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Worker Dies From N-hexane Poisoning At Touchscreen Factory (That Also Makes Apple’s Screens) [Poisoning]

Posted on February 22, 2010 by Danzig

Wintek, who supplies touchscreen components to Apple for the iPhone and iPod touch, just got "exposed" for "hazardous work conditions." One of the most severe conditions? N-hexane poisoning, which the company illegally used instead of alcohol to clean screens.

In August of 2009, 49 people were treated for N-hexane poisoning, with one dead. The BoingBoing post says that the worker died this weekend, so it seems like Wintek continued to use N-hexane even after they were punished from last year. [China Tech News via BoingBoing]

Image credit

122 Brilliant and Blinding Blow Outs [Photography]

Posted on February 22, 2010 by Danzig

99.99% of our photography falls within a certain acceptable range of exposure—one filled with color and detail. Last week's Shooting Challenge was dedicated to the rare .01% that's blinded by the light. The resulting shots are incredible.

Second Runner Up

I shot most of the photo with the exposure I wanted, but used photoshop to up the exposure, gamma correction, noise reduction and unsharp mask.
Lens: Nikon AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm VR
ISO: 200
Shutter: 1/200
Aperture: F13
Focal Length: 50mm
[Ed note: I have a feeling that the larger you can look at this, the more you can appreciate the gradient of detail and the more striking it would be. Imagine a wall-sized print.]
-Jason Bolt

First Runner Up

Camera: Canon Eos 40d
Lens: Canon 24-70 2.8L USM
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 52mm
Aperture: f2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/1000
[Ed note: I was just struck by the simple, clever play of black and white.]
-Justin Carney

Winner

Michelangelo´s "Creation of Men" inspired me to this "Adam´s sight of view".
I shot "Gods hand" with my Canon Eos 500D and the Canon 18-55mm lens.Also used a tripod and a remote trigger. 1/4 sec. Iso 800, into the sunlight. No software adjustments except for crop and resize.
[Ed note: My mind just kept coming back to this one.]
-Roland Renne

The notable shots mentioned here barely represent the creativity and awesome execution of this week's challenge, ranging from subtle clipping to complete whiteouts. Thanks to everyone for participating, and readers, be sure to mention your favorites in the comments!

Singing Therapy Can Rewire Brains of Speech-Impaired Stroke Patients | 80beats

Posted on February 22, 2010 by Danzig

brain-3 If you can’t say it, then sing it! Experts researching patients who have lost their ability to speak after a stroke are now suggesting that they could be able to communicate with music using Melodic Intonation Therapy (MIT). Using MIT, the scientists showed that patients who were earlier communicating only in mumbles and grunts could now learn to sing out basic phrases like “I am thirsty.”

The study was conducted by Harvard Medical School neurologist Gottfried Schlaug on 12 patients whose speech was impaired by strokes, and showed that patients who were taught to essentially sing their words improved their verbal abilities and maintained the improvement for up to a month after the end of the therapy [Wall Street Journal]. Schlaug presented these findings at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Diego.

The researchers worked with stroke patients whose speech was incoherent, and who had damage in a region of the left side of the brain that is typically involved in speech. Schlaug’s research suggests that the brain can be essentially rewired. Stroke patients can learn to use a region on the right side of the brain, which is typically involved with music, for sing-songy speech instead. “Singing can give entry into a broken system by engaging the right hemisphere,” says Schlaug [ScienceNOW Daily News].

Using MIT, therapists taught patients how to sing words and phrases consistent with the underlying melody of speech, while tapping a rhythm with their left hands. After frequent repetition—1.5 hour-long daily sessions with a therapist for 15 weeks—the patients gradually learn to turn the sung words into speech [Wall Street Journal]. When Schlaug compared images of the patients’ brains before and after the therapy, he found that the right side of their brains had changed both structurally and functionally.

