[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/5368967[/vimeo]
How may airplanes fly above our heads everyday?
Aaron Koblin knows the answer: It can be more than 19,000 in the United States. And thanks to his wizardry with FAA data, we can see how these aircraft drift from city to city in this mesmerizing computer visualization.
Continue reading… “A visualization of airplane flight paths in the U.S.”
Scientists restore vision to blind mice.
There are three blind men who have an inherited eye disorder that had destroyed the light-sensing cells of their retinas many years ago. Now one of the blind men can walk around at night navigating by streetlight and headlights. Another can read his own name. And the third mean has been able to see his fiancée’s smile for the very first time. All of this has been made possible by the retinal implants they have been fitted with. The implants took over from the broken cells. They sense incoming light by converting it into electrical impulses delivered to the brain. They aren’t close to having 20/20 vision, but they have restored sight to people who have lived without it for years.
Continue reading… “Scientists restore sight to blind mice by regenerating optic nerve”
How is my DNA NOT private?
Unlike the contents of your inbox, bank statement, or Facebook timeline, your DNA quite literally defines you. It’s strange, then, that in an age where sequencing the genome is becoming trivial, we don’t give a second thought about the privacy issues surrounding the chemicals that make us who we are.
In fact, most states in the US have absolutely no laws whatsoever to govern surreptitious genetic testing. If that surprises you, it gets worse. Back in 2006, the particularly forward-thinking state of Minnesota passed a law demanding that written consent had to be obtained for collection, storage, use, and sharing of genetic information. In 2011, however, the Minnesota Supreme Court judged that the state’s own department of health was in violation of that very law.
So, quite literally millions of US citizen have their DNA records stored on databases, and there are few laws governing what’s done with the data. Something has to be done about that—but it’s not necessarily as easy as it sounds.
Clamp down on DNA privacy…
Congratulations to the winners of the 2011 Nebula Awards, especially to Jo Walton, who won for her magnificent novel, Among Others. Here they are…
Solar wins again.
If you like the idea of getting free energy from the sun, but don’t want to deal with the complications of installing a solar array on your roof, Umbrosa has created a lovely backyard sun shade that does double-duty—turning those rays into electricity.
As umbrellas go the Eclipse’s design is striking, but it isn’t really an umbrella at all…
Continue reading… “Stylish Sun Shade Is the Easiest Way To Harness Solar Power For Your Home”
Charcoal for sale in an African market.
Xipamanine is a sprawling, labyrinthine marketplace in the heart of Maputo, Mozambique’s capital. On the street outside, tinny music blares and a bustling throng mills around. Inside, a series of winding corridors leads you through a maze of colorful booths that boast a wide variety of wares: shoes, stereo equipment, coconuts, toys, tomatoes, rugs, seeds, nuts, goats, and charcoal. Lots of charcoal.
You can buy it wholesale, in a gigantic sack with a month’s worth of cooking fuel, for about $20. An entire open air section of the market is dedicated to storing these bags; they’re stacked in imposing dust-covered piles….
Continue reading… “How deadly charcoal is bought and sold in an African market”
Will the internet be in better hands now?
Cybersecurity and the government have been a volitile combination lately, with proposed bills like SOPA, PIPA, and the still-up-in-the-air CISPA at the center of on-and-off internet outrage. So it’s kind of a big deal when the White House replaces its chief of cybersecurity affairs.
Last week, longtime chief Howard Schmidt stepped down…
Continue reading… “White House hires a new cybersecurity boss”
Futurist Thomas Frey: Scarcity is defined as an economic condition that arises when people have far greater wants than the available resources. Most often we think about the limited supplies of natural resources, but it includes far more than that.
Elon Musk, SpaceX CEO, stands in front of a Falcon 9 rocket at SpaceX’s launch site.
A Falcon 9 rocket will lift-off from Cape Canaveral, Florida tomorrow night. The craft will rendezvous in low-Earth orbit with the International Space Station (ISS) a few days after it has been launched.
Continue reading… “SpaceX set to launch first commercial rocket to ISS”
Pinterest deal values the company at around $1.5 billion.
It seems that every hot startup needs to reach a billion dollar valuation to be taken seriously after the surprising purchase of Instagram by Facebook. It only seems inevitable that the popular image pinboard site, Pinterest would skyrocket in value.
Continue reading… “Pinterest joins the billionaires club with $100 million funding from Rakuten”
Flickr’s tag line used to read “almost certainly the best online photo management and sharing application in the world.”
Flickr was something that had never been done before on the internet and it changed the shape of the internet as we know it today. But along came Yahoo who bought Flickr and “murdered it and screwed itself out of relevance along the way.”
Economists are increasingly worried that young Americans will spend years buried under student debt.
Joe Mihalic was determined not to be one of the many young Americans that economists are increasingly worried about that will spend the coming years buried under student debt.
Continue reading… “How one man wiped out $90,000 in student loans in 7 months”