Folding Empanadas Into Your Super Bowl Spread (audio)

Posted by Franz

Folding Empanadas Into Your Super Bowl Spread
by NPR Staff
January 30, 2013
http://www.npr.org/2013/01/30/170668788/folding-empanadas-into-your-super-bowl-spread

Pale Blue Blobs Invade, Freeze, Then Vanish (photo, video)

Posted by Franz

Pale Blue Blobs Invade, Freeze, Then Vanish
by Robert Krulwich
January 30, 2013
http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2013/01/30/170661670/pale-blue-blobs-invade-freeze-then-vanish

A ‘Permatemp’ Economy: The Idea Of The Expendable Employee (audio)

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A ‘Permatemp’ Economy: The Idea Of The Expendable Employee
by NPR Staff
January 28, 2013
http://www.npr.org/2013/01/28/170473478/the-ideology-of-the-expendable-employee

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/01/27/opinion/27inequality-img/27inequality-img-blog427-v2.jpg

Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Encoded In DNA

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Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Encoded In DNA
January 25, 2013
http://www.npr.org/2013/01/25/170267855/shakespeares-sonnets-encoded-in-dna

Reporting in Nature, researchers write of encoding a variety of files—jpg, mp3, txt and pdf—in strands of DNA.
Lead author Nick Goldman says DNA is extraordinarily long-lasting, compared to today’s hard drives and magnetic tapes.
And if all the world’s information were written in DNA, he says, it would fit in the back of a station wagon.

what did you store in that DNA? … anything is just as possible. But we chose a photograph of our own institute

E-Readers Track How We Read, But Is The Data Useful To Authors? (audio)

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E-Readers Track How We Read, But Is The Data Useful To Authors? (audio)
by Lynn Neary
January 28, 2013
http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/01/28/170296373/e-readers-track-how-we-read-but-is-the-data-useful-to-authors
Would I love to hitch the equivalent of a polygraph to my readers and know how they are responding word by word? That would be quite interesting.”

Dung beetles guided by Milky Way (audio)

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Dung beetles guided by Milky Way
24 January 2013
By Jonathan Amos
Science correspondent, BBC News
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21150721

“These beetles have compound eyes,” she told the BBC. “It’s known that crabs,
which also have compound eyes, can see a few of the brightest stars in the sky.
Maybe the beetles can do this as well, but we don’t know that yet; it’s
something we’re looking at. However, when we show them just the bright stars in
the sky, they get lost. So it’s not them that the beetles are using to orientate
themselves.”

also:

Swiss Scientists Discover Dung Beetles Use The Milky Way For GPS (audio)
January 29, 2013
http://www.npr.org/2013/01/29/170588505/swiss-scientists-discover-dung-beetles-use-the-milky-way-for-gps

Tech patents reach record high

Posted by Franz

Tech patents reach record high
28 January 2013
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21229984
Last year 14,205 patent applications for computer-related products and technologies were filed, says legal information provider Sweet and Maxwell.

496: When Patents Attack… Part Two!
This American Life. May 31, 2013
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/496/when-patents-attack-part-two our patent system may be discouraging, not encouraging, innovation.

the patent trolls

http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/04/27/151357127/another-ridiculous-number-from-the-patent-wars

‘Quantum smell’ idea gains ground

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‘Quantum smell’ idea gains ground
BBC News. 27 January 2013
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21150046

A controversial theory that the way we smell involves a quantum physics effect has received a boost, following experiments with human subjects.

It challenges the notion that our sense of smell depends only on the shapes of molecules we sniff in the air. Instead, it suggests that the molecules’ vibrations are responsible.

A way to test it is with two molecules of the same shape, but with different vibrations. A report in PLOS ONE shows that humans can distinguish the two.

tantalizingly, the idea hints at quantum effects occurring in biological systems – an idea that is itself driving a new field of science, as the BBC feature article Are birds hijacking quantum physics? points out.

But the theory – first put forward by Luca Turin, now of the Fleming Biomedical Research Sciences Centre in Greece – remains contested and divisive.

Of horses and unicorns
“I like to think of the vibration theory of olfaction and its proponents as unicorns. The rest of us studying olfaction are horses,”

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Quantum Physics: What is really real?
May 20, 2015
http://www.nature.com/news/quantum-physics-what-is-really-real-1.17585

http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2013/01/23/169972487/can-you-be-in-two-places-at-once-lets-find-out

quantum123