Though it has been known that patients who can’t speak clearly often do better when they sing the words, this is the first time anyone has shown the phenomenon through a clinical trial that combines treatment with brain imaging. Schlaug hopes more patients and caregivers will be enticed to try out Musical Intonation Therapy. However, he points out that MIT is long and expensive; the treatment often lasts for 14 to 16 weeks, with 90-minute sessions five days a week. The results are also dependent on how recently the patient had the stroke and the severity of the attack.

But the benefits of the therapy are usually permanent, and two thirds of patients who have undergone MIT with Schlaug added more words to their spoken vocabulary after their therapy had ended than the 100 words they were “taught” to say in therapy [AFP]. Each year, about 60,000 to 70,000 people suffer speech defects due to a stroke.

Image: iStockphoto

Genetics Study: Will IVF Babies Face Health Problems Later in Life? | 80beats

Posted on February 22, 2010 by Danzig

infant baby Louise Brown, the first baby conceived through in vitro fertilization, will be turning 32 this year, and most people born through IVF are still younger than 30. While the technique has become commonplace for would-be parents struggling with fertility problems, doctors note that the long-term effects of the procedure still aren’t certain. Now, some scientists are saying they see slight differences in the DNA expression of people born via IVF, and that it’s possible they could be at higher risk for conditions like cancer or diabetes later in life.

Says lead researcher Carmen Sapienza said “By and large these children are just fine, it’s not like they have extra arms or extra heads, but they have a small risk of undesirable outcomes” [The Guardian]. Rather, the team found a very subtle impact. In 75 IVF babies and 100 naturally conceived ones, they examined 700 genes that particularly interested the researchers because they are linked to fat cell development, insulin signaling, and other functions associated with diseases for which people tend to be at higher risk as they age. The scientists checked DNA methylation, a modification to DNA which affects gene expression, and found that 5 to 10 percent of IVF babies had abnormal patterns of methylation.

Sapienza’s team published the study in October in Human Molecular Genetics, but his work is picking up attention after he spoke at the American Association of the Advancement of Science meeting in San Diego.

Studying the health forecast for IVF babies is crucial because they tend to have lower birth weights than traditionally born babies. That could spell trouble ahead, because low-birth-weight babies often have long-term health problems. They’re more likely to be obese, to have diabetes, and to have hypertension when they’re 50, for example [ScienceNOW]. And because no IVF-born person is currently older than 31, there’s no data to predict what health patterns they will have as they age.

Conscious of a strong reactions by parents of IVF children, Sapienza stressed that the work is neither an attack on IVF nor any kind of proof that IVF babies will be unhealthier than other people as they age. But, he says, one must ask the questions. If it turns out that children who were conceived by IVF had a higher risk of, say, colon cancer, he says, it would be useful to be able to tell them to get screened earlier [ScienceNOW].

However, one researcher is publicly concerned about the overuse of a specific kind of IVF called Intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). That’s one of its creators, Andre Van Steirteghem. Also speaking at the AAAS meeting, Van Steirteghem warned that his creation was being overused, becoming the dominant IVF method in many hospitals. He says shouldn’t be employed in cases where regular IVF techniques could suffice: “We have to see what will come out in the future, and long term follow up is extremely important, but yes, ICSI has been overused” [The Telegraph]. ICSI makes it possible for men who ordinarily would be sterile to conceive, but carries a slightly higher risk of health problems down the road than regular IVF.

Image: iStockphoto

Legendary Designer Says the iPad Will Rule the World [Blockquote]

Posted on February 22, 2010 by Danzig

That's what Alan Kay said when Steve Jobs asked him about his thoughts on the iPhone. Knowing who Alan Kay is, you better listen up.

Alan Kay is one the greatest minds in the history of computing. He worked in the 70s at the legendary Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, where he said that "the best way to predict the future is to invent it!" He did precisely that. This is what he wrote in a 1971 memo:

In the 1990s there will be millions of personal computers. They will be the size of notebooks today, have high-resolution flat-screen reflexive displays, weigh less than ten pounds, have ten to twenty times the computing and storage capacity of an Alto. Let's call them Dynabooks.

