od strane industrije (uzmeš anonimusa da odradi seks, a onda preko toga zalepiš lice nekog selebritija koji to radi za pare, takoreći porno-selebritija) a ovde to radi narod.

I to je demokratija. Kad nam postane svejedno da li je nešto istina ili laž.

Nebre, to je apatija. A ovo je indikator koliko neki ljudi imaju slobodnog vremena  :lol:

Nebre. To je indikacija da svaka budala ima svoje veselje.

Kako živimo sve duže, došlo je i do ovakvih stvari:

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-42708507

Nema toga u Jagodinu, kod Palme 5 generacija pod istim krovom!

Hyperloop is edging closer to reality (https://www.engadget.com/2018/03/08/state-of-hyperloop-2018/)

A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is "100 percent fatal" (https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610456/a-startup-is-pitching-a-mind-uploading-service-that-is-100-percent-fatal/)

Živimo SF...


...i od njega umiremo:


Uber self-driving test car involved in accident resulting in pedestrian death (https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/19/uber-self-driving-test-car-involved-in-accident-resulting-in-pedestrian-death/)

I can resist everything but temptation. :lol:

(https://www.znaksagite.com/diskusije/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi64.tinypic.com%2Fn5shhf.jpg&hash=8de802245d61c614e89ebf7d262c3d0908263cc6)

MIT's wearable device can 'hear' the words you say in your head (https://www.engadget.com/2018/04/06/mit-wearable-silent-words/)

Quote from: Meho Krljic on 07-04-2018, 07:07:15
MIT's wearable device can 'hear' the words you say in your head (https://www.engadget.com/2018/04/06/mit-wearable-silent-words/)

sreća, radost :)
bitno da je tehnologija na dohvat ruke, za dizajn ne treba toliko puno vremena.

Jedino mislim da ovaj tekst nije jasan, odnosno da sugeriše da instrument čita nekakve sinaptičke signale, umesto da zapravo čita pokrete mišića kada izgovaramo reči (samo bez upotrebe glasa i otvaranja usta, a što je "subvokalizacija") i da  to tumači.

Ovako počinje bar 5-6 naučnofantastičnih romana i filmova iz moje mladosti:


   Scientists accidentally create mutant enzyme that eats plastic bottles  (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/16/scientists-accidentally-create-mutant-enzyme-that-eats-plastic-bottles)

NASA's EM-drive is a magnetic WTF-thruster (https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/05/nasas-em-drive-is-a-magnetic-wtf-thruster/)

Ne mogu da se setim na kom topiku smo već pisali o ovim EM pogonima, pa evo ovaj tekst ovde.

well, napredujemo. :lol:

http://www.syfy.com/syfywire/famous-sex-robot-can-now-refuse-sex-if-shes-not-in-the-mood

https://www.b92.net/biz/vesti/srbija.php?yyyy=2018&mm=09&dd=20&nav_id=1446088

До скора сам ово гледао само у СФ филмовима.

Nema ništa o svinjskim papcima?

Japan's Hayabusa 2 mission lands on the surface of a distant asteroid (https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/21/japans-hayabusa-2-mission-lands-on-the-surface-of-a-distant-asteroid/?yptr=yahoo)

Quote from: Meho Krljic on 22-09-2018, 06:50:13
Japan's Hayabusa 2 mission lands on the surface of a distant asteroid (https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/21/japans-hayabusa-2-mission-lands-on-the-surface-of-a-distant-asteroid/?yptr=yahoo)

genijalno! kakvi carevi.

U realnom vremenu posmatramo nastajanje Bond-negativca:

Musk to resign as Tesla chairman, remain as CEO in SEC settlement (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-musk-sec/musk-to-resign-as-tesla-chairman-remain-as-ceo-in-sec-settlement-idUSKCN1M90SY)

let's see kako će sve to da se završi. fakat je da se elon musk ponaša erratic već neko vreme kad je tesla u pitanju. moguće i da je našao izlaz iz toliko obaveza a da sam ne mora da da ostavku.

Nisam mislio da ću doći u poziciju da branim Muska. Ali, takav mi je adet. Ljude sa velikom vizijom uvek unište oni sa malom. Uvek nađem brojne analogije, pa vam ostavljam da vi nađete svoje.  xfrog

Quote from: Meho Krljic on 30-09-2018, 05:40:59
U realnom vremenu posmatramo nastajanje Bond-negativca:

Musk to resign as Tesla chairman, remain as CEO in SEC settlement (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-musk-sec/musk-to-resign-as-tesla-chairman-remain-as-ceo-in-sec-settlement-idUSKCN1M90SY)

Кад смо код Бонда вечерас на РТС 1 имаш мој омиљени Бонд филм Казино Ројал. Никако не смеш то да пропустиш!
А што се тиче Маска он заиста и јесте визионар. Ако му пропадне једна визија успеће друга. Ја се највише уздам у оне супербрзе  хиперлупове.

Pa gledao sam Kazino Rojal jedno 3-4 puta, naravno.

A Mask jeste poslednjih meseci imao malo, hadje da kažemo, neodmerene javne nastupe što, naravno, uvek proizvede nervozu kod investitora (između ostalog je napravio taj džumbus sa "najavljivanjem" da će da otkupi većinski paket deonica Tesle i da je skine sa berze) i utiče na cenu akcija tako da me ne čudi da su ga sklonili sa čela borda...

