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Futurology #129: lit soccer balls & cybertracking
Monday, 01 February 2010
Soccer ball to light the Third World: Perhaps aptly, in the year of the Football World Cup being staged in Africa, a new soccer ball called the sOccket (pic from Fast Company) could help ease the reliance on toxic kerosene lamps. It works with inductive coil technology similar to what is found in flashlights that power up when shaken.
Every 15 minutes of play with the ball generates the power to light up an LED lamp for 3 hours. That means a whole soccer game could easily provide light for a day, and could cut down the unhealthy widespread use of kerosene lamps that deliver 190 million metric tons a year of carbon dioxide emissions into the air each year, equivalent to emissions from 38 million cars.
It will originally be marketed in Western countries as a tech gadget, with money from the sales directed at distributing the sOccket in poor nations.
[Comment — well, kick me out of the park!]
Scientific American explains it in terms of waves. On the particle side of things, imagine you are trying to get to someone through a large crowd of randomly moving people. At first it takes effort to move through the crowd of people. Then, as you get close to each other, there won't be any more people to fight through. There will be a lot of people around you, though, jostling you towards each other. The force of the crowd around the two of you will push you into each other, and this is called the Casmir Effect.
Physicists have come up with a way to reverse the Casimir Effect . Under the right conditions, two plates will push away from each other, instead of towards each other. It made frictionless technology possible and the Casimir Effect more versatile.
At the moment, NASA is "doubtful this energy can be tapped." The energy is there, however, and its potential remains.
[Comment — if it's there, it will be tapped one day.]
NASA commissions 'plug and play' spacesuit: The new suit will not only outfit astronauts outside the International Space Station and on the planned 2020 trip to the moon, but will be able to sustain life for up to 120 hours so it's suitable (pun!) for trips to Mars.
The new suit will have a plug and play design so that different modules (arms, legs, feet) can be used interchangeably with different torsos. (Think of it as several outfits for the price of one.)
The suit, writes Smart Planet, will be lighter weight, more flexible and more breathable than existing suits and will be equipped with a computer that links directly back to Earth. (The suits will also be easier to put on; existing suits take three hours.)
[Comment — and the, er, waste disposal: is that plug and play too?]
The dirt on dirt: Smart Planet has published ten common misconceptions about dirt, just to bring you back to Earth.
[Comment — no, it isn't 'clean']
Quantum computer built: Groups at Harvard and the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia have designed and built the first quantum computer to simulate and calculate the behavior of a molecular, quantum system.
Much has been written about how such computers would be paragons of calculating power should anybody learn to build one that is much more than a toy. And this latest one is at the toy stage, too, reports Wired.
[Comment — I've always wanted to simulate the behavior of a molecular, quantum systems. Maybe in OS 10.7?]
Moscow's strays evolving in intelligence: Stray dogs in Moscow are gaining greater intelligence as they evolve to navigate city living. The A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution can study a population of about 35,000, and has been doing so for the last 30 years.
Of the three broad types of stray behaviours identified, the beggar dogs appear to be most evolved. They can recognise humans most likely to give them food and can navigate the subway. Beggar dogs can use scent to identify different subway stops. In beggar packs, the smartest dog is the alpha male.
[Comment — the most annoying dogs are the cleverest, just like salesmen.]
Your cyber track tracked as you surf: A technology researcher has created a web tool that shows just how easy it is to identify you based on nothing more than a click.
Panopticlick comes from Electronic Frontier Foundation staff technologist Peter Eckersley. It identifies what kind of computer you have, the OS it runs, what kind of browser you are using to surf the web, and what kinds of plugins you have on that browser.
Panopticlick will anonymously log the configuration and version information from your operating system, your browser and your plug-ins, then compare it to a database of five million other configurations. Then, it gives you a uniqueness score letting you see how easily identifiable you might be as you surf the web.
[Comment — try it ...Yikes!]
Google's sex and religion traces: Three geographers who research internet map data did an exhaustive study of user-generated markers on Google maps. University of Kentucky's Matthew Zook and Oxford's Mark Graham sifted through reams of this data looking for keywords that popped up in association with different regions in the flags and notes people leave on Google maps to let other people know what's going on in that area.
One of their most recent results is this map showing the prevalence of words associated with different religions (they picked the words "Jesus," "Hindu," "Buddha," and "Allah") – of course the terms tend to occur more commonly in areas of the world associated with religions that use those words frequently. Obviously, there are going to be more places with the word "Jesus" associated with them in South America, while there will be more places associated with "Buddha" in Southeast Asia.
[Comment — no real surprises there.]
One of their most recent results is this map showing the prevalence of words associated with different religions (they picked the words "Jesus," "Hindu," "Buddha," and "Allah") – of course the terms tend to occur more commonly in areas of the world associated with religions that use those words frequently. Obviously, there are going to be more places with the word "Jesus" associated with them in South America, while there will be more places associated with "Buddha" in Southeast Asia.
[Comment — no real surprises there.]
Art robot sells itself on eBay forever: Called "A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter (2009)," by the artist Caleb Larsen, the imposing cube has a mind of its own – hooked up to the internet, it put itself up for sale every seven days.
This thing comes with a legal contract binding the collector to facilitating the sale, and apparently this robot artwork is supposed to change hands every week – forever.
[Comment — it says more about a buyer's intelligence than the robot's, I fear.]
This thing comes with a legal contract binding the collector to facilitating the sale, and apparently this robot artwork is supposed to change hands every week – forever.
[Comment — it says more about a buyer's intelligence than the robot's, I fear.]