He was right. His Dynabook design was the first laptop and tablet concept ever. And his idea of always-connected mobile computing is exactly what we have today. Not only he came up with these ideas out of nowhere, but he was also responsible for the overlapping windowing graphical user interface of the Alto. That GUI was the base for the Macintosh, and all the computer user interfaces we use today—except for our iPhones and Androids. Or the iPad, when it comes out.

Lately, however, Kay doesn't seem to love the windowing GUI concept as much as he did back in the 80s, when the Macintosh came out. This is what he said to Om Malik in a recent interview, before the iPad was introduced:

When the Mac first came out, Newsweek asked me what I [thought] of it. I said: Well, it's the first personal computer worth criticizing. So at the end of the presentation, Steve came up to me and said: Is the iPhone worth criticizing? And I said: Make the screen five inches by eight inches, and you'll rule the world.

I didn't see the quote back then, but his judgement seems to me spot on. The quote was in a presentation by Evan Doll, from his class at Stanford about designing user interfaces for the iPad. In that slide, Doll quotes Kay, listing then why the iPad's user interface will change computing as we know it (something that I also said before it came out. Obviously the magic rainbow pills are working).

It's an interesting slideshow, even without his oral explanations, which covers how the "gulf of knowledge" is making many so-called experts ignore the extreme complexity of computers today, and also ignore why the iPad is the computing device for 95% of the population. Doll makes a great case for this, pointing out the uses of the iPad, and where it would fit in our daily lives—including the inevitable toilet factor:

Stanford CS193P - Designing for iPad

View more presentations from Evan Doll.

Beyond Doll's rationale, however, I find particularly interesting that Kay—the guy who invented mobile computing and the windowing interface—is now behind the idea of a modal, always-connected tablet. Hopefully, he will be right as he was with the Dynabook. [Gigaom via Slideshare]

Vibration Dampening

Posted on February 22, 2010 by Danzig

I have a need to isolate a very sensitive microscope from floor vibration created from Air Handeling Units. Does anybody have suggestions? I have tried to use rubber pads stacked together with some success but that has not totally eliminated the problem. I need something with more dampening ability

The Science of Exobiology

Posted on February 22, 2010 by Danzig

Exobiology, or more correctly, astrobiology, is the study of life outside the boundaries of Earth. The possibility, the evolution, the distribution, and the future of life away from Earth. It’s concerned not just with what you might find crawling across an alien landscape, but in the landscape itself; in recognizing and exploring diverse biospheres. It is interested in the universal evolution of life, not just the terrestrial evolution of life.

Yellow Mite (Lorryia formosa), Image: Erbe, Pooley: USDA, ARS, EMU

While still new among the empirical sciences, astrobiology (as in all the astrosciences) is multidisciplinary. It encompasses physics, chemistry, biology (of course), paleontology, astronomy, and planetology… to name a few. It deals mostly with proven scientific fact and less with theory and conjecture than what you might initially think. When you get right down to it, the only thing theoretical about the subject is that life is possible in places other than Earth, and that’s barely a stretch. Really, we have more evidence for the existence of life outside Earth’s biosphere than we do for the existence of intelligent life within it. Seriously. It’s hard enough to define “life” without throwing in a completely subjective, umbrella term like “intelligence” to further limit the field.

motivational posters, public domain, "Education Pays"

I'm not even gonna' say it.

Knowing that I’m probably causing a few bipedal, carbon-based, Earth-bound life forms to swell up and take umbrage, I still must point out that our understanding of “life” is in its infancy. Not its “meaning”, or “purpose” (that’s philosophy); but the nature of life itself. Astrobiology attempts to look at the possibility of life so diverse that we might not even consider it “life”. It looks at different possible environments, then at what kinds of life may have evolved in response to the environments. That’s the way it works, after all. Environments don’t change to benefit the life forms within it, the life forms change in response to the environment. That or they become extinct.

