Tech Heavyweights Raise Millions For Tsunami Relief

And other companies as well.

Nice to see corporations donating towards this. Amazon supposedly doubled their collections from 3m yesterday to 6m today off their donation page.

posted by Farookh at 5:16 PM Comment (0)

Where Are All the Dead Animals? Sri Lankan wildlife officials are stunned -- the worst tsunami in memory has killed around 22,000 people along the Indian Ocean island's coast, but they can't find any dead animals.

"No elephants are dead, not even a dead hare or rabbit. I think animals can sense disaster. They have a sixth sense. They know when things are happening."

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/nm/20041229/od_uk_nm/oukoe_quake_lanka_wildlife
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/nm/20041229/od_nm/wildlife_dc
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/nm/20041230/od_uk_nm/oukoe_quake_animals

-K

posted by Kaushik at 2:47 PM Comment (0)

Yahoo! News - Doctor Mistakenly Amputates Wrong Foot: "A doctor at a public hospital in southern Mexico mistakenly amputated the right leg of an elderly patient who had sought treatment for an infection in his left foot, the patient's family announced Sunday."

posted by Kaushik at 2:44 PM Comment (0)

A laptop battery breakthrough at TI: "Its gauge accurately measures remaining power, company says

Drivers can trust the fuel gauges in their cars to tell them whether the tank is half full or close to empty. But laptop owners do not have the same security when they check the time left in a lithium-ion battery.

Now Texas Instruments researchers have come up with a monitor that they say laptop users can trust to measure remaining battery energy accurately. The new gauges should help people avoid unexpected shutdowns that could result in a loss of data."

Strange that with all this technology, something seemingly simple like estimating the remaining battery energy is so difficult.


-K

posted by Kaushik at 2:35 PM Comment (0)

Transparent Transistors Are Coming: "Transparent Transistors Are Coming

Transparent electronics is an emerging technology which aims to produce invisible electronic circuits. Now, researchers from Oregon report they made a major advance in transparent electronics. Their zinc-tin-oxide 'thin-film' materials are amorphous, physically robust, chemically stable and cheap to produce at just above room temperature. These new materials and transistors offer many new possibilities for consumer electronics, transportation, business and the military. Even if these transparent transistors don't show up inside your next computer, they might soon appear in flat panel screens, flexible electronics devices you'll carry with you, and even in your car windshields."

posted by Kaushik at 3:01 AM Comment (0)

I Want My Internet TV: "Next month, Adultinternet.TV [nudity ahead] officially launches with a lineup that includes reality shows, news, sitcoms and cartoons -- all with an adult twist. That doesn't mean that every host or actress is going to take her clothes off, but it does mean that adult pioneers are once again developing technologies that will change the landscape of entertainment as we know it."

I wonder why nobody has created a regular TV channel that is adult-oriented and funded by ads unlike the PPV model of today. It would be pretty successful I would think with risque advertising for big brands like those seen in Europe.

These guys are using a p2p streaming technology from Abacast. It is a little client that runs on your PC that can connect to the server or another peer and also serve other peers.

posted by Farookh at 2:53 PM Comment (0)

Top linked site off Google News - NYT

I thought Kerala News would be on the top 5, given the number of links I see there. :P

posted by Farookh at 2:46 PM Comment (0)

Firefly light helps destroy cancer cells

Researchers found that the bioluminescence effects of fireflies may kill cancer cells from within. By inserting the firefly gene that activates bioluminescent light into modified cancer cells, the researchers hoped to set off a chain of events that has a proven track record at fighting the disease. This light source, known as Luciferin, caused the modified cancer cells to glow much like it does with the firefly. When a photosensitizing agent was added, the cells produced toxic substances that forced them to commit suicide.

This is last year's news, so you might have already seen this.


posted by Anonymous at 1:06 AM Comment (0)

Scientist's invention was let go for a song: "Consumers will spend billions this holiday season on CDs, DVDs and machines to record and play the ubiquitous silver discs.

But the inventor of the underlying technology won't make a cent. Jim Russell, a retired scientist in Bellevue, can only shrug, shake his head and tell his story."