Vizionari redovno stradaju od nestrpljenja svojih ulagača. I Galilej je prihvatio mesto CEO da ga ne bi spalili kao Bruna.

Brain-to-brain network allows three people to share their thoughts (https://www.engadget.com/2018/09/30/brain-to-brain-network/?yptr=yahoo)

Flexible self-powered biosensors

Current biological sensors require bulky external power sources. Ultrathin solar cells have now been fabricated that can power flexible, wearable sensors for the precise and continuous monitoring of biological signals.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06788-1?utm_source=twt_na&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=NNPnature

(https://media.nature.com/w800/magazine-assets/d41586-018-06788-1/d41586-018-06788-1_16146794.jpg)



Figure 1 | A self-powered ultraflexible biosensor. Park et al. demonstrate a platform for capturing biological signals and converting them into electronic signals, which can then be analysed. The platform is ultraflexible, and does not require external power connections. It consists of electronic devices known as organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs) and solar cells called organic photovoltaic (OPV) cells. These components are connected by an electric circuit and are contained on an ultrathin plastic substrate. The platform is powered by the electrical energy produced when the OPV cells are irradiated with light. The authors attached the platform to a person's finger and a gel electrode to the person's chest (not shown), and found that the platform could be used to monitor the person's heart rate.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0536-x

China to launch artificial 'moon' into orbit to light up city   (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2018/10/17/china-launch-artificial-moon-orbit-light-city/)

Quote from: Meho Krljic on 18-10-2018, 06:27:40
China to launch artificial 'moon' into orbit to light up city   (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2018/10/17/china-launch-artificial-moon-orbit-light-city/)

tekst je quite zabavan al ovo mu je najbolji deo:

QuoteThe scheme developed by Russia used a device called Znamya 2. It was equipped with a 25-metre mirror to illuminate a three-mile wide patch of land. During its first orbit the craft was destroyed following a collision in space. The scheme was abandoned. 

mislim da je, ko god je pisao ovaj tekst, pomešao koliziju satelita (plural) iz 2009. sa znamya 2 sudbinom i napravio rijaliti živimo SF!
na ovom topiku, bitte, hoćemo samo realni živimo SF život!  :lol: :lol: :lol: 

Da, vidiš, ne znam otkud ispade ta glupost. Verovatno potreba da se Rusi, makar i lažima, oblate kako su nesposobni  :( :( :( :(

Quote from: Meho Krljic on 18-10-2018, 09:15:35
Da, vidiš, ne znam otkud ispade ta glupost. Verovatno potreba da se Rusi, makar i lažima, oblate kako su nesposobni  :( :( :( :(

ne mislim ni da je specijalna namera da se rusi oblate, to je pre neki mashup, neko spucao članak za koju funtu. za tri dlake (tanušne), pa trash štampa.
ipak je to telegraph, a od njih tako nešto i očekujemo!  :lol:

Hungarian scientists are working on a cure against stink bugs (https://dailynewshungary.com/hungarian-scientists-are-working-on-a-cure-against-stink-bugs/)

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n20/meehan-crist/race-doesnt-come-into-it

In the last section of the book, Zimmer spends time with researchers who may have found a way to alter for good the DNA of transgenic mosquitoes in an attempt to wipe out their ability to transmit disease. Building on the work of Jennifer Doudna, who pioneered CRISPR, as well as Valentino Gantz and others (the transmission of knowledge is a form of heredity), the biologist Anthony James found a way to cut a long piece of DNA out of the mosquito genome and replace it with genes engineered to make mosquitoes unable to transmit malaria, as well as CRISPR genes that can copy this DNA to other chromosomes. All the mosquitoes in this lineage then carry these genes, which could potentially spread through a population and overpower other genes. The implications are both promising and chilling – diseases could be wiped out, but using similar technology a few people could conceivably make choices that alter the genetic inheritance of the human species for ever. Zimmer ends his book in James's lab full of red-eyed flies. Twenty-nine generations have inherited the trait, along with CRISPR genes from their ancestors. But this inheritance is not perfect – there are weak links. There is still work to be done and more, no doubt, to come.

Ion-powered aircraft flies with no moving parts (https://www.engadget.com/2018/11/21/mit-ionic-wind-aircraft-flies/?yptr=yahoo)

http://www.rts.rs/page/magazine/ci/story/501/zanimljivosti/3332836/rogozin-provericemo-jesu-li-amerikanci-bili-na-mesecu.html?fbclid=IwAR2fkiM-krcG67wTmgxUVjuBqpbrwqJzDamgkuA0QHFEZCnj315DGvt8ogw

(https://im-indiatimes-in.cdn.ampproject.org/ii/w1200/s/im.indiatimes.in/content/2017/May/russia-orthodox-patriarch-wannacry_1495178656.jpg)

Filip K. Dik bi bio ponosan :lol:

http://rs.n1info.com/Vesti/a459249/Ministar-predlaze-uvodjenje-krivicnog-dela-priprema-ubistva-struka-strahuje-od-zloupotrebe.html

Ne moraš ni da klikneš da bi znao da je u pitanju ministar Stefanović.