While astrobiology may be about life in places other than here, so far everything we know is based on what happens here on Earth. That’s limiting, true; but it still gives us a rich field with which to work. After all, we are part of the universe. We’re not an island off by ourselves. If we look at Earth as a jumping-off place in considering what extraterrestrial life may be like, we can come up with some very interesting theories. We can even theorize that for almost any possible environment, some life form has evolved to take advantage of it. Just because we wouldn’t survive in some of these environments doesn’t mean that something hasn’t evolved to survive there. This isn’t a new idea, by the way. Literature has been kicking the concept around for centuries. Remember Terry Pratchett’s The Dark Side of the Sun? Sundogs, sentient planets, and a telepathic body of water?

Well, why not?

3D Ceramic Printer Creates Pottery Bowls and That Perfect Futuristic ‘Ghost’ Parody [3D Printers]

Posted on February 22, 2010 by Danzig

To watch this transparent cube build a ceramic bowl must be like watching magic. The nozzle shoots clay out, designing sculptures layer by layer, until the finished object is ready to be fired in a kiln.

Below you can see some of the creations made from the powder clay mixing with water in the printer's tubes. If ever the movie Ghost is remade and updated with 21st century technology, Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore's replacements should be straddling one of these 3D ceramic printers instead. Now there's a film I'd pay money to watch. [Unfold via Designboom]

The Animal Abuse Registry

Posted on February 22, 2010 by Danzig

California may soon place animal abusers on the same level as sex offenders by listing them in an online registry, complete with their home addresses and places of employment.

Is this a good idea? I think not.

First, as awful as animal abuse can be, it is ridiculous to think of animal abuse as similar to rape or molesation. Animals are not people.

Second, registries for sex offenders seem unlikely to be the right policy. If offenders still pose risks to others, keep them in jail.

Falcon 9 getting ready for maiden voyage | Bad Astronomy

Posted on February 22, 2010 by Danzig

President Obama’s plan for NASA in the future is to rely heavily on private industry. One of the companies preparing for this is Space X, which has tested its first generation Falcon 1 rocket successfully. The Falcon 9 is a much larger rocket capable of carrying a much heavier payload, but has not yet flown.

However, the first F9 is at Cape Canaveral, getting ready for launch. It’s been sitting horizontally in a hanger for some time, but is now vertical.

F9_Vertical_Sunset

It will undergo a series of ground tests, including a 3.5 second full engine firing (the rocket will be locked down to keep it form going anywhere) before it’ll be cleared for launch. Launch could be as early as March!

Once it’s flown, the next step will be to carry a test version of the Dragon module — the part that will carry big payloads — on top which could happen as early as July. Once that passes, Space X will be ready to start ferrying material to the space station. They hope to be able to be man-rated by 2013 or 2014, so they can begin to ferry humans into orbit.

Image credit: Chris Thompson/SpaceX

And the Survey Says: Google Is Not Making You Stupid | Discoblog

Posted on February 22, 2010 by Danzig

is_google_making_us_stupid In 2008, writer Nicholas Carr worried in The Atlantic that the search engine Google and the easy availability of information on the internet is making our brains lazy–and rendering humans stupid. He wrote that the net was destroying his capacity for concentration and contemplation, adding, “Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.”

DISCOVER’s own Carl Zimmer responded by taking the opposite stance, and declaring that Google is making us smarter. He argued that humans are “natural born cyborgs” and the internet is our “giant extended mind.” He wrote that there was “nothing unnatural about relying on the internet—Google and all—for information…. Nor is there anything bad about our brains’ being altered by these new technologies, any more than there is something bad about a monkey’s brain changing as it learns how to play with a rake.”

