The doctor is on-line!

A London hospital is testing a tele-presence robot which allows doctors to make rounds and see patients from a remote location (say, home or the golf course or... maybe a call centre in Bangalore). Okay, first the bedside manner goes... now docs don't even have to come to the bedside! The question is will patients line up to sbe seen by a moblie tv screen? Given the state of the English health service... probably. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4555555.stm

Inventor of the K ration dies at 100

Obituaries often make for intersting reading. Not only did the guy develop the "K" ration during WWII, he even found a use for Conscientious objectors, as subjects in one of the first controlled studies of starvation. After the war he was among the first scientists to sutdy the link between cholestral and heart disease. Since he lived to be a 100, maybe he knew what he was talking about. He was also Lon Chaney's nephew.

Inventor of the K ration dies at 100

Obituaries often make for intersting reading. Not only did the guy develop the "K" ration during WWII, he even found a use for Conscientious objectors, as subjects in one of the first controlled studies of starvation. After the war he was among the first scientists to sutdy the link between cholestral and heart disease. Since he lived to be a 100, maybe he knew what he was talking about. He was also Lon Chaney's nephew.

One place in Europe We're still Appreciated

Not that I'm planning a trip to Europe anytime soon but if I do go, I might make a side trip to Bastone.

Snakes! why did it have to be snakes?

Last year I read a stow aobut how nile monitors were turning up in the Everglades, apparently now its Burmese pythons popping up. Well, on the upside, at least the the alligators have something new to eat. click on title for the article.

The xprize is over. Long live the X-cup!

Looks like the folks behing the x-prize are trying to turn it into an annual competition.http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/10/05/spaceshipone.race.ap/index.html

SpaceshipOne claims X-prize

Well, it's over. Spaceship flew successfully this morning winning the X-prize. http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/10/04/spaceshipone.attempt.cnn/index.html
Mad props to Alien for sending me the story.

Trouble down on the ant farm

We hear lots of stories of native species getting crowed out by exoctic "invasive" species. Here's one where local bugs got the better of a museum's prized colony of army ants. And shame on those enytomologists for not understanding how badass dermistids are. They work in a frick'n natural history museum whe dermistids are both a tool for cleaning bones and a meance because the eat nearly everything else. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/10/02/MNG4M92UQC1.DTL

Trouble down on the ant farm

We hear lots of stories of native species getting crowed out by exoctic "invasive" species. Here's one where local bugs got the better of a museum's prized colony of army ants. And shame on those enytomologists for not understanding how badass dermistids are. They work in a frick'n natural history museum whe dermistids are both a tool for cleaning bones and a meance because the eat nearly everything else. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/10/02/MNG4M92UQC1.DTL

Trouble down on the ant farm

We hear lots of stories of native species getting crowed out by exoctic "invasive" species. Here's one where local bugs got the better of a museum's prized colony of army ants. And shame on those enytomologists for not understanding how badass dermistids are. They work in a frick'n natural history museum whe dermistids are both a tool for cleaning bones and a meance because the eat nearly everything else. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/10/02/MNG4M92UQC1.DTL

X-prize: One down, one to go!

SpaceshipOne made the first of two planned flights towards the X-prize. It was successful but a bit scarier than planned. Hopefully the can do something about that roll before Monday. http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/09/29/spaceshipone.attempt.cnn/index.html

Space... Virgin Territory?

Just a few days ahead of spaceship one's try at the x-prize Richard Branson has announced the formation of Virgin Galactic a company which plans to liscense the spaceOne technology to take tourists into space by 2007. Wonder if each seat will have its own tv screen. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3693020.stm

Building a better cockroach

So now even cockroaches need to worry about being replaced by robots! http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/09/16_full.shtml For a bit more detail and some cool viedo clips go here http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2002/09/rfull/rfull.html
and to think... a lot of this work is going on 3 floors above me! That's cool as long as none of the roaches (robotic or biological) escape.

Robot menace!

As long as the concept of the robot has been around there are those who have been fearful of it. robots could steal our jobs, take over the planet, exterminate the human race or even.... beat us at poker? Yep, with the rise of on-line poker comes the suspision that not all the players are human
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6002298/

Maybe Icarus would be a more appropriate name

Just when the Mars rovers were helping to rehabilitate NASA's pulic image, Genesis had to go muck things up.
The Genesis capsule was suppossed to deploy a parachute and be snagged mid-air by a helicopter. Instead the chute never deployed and capsule hit the desert floor in a 100 mph "hard landing". So now smples which should have been removed in clean room conditions areexposed to the elements. Sure hope these guys saw "The Andromenda Strain." http://genesis.entry.cnn/index.html

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

I'm not sure how I feel about this movie. It could be decent or it could really suck. The web site is kinda interesting and the trailer does look better than the first one I saw. http://www.skycaptain.com/

Faster than a speeding bullet it's a bird it's a plane it's the x-43 scramjet!!!!

I can remember reading the Guinness Book of records in the elementery school library. Back then my favorite part was the section on the rocket cars which set the land speed record. Now after a hiatus of a few decades air speed records are being broken again.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3613752.stm

Day of the Dolphin

Remember William Gibson's short story Johnny Mneumonic? Of Course you do! Anyway the story featured an ex-Navy junkie cyborg Dolphin named Jonesy the War-whale. Well, the Navy really does use Dolphins in mine-clearing operations but they're not cyborgs (or junkies either one hopes) anyway here's a pretty picture
http://www.strategypage.com/gallery/articles/military_photos_20048260.asp
For more pics, info and even calendar pages for your desktop go to the Navy's offical site at
http://www.spawar.navy.mil/sandiego/technology/mammals/index.html

More fun with exoskeletons!

Just to show that the japanese aren't the only ones working on exoskeletons here's the DARPA funded UC Berkeley BLEEX project http://bleex.me.berkeley.edu/bleex.htm

Dommo arrigatto Mr. robotto

Back when I went to NEXTFEST, there were a lot of demonstrations of Japanese robotic prowess. Of course the most impressive was the Sony Asimo but they also had a "muscle suit" a sort of exoskeleton developed to help disabled people with mobility. You can read more about it at http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/08/09/japan.robots/index.html