Google Zeitgeist is a massive trending tool that displays the most popular search queries. So it is no surprise that at the end of 2011 we have been presented with a Google Zeitgeist 2011 recap video. Take a look and see if some of your search queries are included…
Continue reading… “Google Zeitgeist 2011: How the world searched”
“The Importance of DNS” is a humorous short educational animation about the history and importance of the Internet’s Domain Name System (DNS), the system responsible for translating numerical IP addresses into human-friendly domain names like www.impactlab.com
Continue reading… “The Importance of DNS”
The very start of a very big bang.
Allegedly, this is a photograph of the beginning of a nuclear detonation. It was taken in 1952 during the Tumbler-Snapper tests in Nevada. At this point, the fireball is about sixty-six feet across. How was the photographer able to get a shutter speed fast enough to do it?
Continue reading… “1 Millisecond into a Nuclear Explosion”
Optical image of flexible and stretchable thin film transistor array covering a baseball shows
the mechanical robustness of this backplane material for future plastic electronic devices.
Imprinting electronic circuitry on backplanes that are both flexible and stretchable promises to revolutionize a number of industries and make “smart devices” nearly ubiquitous. Among the applications that have been envisioned are electronic pads that could be folded away like paper, coatings that could monitor surfaces for cracks and other structural failures, medical bandages that could treat infections and food packaging that could detect spoilage. From solar cells to pacemakers to clothing, the list of smart applications for so-called “plastic electronics” is both flexible and stretchable. First, however, suitable backplanes must be mass-produced in a cost-effective way…
Continue reading… “Artificial Electronic Skin Device Capable of Detecting and Responding to Touch”
Let’s play a quick game of word association. I say, “YouTube,” you say the first thing that pops in your head. Did the phrase “educational resource” come to mind? I didn’t think so, and therein lies a perception problem that often gets the video streaming site banned from schools.
To tackle this setback, the Google-owned property has created a safe-for-classroom network setting called YouTube Schools that restricts student access to just the content available on YouTube EDU. The subdomain contains hundreds of thousands of educational videos from YouTube’s more than 600 child-approved partners, including Smithsonian, TED and esteemed universities…
Continue reading… “YouTube makes its site classroom ready”
Captured light ‘scattering’ below the surfaces of solid objects.
MIT researchers have created a new imaging system that can acquire visual data at a rate of one trillion exposures per second. That’s fast enough to produce a slow-motion video of a burst of light traveling the length of a one-liter bottle, bouncing off the cap and reflecting back to the bottle’s bottom…
Continue reading… “The trillion-frame-per-second video”
Local geography CAN be interesting.
Atlas Obscura had a great success earlier this year with Obscura Day, a project to get people all over involved in their local geography and interesting places. It was so successful that they are now forming The Obscura Society, a club in which people not only explore places, but share their experiences with others.
Born of the success of Obscura Day, this real-world exploration arm of Atlas Obscura will be seeking out secret histories, unusual access, and opportunities to explore strange and overlooked places hidden all around us, all year round – and we could not be more excited about it…
Girls just as good at math as boys.
There are many explanations for the gender gap in math skills but they just don’t hold up, suggests new research on math skills and gender in 86 countries.
Continue reading… “Girls are just as good at math: study”
Learning with a zing-zang-zoom!
Remember the Matrix where all you need to do to learn kung fu is to get it uploaded to your brain? Well, that may soon be coming to real life:
New research published today in the journal Science suggests it may be possible to use brain technology to learn to play a piano, reduce mental stress or hit a curve ball with little or no conscious effort. It’s the kind of thing seen in Hollywood’s “Matrix” franchise…
Toymakers are hoping to stuff babies’ stockings with kid-size computers.
It used to be that all a kid wanted for Christmas was to sit on Santa’s lap. Now, they may get a laptop.
Continue reading… “Do toddlers need computers to learn?”
Inventor Robert Norton Noyce
Today’s Google Doodle celebrates the life and career of inventor Robert Noyce, co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel. Noyce, who died in 1990, is credited with the invention of the integrated circuit. His patent for a “Semiconductor Device and Lead Structure” paved the way for the semiconductor revolution of the next decades.
He was called the Mayor of Silicon Valley and his relaxed corporate structures encouraged his employees to experiment in an era of buttoned-down austerity. Without Noyce and his various projects, you probably wouldn’t be reading this right now…
Continue reading… “Google Celebrates The Career Of Microchip Inventor Robert Noyce”
Up, up and away with a quadrotor.
A clever idea, first reported by Gareth a couple years ago: Architects are trying to figure out how touse quadrotors to haul and place individual bricks. The above link is in French; here’s a Google translation…
Continue reading… “Using Quadrotors to assemble a building”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.