Now, a new survey from the Pew Internet & American Life Project agrees with Zimmer; it found that Google is indeed making us smarter by allowing us to make better choices. More than 76 percent of the 895 experts polled said Nicholas Carr was wrong in thinking that Google made us stupid.

PC Magazine reports:

“Google allows us to be more creative in approaching problems and more integrative in our thinking. We spend less time trying to recall and more time generating solutions,” said Paul Jones of ibiblio.org at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.
“For people who are readers and who are willing to explore new sources and new arguments, we can only be made better by the kinds of searches we will be able to do,” wrote Oscar Gandy, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “Of course, the kind of Googled future that I am concerned about is the one in which my every desire is anticipated, and my every fear avoided by my guardian Google. Even then, I might not be stupid, just not terribly interesting.”

Nicholas Carr meanwhile said he “felt compelled to agree with himself,” telling the Pew Project:

“What the Net does is shift the emphasis of our intelligence, away from what might be called a meditative or contemplative intelligence and more toward what might be called a utilitarian intelligence. The price of zipping among lots of bits of information is a loss of depth in our thinking.”

Peter Norvig, Google’s research director, argued in turn that because Google makes so much information available instantly, it’s a good strategy for a knowledge-seeker to skim through many offerings first to get an overview. Then the user can settle down with the best sources for a deeper read. He added that skimming and concentrating can and should coexist.

Image: The Atlantic

A Viral Indiana Jones | The Loom

Posted on February 22, 2010 by Danzig

mtsitunes220 In my newest podcast, I talk to a kind of viral Indiana Jones. Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona chases down the evolutionary origins of viruses such as HIV and the flu no matter what it takes–including getting dangerously ill in the middle of a civil war. Check it out.

Report: Walmart’s Buying Vudu After All [Walmart]

Posted on February 22, 2010 by Danzig

The New York Times is saying that Walmart will acquire Vudu, the online movie service. The report's consistent with earlier rumors, and may just be a match made in heaven.

Walmart sells more DVDs than just about anybody on the planet, but have so far been shut out of the increasingly popular movie streaming business that's buoyed Netflix recently. Vudu gives them a convenient way into that market without having to build from the ground up.

For Vudu, selling out couldn't come at a better time: they've never been profitable, although they've been gaining some traction by having their players embedded in increasing numbers of TVs. Being owned by the world's largest retailer will help them build on that momentum. It also gives consumer electronics makers even more incentive to preload their sets with Vudu, since Walmart will be more inclined to sell products that incorporate a property that it owns.

But what about for consumers? Actually, it could end up being a win there, too. Nobody's more effective at driving down prices than the big box retailer, and giving Vudu more visibility and market share should lead to some healthy price competition.

Time will tell, but the could be one business transaction that ends up making sense for just about everyone. [NY Times]

43-Year-Old Woman Seduced a 14-Year-Old Boy on PlayStation Home [Gross]

Posted on February 22, 2010 by Danzig

A 43-year-old mother of three is currently wanted by the police in Oklahoma City for seducing a 14-year-old kid on PlayStation Home. Her avatar must've been really something.

Apparently, Annamay Alexander of Deltona, FL met this kid via Home and started sending him messages and a picture of her in her underwear. She then traveled to Oklahoma to see him and met with his mom, claiming to be there to talk about the kid wanting to marry her daughter. OK then!

Even after being told off by the kids mom, she continued to send downright-unsettling texts like "My body is yours to do whatever you want with," and "I love you and we are going to get married."

So yeah, be careful out there in those virtual worlds, kids. It's probably best to stick with Xbox Live, where the 14-year-old boys are so fucking obnoxious no one would ever in their right mind try to seduce them. [KOCO via Kotaku]

Plush Alien Facehugger: You Want It, But You Can’t Have It | The Loom

Posted on February 22, 2010 by Danzig

Plush Alien Facehugger out of stock and not back until mid-2010?? This is an outrage–let’s get to work, people!

