TED: The state of modern viruses and algorithms

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Two very cool and sobering TED talks have recently been released that are worth checking out: Mikko Hypponen: Fighting viruses, defending the net and Kevin Slavin: How algorithms shape our world. Hypponen's presentation in particular is one of the best I've seen in a while.

It's been 25 years since the first PC virus (Brain A) hit the net, and what was once an annoyance has become a sophisticated tool for crime and espionage. Computer security expert Mikko Hyppönen tells us how we can stop these new viruses from threatening the internet as we know it.

Kevin Slavin argues that we're living in a world designed for -- and increasingly controlled by -- algorithms. In this riveting talk from TEDGlobal, he shows how these complex computer programs determine: espionage tactics, stock prices, movie scripts, and architecture. And he warns that we are writing code we can't understand, with implications we can't control.


Russian Futurist Opera Brought Back to Life

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Anfang gut. Alles gut.
Actualizations of the futurist opera Victory Over the Sun (1913)

July 16 – October 16, 2011
Kunsthaus Bregenz Arena
Catalog

The Futurist opera Victory over the Sun, which received its premiere at the Lunapark Theater in St. Petersburg in 1913, attempted to “create a collective work based on language, painting, and music.” Its authors – the poets Velimir Khlebnikov and Aleksei Kruchenykh, the composer and painter Michail Matjuschin, and the painter Kazimir Malevich – wished to construct an “anti-harmonious” work against the current of their time. This was in Czarist Russia in the years between industrial modernization and peasant ser fdom and after the attempted revolution of 1905. While in their enthusiasm for technology the Italian Futurists had already glorified machinery before World War I and brought it to bear against people, Russian Futurism took off from an idea of the future that seemed possible only by fundamentally deconstructing the as yet scarcely industrialized present.

Anfang gut. Alles gut. is the long-term project of an evergrowing group of currently forty international artists, musicians, architects, and writers who are picking up the threads of the past and actualizing them. Since 2008 those involved have drawn on the historical text and documentations of its performances as well as the opera’s reception history to develop formats translating the almost 100- year-old material in contemporary forms into the present. To begin with, the producers selected individual aspects of the opera, such as characters, costumes, stage set, text, music, or lighting and made them the starting point for their own artistic explorations.

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Wasserfilter mit Nanotechnologie

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Neben vielen anderen Anwendungsmoeglichkeiten koennen Nanoroehren zur Reinigung von kontaminiertem Wasser eingesetzt werden. Viele wasserverunreinigende Stoffe haben eine hohe Affinitaet fuer Kohlenstoffnanoroehren. Deshalb koennen Schadstoffe aus kontaminiertem Wasser entfernt werden, indem sie durch dieses Material gefiltert werden.

A carbon nanotube transistor that can smell

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Integrating biological molecules or even complex molecular machines with man-made nanoelectronic devices is one of the ultimate goals of bionanotechnology. Already there is a growing community of researchers interested in this area of bio/nano integration where biological components are interfaced with inorganic nanomaterials to create new devices and systems that combine the desirable properties of each system. One particular nanomaterial used in this kind of research are carbon nanotubes (CNTs). Scientists now report the integration of a CNT transistor with olfactory receptor proteins. The ultimate goal of this type of research is to transfer the sensing properties of biological molecular systems to artificial electronic devices.

Nanoplasmonic ‘whispering gallery’ breaks emission time record in semiconductors

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Renaissance architects demonstrated their understanding of geometry and physics when they built whispering galleries into their cathedrals. These circular chambers were designed to amplify and direct sound waves so that, when standing in the right spot, a whisper could be heard from across the room. Now, scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have applied the same principle on the nanoscale to drastically reduce emission lifetime, a key property of semiconductors, which can lead to the development of new ultrafast photonic devices.

Avo Photonics Acquired by Halma

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Avo Photonics, Inc., a specialist in opto-electronic design, packaging, and manufacturing, has been acquired by Halma, p.l.c., a leading safety, health and sensor technology group based in the United Kingdom. Avo will join Halma's global Photonics Division.

Nanotechnology for water filtration

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Among many potential applications, carbon nanotubes are great candidate materials for cleaning polluted water. Many water pollutants have very high affinity for carbon nanotubes and pollutants could be removed from contaminated water by filters made of this nanomaterial, for example water soluble drugs which can hardly be separated from water by activated carbon.