Columbia Engineers Translate Brain Signals Directly into Speech (https://zuckermaninstitute.columbia.edu/columbia-engineers-translate-brain-signals-directly-speech)

Microsoft's mixed reality HoloLens 2 headset is official (https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/24/microsoft-hololens-2-announced/?yptr=yahoo)

Robot news presenter causes a stir on Russian TV (https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47981274)

Kakvi su ovi Britanci, jebote, samo da se podsmevaju...

MIT unveils new 'blackest black' material and makes a diamond disappear (https://www.cnet.com/news/mit-unveils-new-blackest-black-material-and-makes-a-diamond-disappear/)

Počelo je...

Woman Claims AI Robots Killed 29 Japanese Scientists In Incredible Conspiracy Theory
https://thehooksite.com/woman-claims-ai-robots-killed-29-japanese-scientists-in-incredible-conspiracy-theory-2/



"The scariest part is that lab workers deactivated two of the robots and took apart the third.

But the fourth robot began restoring itself, and somehow connected to an orbiting satellite to download information about how it could rebuild itself even more strongly than before."

She then goes on to say how she was told:

"This is serious s*** Linda, but you're not going to hear about this in the news.

The robotics company has too much to lose, and the government wants AI robot soldiers. "

Dad 3D-printed a Lamborghini because his son liked one in Forza (https://www.autoblog.com/2019/10/07/diy-3d-printed-lamborghini-aventador/?yptr=yahoo)

Naravno, šasiju je pravio na ruke a motor uzeo iz drugih kola ali opet, sve je koštalo oko 20 hiljada dolara, impresivno.

The USPTO wants to know if artificial intelligence can own the content it creates (https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/13/20961788/us-government-ai-copyright-patent-trademark-office-notice-artificial-intelligence)

 Foreigners visiting China are increasingly stumped by its cashless society (https://boingboing.net/2019/11/11/beggars-and-toilet-paper.html)

The Men Who Try to Hack Tinder to Score Hotter Women (https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/the-men-who-try-to-hack-tinder-to-score-hotter-women)

A ima i ovih koji preskoče taj korak:


'They Can't Stop Us:' People Are Having Sex With 3D Avatars of Their Exes and Celebrities (https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/j5yzpk/they-cant-stop-us-people-are-having-sex-with-3d-avatars-of-their-exes-and-celebrities)

Real-life Tony Stark has 4 computer chips implanted in his hands and does cool stuff with them  (https://abcnews.go.com/US/real-life-tony-stark-computer-chips-implanted-hands/story?id=67926575)

A New Protein Source Made From Air Could Be A Planet-Saving Game Changer (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/protein-solar-foods-air-renewable-energy_n_5e15ae04c5b6c7b859d32d47) 

Quote
Developed by the Finnish company Solar Foods in a lab just outside Helsinki, the protein ― called Solein ― is made using living microbes that are then grown in a fermenter in a process similar to brewing beer. The microbes are fed with carbon dioxide, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen ― all taken from the air. 

Augmented Reality in a Contact Lens: It's the Real Deal (https://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/consumer-electronics/portable-devices/ar-in-a-contact-lens-its-the-real-deal)

Slejt je napravio listu 30 najviše zlih tehnoloških kompanija na planeti. Listu, ako je uopšte potrebno da naglašavam, ne treba shvatati kao nekakav preozbiljan gospel (8Chan i Dizni na istoj listi jer je 2020. godina i mi živimo SF), ali je interesantan inventar naših (ili bar "naših") modernih strahova:

https://slate.com/technology/2020/01/evil-list-tech-companies-dangerous-amazon-facebook-google-palantir.html

kakav fejk treš! :lol:

Živimo SF. I to Black Mirror inačicu (Mada je i Tom Taylor imao svojevremeno sličan zaplet u jednom X-Men spinofu):


  An anonymous group claims it took DNA from global elites — and is auctioning it off (https://onezero.medium.com/trumps-dna-is-reportedly-for-sale-here-s-what-someone-could-do-with-it-e4402a9062c2)

Živimo SF a u slučaju Arnolda Švarcenegera, SF iz nekoliko filmova u kojima je glumio:

Arnold Schwarzenegger launches £7m lawsuit against Russian robot company for using his likeness (https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/arnold-schwarzenegger-sues-russian-robot-company-100622751.html)

juče smo imali prvu odbranu mastera online. super smo se proveli i kandidat i mi, svako u svojoj sobici, a priznajem i da mi se već mnogo više sviđa nego in vivo odbrane te se nadam da ćemo u budućnosti imati isti setting čak i kad se rešimo corone.


in addition, sva predavanja se preusmeravaju na cisco webex! ili zoom, kad webex trokira. feels kao kad mi se pong onomad pojavio u televizoru.  :lol:


ovaj deo trenutne distopije je pure joy.

ljudi!!!!

živimo SF! 18 sati let beč - sidnej! kakva dobra vest!! :) :)

https://runningwithmiles.boardingarea.com/austrian-airlines-completes-historic-17-hour-flight-to-sydney/ (https://runningwithmiles.boardingarea.com/austrian-airlines-completes-historic-17-hour-flight-to-sydney/)

Apple and Google partner on COVID-19 contact tracing technology
https://www.blog.google/inside-google/company-announcements/apple-and-google-partner-covid-19-contact-tracing-technology/

Quote from: Meho Krljic on 28-06-2016, 09:00:55
Kolumnist Vošington posta tvrdi da je ubrzani plejbek video materijala ključ za budućnost:



I have found a new way to watch TV, and it changes everything (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/22/i-have-found-a-new-way-to-watch-tv-and-it-changes-everything/)

QuoteGame of Thrones. The Bachelor. House of Cards. It's now possible to watch everything. How? It's the future of storytelling.