Light Pewk [Art]

Posted on February 22, 2010 by Danzig

What happens when Marcus Tremonto, the lighting artist behind this thing updates Kidrobot's famed MUNNY dolls? Pew pew crosses with puke...and I mean that in the best possible way.

Starting this Friday, Kidrobot NY will have Tremonto's "Lightbot" MUNNY remixes on display (and apparently available for purchase, too). Each is signed, numbered and sold in its own custom box. I'm a bit curious as to the power source, but I'm assuming a plug is hiding there somewhere. [KRonikle]

Rotating a Small Roller

Posted on February 22, 2010 by Danzig

I need to rotate a small roller (ground + hardened steel dia 2.5 mm L 11 mm) around its axis for visual inspection. I am thinking of using 2 driver rollers of dia 10 mm placed such that there contact line with the driven roller is 30 degrees below horizontal. These driver rollers are to be driven by

Fashion Show Goers Purchased Clothes Straight From the Runway Using a BlackBerry App [Blackberry Apps]

Posted on February 22, 2010 by Danzig

Ultra-trendy fashion designer Henry Holland held his London Fashion Week show on Saturday, where the BlackBerry-using front row sitters could buy the clothes straight from the catwalk using the House of Holland app.

It's the first time a fashion designer's allowed their clothes to be purchased from an app during a show—in the UK that is, but in Japan they've been doing this kind of thing for a while on their cellphones—with the slogan t-shirts painted with internet acronyms like FFS, CTFO and HML. Don't ask me to explain what they mean, otherwise I'll tell you to KMT.

Here's me attempting to blend some knowledge of fashion with slightly more knowledge of tech: maybe "next season" Henry Holland will be offering an augmented reality app where the camera will recognize each "piece" and let you purchase them on the spot with your credit card, using the inevitable Square BlackBerry peripheral?

The app is a free download, and available now, where you can still buy the (overpriced) t-shirts for £55 / $85. [House of Holland BlackBerry App]

Google Earth Hits the Android Market, For a Lucky Few [Android Apps]

Posted on February 22, 2010 by Danzig

Google Earth is available on Android! (Isn't is weird that this didn't happen earlier? It's been on the iPhone for a year! Anyway.) The catch? For now, it only works on the Nexus One, which basically nobody owns. Don't worry, Droiders: Soon.

For now, Google Earth will only work on handsets with Android 2.1, which effectively limits it to the Nexus One. The good news is that the Droid, and some older HTC handsets, are due for a 2.1 upgrade relatively soon. The bad news is that even Google can't even escape Android's increasingly worrying fragmentation problem with its own apps, on its own operating system. This doesn't bode well.

Anyway, the app looks almost exactly like it does on the iPhone, meaning that you get to play God with a barren, lifeless Earth, in full 3D, with your fingers. Oh, and there's voice navigation! So there's that. [AndroidGuys]

Chinese Hacker Responsible For Google Attack Code Identified [Google]

Posted on February 22, 2010 by Danzig

U.S. authorities have tracked down the man who wrote the code used in the hacker attack on Google. He's a "freelance security consultant" in China, and his participation makes it even harder for the Chinese government to deny involvement.

The man's role was an oblique one: while he wrote the code that took advantage of a security hole in Internet Explorer, he himself didn't do any actual hacking. But according to the Financial Times, the Chinese government has "special access" to his work:

"If he wants to do the research he's good at, he has to toe the line now and again," the US analyst said. "He would rather not have uniformed guys looking over his shoulder, but there is no way anyone of his skill level can get away from that kind of thing. The state has privileged access to these researchers' work."

The "research he's good at," apparently, being breaking into computers and inserting spyware on them.

Hopefully by identifying the writer of the code, analysts are closer to tracking down the actual persons responsible. But until then, it's increasingly clear that the Chinese government had a prominent role in the implementation. [FT]

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