-K

posted by Kaushik at 8:39 PM Comment (0)

JewelEye: Personal account of a Cosmetic Extraocular Implantation -- a piece of jewelry is implanted under the surface of the eye!



-K

posted by Kaushik at 3:06 AM Comment (0)

Court Lets Man Change Name to 'Variable'

posted by Kaushik at 1:35 PM Comment (0)

Bereaved Cat Owner Gets $50,000 Clone: "The first cloned-to-order pet sold in the United States is Little Nicky, a 9-week-old kitten delivered to a Texan saddened by the loss of a cat she had owned for 17 years."

posted by Farookh at 11:06 PM Comment (0)

The Graphing Calculator Story

Saw this blogged here: Paul's Space. Interesting story of the Apple Graphing Calculator.

posted by Farookh at 10:57 PM Comment (0)

Skin cancer study reveals roots of grey hair: "Skin cancer researchers have stumbled on a cellular cause for why hair turns grey as we age. "

posted by Farookh at 5:28 PM Comment (0)

The Photoshop story

Each time I fire up Photoshop, the names on the splash screen intrigue me. A little Googling on "Seetharaman Narayanan" found me this article about the history of Photoshop - how it started and some of the early engineers to work on it. Haven't read it through, but is interesting.

posted by Farookh at 11:54 AM Comment (0)

World's smallest baby ready to go home: "A baby who weighed less than a can of soda when she was born by Caesarean section three months ago is nearly ready to be released from the hospital. She is believed to be the smallest baby in the world ever to survive. "

posted by Farookh at 12:52 AM Comment (0)

More Mathematical Craft: Dr Hinke Osinga and Professor Bernd Krauskopf, of Bristol University's engineering mathematics department, used 25,511 crochet stitches to represent the Lorenz equations.



posted by Kaushik at 1:15 PM Comment (0)

posted by Farookh at 11:01 AM Comment (0)

World Community Grid is focusing on a project key to advancing our knowledge of human disease. By identifying the proteins that make up the Human Proteome, scientists can build the understanding needed for novel and effective treatments for diseases like cancer, HIV/AIDS, SARS, and malaria.

Reminds me of SETI@home. This one is by IBM and United Devices.


posted by Anonymous at 4:02 PM Comment (0)

How birds learn songs likened to way humans learn speech: Learning how baby sparrows learn to sing their songs could provide clues to how humans learn to speak languages. The complete white-crowned sparrow song has five segments or snippets — researchers call them phrases — represented by the letters ABCDE. "A" is a characteristic opening whistle; "B" is a note complex or several musical notes in a specific sequence; "C" is a buzzing sound; "D" is a trilling sound; and "E" is another note complex. The study indicates, the sparrows' characteristic song is imprinted on their brains like a long-term memory and not as a complete song, but in pieces. [They] propose that circuits of certain nerve cells only need to detect pairs of song segments (AB, BC, CD, DE) for the birds to learn to sing. That is because each pair of segments overlaps the next, allowing the birds to figure out how to string together the complete melody. Rose said nerve circuits that detect pairs of song segments are shaped as the birds practice singing.

Sounds a little like the Markov-chain stuff. Kernighan and Pike's Practice of Programming had an example which generated random but sensible sounding text from some given text; it did pretty much the same thing -- detected pairs of adjacent words and picked a word that should follow the pair.

-K

posted by Kaushik at 10:50 PM Comment (1)

posted by Farookh at 7:48 AM Comment (0)

The Voltaic™ solar backpack is a mobile power source, designed to charge your gadgets without tying you to a power outlet. Its powerful enough to charge most portable electronics (other than laptops) including: cell phones, cameras, two way radios, GPS's, PDA's, even iPods.

posted by Amit at 5:37 AM Comment (1)

One in five Brits 'buy software from spam'


posted by Farookh at 10:26 PM Comment (0)

Liquid lenses for camera phones
This is not from Philips as the earlier post here. From a French company called Varioptic.

posted by Farookh at 11:34 PM Comment (0)