IHAVE a habit that horrifies most people. I watch television and films in fast forward. This has become increasingly easy to do with computers (I'll show you how) and the time savings are enormous. Four episodes of "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" fit into an hour. An entire season of "Game of Thrones" goes down on the bus ride from D.C. to New York.
I started doing this years ago to make my life more efficient. Between trendy Web shows, auteur cable series, and BBC imports, there's more to watch than ever before. Some TV execs worry that the industry is outpacing its audience. A record-setting 412 scripted series ran in 2015, nearly double the number in 2009.
"There is simply too much television," FX Networks CEO John Landgraf said last year. (http://variety.com/2015/tv/news/tca-fx-networks-john-landgraf-wall-street-1201559191/) Nonsense, responded Netflix content chief Ted Sarandos (http://variety.com/2015/tv/news/netflix-ted-sarandos-john-landgraf-fx-too-much-tv-hrts-1201619086/), who has been commissioning shows at a startling rate. "There's no such thing as too much TV," he said.
So here we are, spending three hours a day on average, scrambling (http://www.adweek.com/news/television/how-millennials-consume-tv-depends-which-stage-life-theyre-170393) to keep up with the Kardashians, the Starks, the Underwoods, and the dozens of others on the roster of must-watch TV, which has exploded in the age of fragmented audiences. Nowadays, to stay on the same wavelength with your different groups of friends — the ones hating on "Meat Chad (http://www.vulture.com/2016/06/bachelorette-chad-is-playing-a-deeper-game-than-you-realize.html)" and the ones cooing over Khaleesi — you have to watch in bulk.


This is where the trick of playing videos at 1.5x to 2x comes in — the latest twist in the millennia-old tradition of technology changing storytelling. The concept should be familiar to many. For years, podcast and audiobook players have provided speedup options, and research shows that most people prefer listening to accelerated speech.
In recent years, software has made it much easier to perform the same operation on videos. This was impossible for home viewers in the age of VHS. But computers can now easily speed up any video you throw at them. You can play DVDs and iTunes purchases at whatever tempo you like. YouTube allows you select a speedup factor on its player. And a Google engineer has written a popular Chrome extension (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/video-speed-controller/nffaoalbilbmmfgbnbgppjihopabppdk?hl=en) that accelerates most other Web videos, including on Netflix, Vimeo and Amazon Prime.
Over 100,000 people have downloaded that plug-in, and the reviews are ecstatic. "Oh my God! I regret all the wasted time I've lived before finding this gem!!" one user wrote.
But speeding up video is more than an efficiency hack. I quickly discovered that acceleration makes viewing more pleasurable. "Modern Family" played at twice the speed is far funnier — the jokes come faster and they seem to hit harder. I get less frustrated at shows that want to waste my time with filler plots (http://abc.go.com/shows/marvels-agents-of-shield) or gratuitous violence (http://www.hbo.com/game-of-thrones). The faster pace makes it easier to appreciate the flow of the plot and the structure of the scenes.
  Wonkblog writer Jeff Guo watches all his television shows at 160% speed. This clip from ABC's Modern Family will give you an idea of what that looks like. (ABC)  As I've come to consume all my television on my computer, I've developed other habits, too. I don't watch linearly anymore; I often scrub back and forth to savor complex scenes or to skim over slow ones. In other words, I watch television like I read a book. I jump around. I re-read. Sometimes I speed up. Sometimes I slow down.
I confess these new viewing techniques have done something strange to my sense of reality. I can't watch television in real-time anymore. Movie theaters feel suffocating. I need to be able to fast-forward and rewind and accelerate and slow down, to be able to parcel my attention where it's needed. The most common objection I hear is that this ruins the cinematic experience. Annette Insdorf, a film professor at Columbia, told me: "Sometimes watching a movie is like lovemaking: Isn't a sustained seduction more gratifying than momentary thrills?"
But the more I've learned about the history and the science of media consumption, the more I've come to believe this is the future of how we will appreciate television and movies. We will interrogate videos in new ways using our powers of time manipulation. Maybe not everyone will watch on fast-forward like I do, but we will all be watching on our own terms.
In a way, what's happening to video recalls what happened to literature when we stopped reading aloud, together, and started reading silently, alone. Beginning in the Middle Ages, people no longer had to gather in groups to hear tales or learn the news or study religion. They could be alone with a text and their own thoughts, an unprecedented freedom that led to political and religious turmoil and forever changed intellectual life.
With computers, video consumption is also becoming a solitary, self-paced act — and maybe a more analytical act, as well. If you believe, as I do, in the artistic potential of television and film, then perhaps we are on the brink of another cultural transformation — viewers finally seizing control of this medium. And the medium will be better for it.
FOR a very long time, life was limited by the rate at which we spoke. Although we have had writing systems for millennia, early texts were designed to be read aloud, meaning that literature unfolded at the pace of human speech.
Many ancient Greek and Roman documents, for instance, lacked punctuation, spaces or lowercase letters, making it challenging for people to understand them without sounding out the words syllable by syllable. "A written text was essentially a transcription which, like modern musical notation, became an intelligible message only when it was performed orally to others or to oneself," historian Paul Saenger writes (http://www.brepolsonline.net/doi/abs/10.1484/J.VIATOR.2.301476?journalCode=viator).
There are physical limits to how quickly we can form sounds, as anyone who has attempted a tongue-twister can attest. Mouths need time to move into position for the next vowel or consonant. A good estimate (http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/content/11/1/90.abstract) for the natural rate of speech in English is 200 to 300 syllables per minute, which translates into 150 to 200 words per minute.
According to Audible (http://audible-acx.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/6477/c/3550), the audiobook company, the typical book recording is performed at 155 wpm. A 1990 study (http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/content/11/1/90.abstract) found that radio broadcasts run at 160 wpm on average, while everyday conversations, which use shorter words, occur at about 210 wpm.


For much of human history, this was the sound barrier for communicating ideas.
It's not that silent reading was impossible in antiquity. It was just very difficult. There exist tales of scholars who seemed to absorb books silently; in the fourth century, Saint Augustine told of an odd monk who read without forming the words with his mouth. "When he read," Augustine wrote (https://books.google.com/books?id=guvT6FGNoVwC&pg=PA144&lpg=PA144&dq=his+eyes+scanned+the+page+and+his+heart+sought+out+the+meaning,+but+his+voice+was+silent+and+his+tongue+was+still.&source=bl&ots=VQ3vioPt87&sig=Gw5_MQ3mF37kc17AthWQzDtBzrs&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjH79vhkqjNAhWIth4KHd2dBdYQ6AEIPTAE#v=onepage&q=his%20eyes%20scanned%20the%20page%20and%20his%20heart%20sought%20out%20the%20meaning%2C%20but%20his%20voice%20was%20silent%20and%20his%20tongue%20was%20still.&f=false), "his eyes scanned the page and his heart sought out the meaning, but his voice was silent and his tongue was still."
Historians debate whether these silent readers were regarded as freaks or the practice was merely unusual. Reading was still a group activity in the fifth and sixth centuries. One person read aloud while others listened. Even for scribes who copied manuscripts in solitude, the act of reading was intertwined with the act of speaking. Many early medieval monks who had taken vows of silence were still allowed to mumble as they read, Saenger writes (http://www.brepolsonline.net/doi/abs/10.1484/J.VIATOR.2.301476?journalCode=viator), because mumbling was considered part of the reading process.
During the Middle Ages, scribes began introducing spacing and punctuation into texts, which made silent reading much easier for everyone. The practice began in monasteries around the 10th century and slowly spread (http://users.manchester.edu/FacStaff/SSNaragon/Kant/LP/Readings/Chartier.html) to university libraries a few hundred years later, and finally to the European aristocracy by the 14th and 15th centuries, according to historian Roger Chartier.
The technique of silent, solitary reading released people from the sluggishness of the spoken word — as well as from the judgment of their peers. Reading in private gave people room to engage with a text, the freedom to think critically and sometimes heretically. Opinions too controversial for group reading could be disseminated and consumed in private. The result, historians say, was an intellectual, scientific — and spiritual — blossoming in Europe.
"Silent, secret, private reading paved the way for previously unthinkable audacities," Chartier writes (https://books.google.com/books?id=OoUYAoSNMFMC&pg=PA126&dq=%22Although+the+invention+of+printing+was+indeed+a%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjisriwpajNAhUEbSYKHe6sBtUQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=%22Although%20the%20invention%20of%20printing%20was%20indeed%20a%22&f=false). "In the late Middle Ages, even before the invention of the printing press, heretical texts circulated in manuscript form, critical ideas were expressed, and erotic books, suitably illuminated, enjoyed considerable success."
Chartier called silent reading the "other revolution" — together with the printing press and mass literacy, these developments created both the demand and the supply for a vast quantity of writing. The faster pace of silent reading accelerated the spread of new ideas and vaulted Western society toward religious and political schism.
"This 'privatization' of reading is undeniably one of the major cultural developments of the early modern era," Chartier argued (https://books.google.com/books?id=OoUYAoSNMFMC&pg=PA126&dq=%22Although+the+invention+of+printing+was+indeed+a%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjisriwpajNAhUEbSYKHe6sBtUQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=%22Although%20the%20invention%20of%20printing%20was%20indeed%20a%22&f=false).
WHAT silent reading also revealed was that the rate of human thought far outstrips the rate of human speech.
Broadcasters speak at about 160 wpm, but college students can comfortably devour a text at 300 wpm, which also seems (http://www.jstor.org/stable/40016440?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents) to be the most efficient speed for reading comprehension, on average.
Some people, of course, read slower, and others read much, much faster. The beauty of text is that we absorb it at our own pace. Not so for audiovisual recordings, at least not for much of the 20th century. If you play back a tape or a phonograph record too quickly, the voices turn squeaky and unintelligible. Recordings remained difficult to skim until the 1950s, when researchers made a set of discoveries about human speech.
It turns out that sounds of the spoken word are vastly redundant. Vowels and consonants drag on longer than necessary for us to understand them. In the late 1940s, Harvard researchersdiscovered (http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/nbradley/afrl/PAPERS/IntelligibilityOfInterruptedSpeech.pdf) they could cover up more than half of a speech recording without damaging a listener's comprehension. The trick was to rapidly mute and unmute the audio. These silent gaps were brief enough that people's minds could fill them in easily. Words sounded choppy, but they remained perfectly intelligible.
"It is much like seeing a landscape through a picket fence," the researchers wrote. "The pickets interrupt the view at regular intervals, but the landscape is perceived as continuing behind the pickets."


The Harvard researchers rapidly muted and unmuted audio recordings. The top picture shows the original sound wave. The bottom picture shows the resulting sound wave, which has silent bits. Even though half of the sound wave has been destroyed, the researchers found that people could still understand it. (Miller and Licklider, 1950.)
A team of engineers at the University of Illinois soon had another idea: Instead of leaving the gaps in, why not cut them out (http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=1163770&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fiel6%2F8340%2F26161%2F01163770.pdf%3Farnumber%3D1163770) and stitch the remaining slivers of audio together? For instance, deleting every other millisecond of audio would cause the recording to play in half the time. This new way of speeding up sound, which became known as the sampling method, had the benefit of not making people sound like chipmunks.
In the 1960s, a blind psychologist named Emerson Foulke began experimenting with this technique to accelerate speech. A professor at the University of Louisville, Foulke was frustrated with the slowness of recorded books for the blind, so he tried speeding them up. The sampling method proved surprisingly effective. In Foulke's experiments (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1968.tb00070.x/abstract), speech could be accelerated to 250-275 wpm without affecting people's scores on a listening comprehension test.


These limits were suspiciously close to the average college reading rate. Foulke suspected that beyond 300 wpm, deeper processes in the brain were getting overloaded. Experiments showed that at 300-400 wpm, individual words were still clear enough to understand; except at that rate, many listeners couldn't keep up with rapid stream of words, likely because their short-term memories were overtaxed.
Some, of course, fared better than others. Just as people naturally read at different rates, subjects varied in how well they could understand accelerated speech. Further studies found a connection to cognitive ability. Those (https://archive.org/stream/proceedingsoflou1966emer#page/16/mode/2up) with higher intelligence, as well as faster readers, were more adept at understanding sped-up recordings. (The NSA once considered (https://www.nsa.gov/news-features/declassified-documents/cryptologic-quarterly/assets/files/The_Use_of_Compressed_Speech.pdf) using tests involving accelerated speech to screen for people who could become morse code operators.)
The most startling discovery, though, was that people actually enjoy listening to accelerated audio. Foulke and his colleagues noticed that college students preferred recordings that had been sped up by 30 percent, from 175 wpm to 222 wpm. More recent (http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED347988.pdf) studies (http://psychsocgerontology.oxfordjournals.org/content/54B/3/P199.full.pdf) find (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1968.tb00078.x/abstract) that (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563208000423), given the choice, people will increase playback rate by about 40 to 50 percent on average — a 1.4 to 1.5x speedup.
This tendency extends to video as well, as experiments (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08886504.1995.10782138) with video lectures (http://designer.50g.com/docs/Salt_2004.pdf) and even Discovery Channel shows have shown. Increasing the tempo of a recording seems to stave off boredom and help people stay engaged. "With the slower pace, my attention span actually wavered, and I focused on too much detail," one subject told researchers at Microsoft (http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=303017).
Sometimes, people don't even notice that they are watching on fast-forward. Cable companies will slightly speed up shows to make room for more ads (http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2015/03/04/tv_shows_sped_up_to_make_room_for_ads_can_you_tell_the_difference_a_quiz.html), but the difference can be hard to detect — in part because the brain adapts to the higher speeds.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the Defense Department began investigating compressed speech as a way to boost learning. Military-funded experiments (http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=buy.optionToBuy&id=1965-11241-001) showed that people can be trained (http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1985-16026-001) to better understand accelerated recordings. Just a few weeks of regular exposure seemed to alter how people perceived and processed language, causing them to prefer faster and faster listening rates.
Some of those changes happen within minutes. An experiment in 1997 (http://psycnet.apa.org/?&fa=main.doiLanding&doi=10.1037/0096-1523.23.3.914) found that listening to just five sentences of accelerated speech boosted subsequent comprehension rates by 15 percent. This process may be related (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811909007964#articles) to how our brains adjust to unfamiliar accents. Have you ever noticed that it becomes easier and easier to talk to someone with a foreign accent? It's not them. It's your brain making short-term adaptations (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15658715).
Our brains also make long-term adaptations (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0047099) to accelerated speech. Continued training increases people's accuracy rates and their comfort with sped-up recordings. Functional MRI scans show changes in how their brains respond to speech (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1388245715003351). Anecdotally, many subjects found that repeated exposure to accelerated speech caused speech at regular speeds to sound strange.
This seemsto have happened to me as well. After watching accelerated video on my computer for a few months, live television began to seem excruciatingly slow. Ilya Grigorik, the Google engineer who invented the Chrome extension, had a similar experience. He regularly watches videos at double speed, adjusting the pace up or down depending on how complex the ideas are.
"Whenever I describe it to people, I get a very weird look," he said. "Then I actually convince them to try it. It's uncomfortable for them at first, but once they get into it, they really get into it."
WE all chart our own paths through a text. I rarely read a book straight through from start to finish. I take detours, I backtrack, and I always scan the plot summary on Wikipedia to learn what's coming next. Psychologists at the University of California, San Diego have found (http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/archive/newsrel/soc/2011_08spoilers.asp) that people enjoy a story more if the ending has already been spoiled. Suspense, it seems, is overrated.
The Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov believed that re-reading was the only way to truly enjoy a novel. Not until the second or third go-around can we perceive a novel's grand schemes and secrets. Of the initial encounter, he once said (https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/01/21/nabokov-on-what-makes-a-good-reader/): "When we read a book for the first time, the very process of laboriously moving our eyes from left to right, line after line, page after page, this complicated physical work upon the book, the very process of learning in terms of space and time what the book is about, this stands between us and artistic appreciation."
There's no one right way to enjoy a book. Literary theorist Roland Barthes encouraged us not to treat novels so literally or linearly, but to traipse around in search of our own meanings. Why, then, do we still watch television straightforwardly? Why do we relinquish ourselves to the pace set by a film's director? Can't we find more interesting ways to be a couch potato?
For a long time, the answer was that the technology did not allow it. But with the rise of computer viewing, everyone can take charge of how they travel through a video. I often consume reality programs at double speed or faster because the idioms of these shows are so familiar. For me, watching "The Bachelorette" is like shucking a crab. I know where the juicy bits are, and I know which parts are inedible.
Accelerated speeds make it easier to perceive the structure of a story; slower speeds allow me to savor the details of the filmmaking. These alternative styles of viewing are no less illuminating. At double speed, the Red Wedding scene from "Game of Thrones" crosses the threshold from high drama to high farce. You start to see how the directors strained to create a moment of maximum trauma, how the death scenes are overacted, how the massacre operates like the mechanical gnashings of a meat-processing plant.
  Wonkblog writer Jeff Guo watches all his television shows at 160% speed. This clip from HBO's Game of Thrones will give you an idea of what that looks like. (HBO)  I recently described my viewing habits to Mary Sweeney, the editor on the cerebral cult classic "Mulholland Drive (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000IEXVCC?ie=UTF8&tag=thewaspos09-20&camp=1789&linkCode=xm2&creativeASIN=B000IEXVCC)." She laughed in horror. "Everything you just said is just anathema to a film editor," she said. "If you don't have respect for how something was edited, then try editing some time! It's very hard."
Sweeney, who is also a professor at the University of Southern California, believes in the privilege of the auteur. She told me a story about how they removed all the chapter breaks from the DVD version of Mulholland Driveto preserve the director's vision. "The film, which took two years to make, was meant to be experienced from beginning to end as one piece," she said.
I disagree. Mulholland Drive is one of my favorite films, but it's intentionally dreamlike and incomprehensible at times. The DVD version even included clues from director David Lynch to help people baffled by the plot. I advise first-time viewers to watch with a remote in hand to ward off disorientation. Liberal use of the fast-forward and rewind buttons allows people to draw connections between different sections of the film.
I found something of a sympathetic ear in Peter Markham, who teaches directing at the American Film Institute Conservatory. "This notion of privacy, of watching privately and forming your own cathedral of narrative — that's interesting," he said. "But that, I think, is mostly an intellectual or cerebral experience. The thing about dramatic narrative is that it creates an emotional, visceral, subconscious experience. That stuff has its own rhythm, its own insistence."
Markham argued that film is more than a stream of dialogue or a sequence of events. The timing of the images imprints on our brains in a special way. "If you speed up Hitchcock, if you speed up "Rear Window (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002RSU9PY?ie=UTF8&tag=thewaspos09-20&camp=1789&linkCode=xm2&creativeASIN=B002RSU9PY)," you won't get the same experience," he said. "It's like trying to speed up a Beyoncé track. It's already at the perfect speed."
IT didn't occur to me until later, of course, that people do mess with Beyoncé all the time. DJs chop her up, stretch her over new beats, snatch bits of her vocals to craft new songs. Today's cinema fans also engage in forms of creative remixing. They assemble montages (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsJSRP7cZVo) of their favorite characters. They create entirely original shows by re-editing scenes from ones.  The actor Topher Grace, for instance, famously made his own unauthorized version of the "Star Wars" prequel movies called "Episode III.5: The Editor Strikes Back." Those who have seen it say it's a masterful recombobulation of those three flawed films. (http://www.slashfilm.com/topher-grace-edited-star-wars-prequels-85minute-movie/)
Henry Jenkins, a media theorist at the University of Southern California, reminded me that creative repurposing has been happening in fan communities for decades. Throughout his career, Jenkins has studied the rise of "participatory culture" — ways in which fans take control of favorite stories through fanzines, fan art, fan fiction, and more recently, fan videos. "Fans reject the idea of a definitive version produced, authorized, and regulated by some media conglomerate," Jenkins wrote over a decade ago (https://books.google.com/books?id=RlRVNikT06YC&pg=PA256&lpg=PA256&dq=Instead,+fans+envision+a+world+where+all+of+us+can+participate+in+the+creation+and+circulation+of+central+cultural+myths&source=bl&ots=9B7Glx0BOp&sig=DVe943voUoJtNOM99sqw7uim0yk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiI2ZTdsrbNAhVBHh4KHQRBDQUQ6AEIHjAA#v=onepage&q=Instead%2C%20fans%20envision%20a%20world%20where%20all%20of%20us%20can%20participate%20in%20the%20creation%20and%20circulation%20of%20central%20cultural%20myths&f=false). "Instead, fans envision a world where all of us can participate in the creation and circulation of central cultural myths."
Perhaps fan culture offers the most optimistic vision for the future of media consumption. The power of the auteur is diminishing, but our appreciation for the art form is increasing. More and more, we will watch TV on our computers, on own terms, creating our own meanings and deriving our own, private pleasures.
"I think your experience is very similar to my own," Jenkins said. "I do treat television more and more like a book. I totally get that analogy, and it's a good way to think about the degree of control we now have over what we watch — which has been building up over time, with VCRs, then DVRs, and now streaming and digital distribution. We're learning to think about television in a different way."
"I'm fully convinced that everything is better in a box set," he added.


Netflix, which is essentially the motherlode of box sets, has made this kind of careful viewing much easier. That's one reason that serialized shows have become so popular in recent years. Since audiences can easily catch up on missed episodes — many of them are bingewatching anyway — show-runners can tell longer, more complicated stories with less repetition. The rewind button allows television to be a little more sophisticated. If you didn't understand the first time, just watch again.
But the spread of solitary, customized viewing will not mean the demise of television culture — quite the opposite. People will watch an episode and dissect it on Twitter; they will share their favorite scenes and watch them on repeat. "While viewing is becoming a more solitary, personal activity, the flip side is that fan communities have grown stronger," Jennifer Holt, a media scholar at the University of California at Santa Barbara, told me. "People still want to connect. They still want that social experience, only now it's all happening online."
This practice has expanded the dialogue between the makers and the consumers of television. "Show creators, writers and directors are now extremely sensitive to what the blogosphere is saying about their shows," Paris Barclay, the president of the Directors Guild of America, said (https://books.google.com/books?id=oxveAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA178&lpg=PA178&dq=Show+creators,+writers,+and+directors+are+now+extremely+sensitive+to+what+the+blogosphere+is+saying+about+their+shows&source=bl&ots=79yzibawno&sig=CdQWa0DPlb8np7q0eAs2sfP9SSc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiE0tbNs7nNAhVIcj4KHXl2DyEQ6AEIHjAA#v=onepage&q=Show%20creators%2C%20writers%2C%20and%20directors%20are%20now%20extremely%20sensitive%20to%20what%20the%20blogosphere%20is%20saying%20about%20their%20shows&f=false) a few years ago. Barclay, who has worked on shows such as "Glee," "Empire" and "Scandal," was wary of this development. "Some shows have become increasingly dull because taking risks with the show is discouraged," he said. "Audiences generally want to see a different version of the show that they love. They don't really want to see it become something else."
But as Jenkins, the media theorist, points out, creators have always adapted their work to suit who was listening. "Storytelling is a bardic medium," he said. "Bards like Homer would tell a story to a roomful of people and he would be attentive to what they liked and what they didn't like. The same was true of Dickens, whose novels were published serially. He changed plot points and characters on the fly."
Now that tools are making it increasingly easy to alter the flow of how we watch films and television, viewers will also have power to change the plot and the characters of a show to suit their own tastes. We should look forward to a future that involves more cross-pollination, more crazy fan-theories, more creative misunderstandings, all of it enabled by new ways of consuming television, whether that means binge-watching, surfing clips on social media or even watching on fast-forward. We risk transforming, perhaps permanently, the ways in which our brains perceive people, time, space, emotion. And isn't that marvelous?

Можда није одговарајуће место (или јесте?!) за ово што ме интересује али је ово један од ретких постова у којем се помиње Amazon Prime. Дакле, потребни су ми поднаслови или титлови (close caption) из једног видеа који је тамо постављен. Ако се питате зашта ми требају титлови, ствар је мало компликована. Пошто технологија није толико одмакла да бих могао бесплатно да претварам аудио у текст морам или ручно да радим или да се некако снађем. Постоји ово објашњење
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmPQXKqHNe4 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmPQXKqHNe4)
али ми из корисничке подршке нису много помогли:

QuoteChat started on 06 May 2020, 08:11 AM (GMT+0)
(08:11:13)    *** Visitor 33819616 joined the chat ***
(08:11:13)    Visitor 33819616: Is the Amazon Prime video subtitle conversion free?
(08:11:16)    *** Amanda joined the chat ***
(08:12:11)    Amanda: We have a free subtitle converter tool: https://gotranscript.com/subtitle-converter (https://gotranscript.com/subtitle-converter) but I'm not sure if it will be able to convert Amazon Prime subtitles
(08:13:20)    Visitor 33819616: Should I rent or buy Amazon Prime video to get CC subtitles?
(08:13:44)    Amanda: I don't know, sorry
(08:14:06)    Visitor 33819616: OK, thank you
(08:50:54)    *** Visitor 33819616 left the chat ***

Hajnlin je imao nešto ovako:

Exclusive: Trump administration drafting 'Artemis Accords' pact for moon mining - sources (https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-space-exploration-moon-mining-exclusi/exclusive-trump-administration-drafting-artemis-accords-pact-for-moon-mining-sources-idUKKBN22H2S1)

Nije baš SF, ali dešava se danas. U 22:33 po našem vremenu (4:33 PM EDT po njihovom) NASA i SpaceX šalju dvojicu astronauta u svemir. Poslednji put kada je astronaut poleteo sa američkog tla bilo je 2011. godine, kada je obustavljen Spejs šatl program.