28 September 2001

Eier im Weltall - Grundlegende irdische Prozesse aufsteigender Luftblasen

[ Spiegel ]: Wer schon immer mal in der Schwerelosigkeit kochen wollte (und wer Realplayer installiert hat), sollte in diese extraterristrischen Kochtöpfe blicken. Hier ist der dazugehörige Artikel: "Viele Jahrzehnte haben sich Wissenschaftler daran versucht, die grundlegenden irdischen Prozesse der aufsteigenden Luftblasen zu ergründen. Nur langsam wuchs das Verständnis."

Damit ist der geplante Weltraum-Ausflug fraglich, wenn nicht gestorben: kann man so überhaupt Kaffee kochen? Nur langsam wuchs das Verständnis... (September 28., 2001, )

The World Wide Translator - Will Web-wide "translation memory" finally make machine translation pay off?

[ Technology Review ]: "Globalization companies hope to break through this barrier with software that employs translation memory - a way to use past translations to speed new ones. But building a useful database of translations is a slow and expensive endeavor, and companies guard their translations jealously." [ more... ] (September 27., 2001, dj)

Fly like a Bird - Development of "an aircraft that derives all of its thrust and nearly all of its lift from flapping wings" (an Ornithopter) at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies.

[Êornithopter.net ]: "The full-scale ornithopter is an engine powered aircraft that carries one pilot. All of the thrust and nearly all of the lift is created by the mechanical flapping of the ornithopter's wings. The two wings of the craft are joined by a centre section which is moved up and down by pylons connected to the drivetrain. The wings' thrust is due primarily to a low-pressure region around the leading edge, which integrates to provide a force known as "leading-edge suction". The wings also passively twist in response to the flapping. This is due to a structure that is torsionally compliant in just the right amount to allow efficient thrusting ("aeroelastic tailoring"). It should be noted, though, that twisting is required only to prevent flow separation on sections along the wing. It does not produce thrust in the same way as required by sharp-edged wings with little leading-edge suction." [Êmore... ] (September 22., 2001, )

Lost tape of first Moon landing rediscovered - Pretty noisy; lots of people shouting "Go! Go!".

[ÊBBC ]: "The tape covers the crucial few minutes as the Apollo 11 lander touches down on the surface of the Earth's satellite in July 1969. It was found in the audio library at Nasa's space centre in Houston. The recording had been labelled "bad tape" because it was in a very poor condition."

BBC provides a link to the RealAudio file on the top-right of the page. (September 20., 2001, )

Clockless Chips - "Replacing dictatorship with anarchy", a few iconoclasts are building computer chips that dispense with the traditional clock.

[ Technology Review ]: "The winners in this next wave of innovation will be the companies that choose the right time to jump off the curve. Clockless chips have the promise of revolutionizing the industry, of rapidly accelerating the relentless drive toward faster and cheaper chips that we've come to expect from Moore's Law. Who is to say what might be possible? Why not an all-asynchronous chip compatible with Intel products?

"If someone does that, they will have a serious competitive advantage for a number of years," says Intel's Stevens. Translation? "So yeah, we're worried."

Let the anarchy begin." [ more... ] (September 19., 2001, )

Neurobiologie: wie funktioniert der freie Wille? - Unter dem Eindruck eines mehrtägigen mono-thematischen Nachrichtenbombardements: entscheiden wir uns wirklich bewußt für unsere Handlungen?

[ÊDie Zeit ]: "Hirnforscher stellen unseren freien Willen infrage. Die Neurobiologie zeigt: Wir tun nicht, was wir wollen, sondern wir wollen, was wir tun. Erst im Nachhinein findet unser Hirn vernünftige Begründungen für Dinge, die wir längst getan haben. Philosophen wenden ein: Automaten sind wir deshalb noch lange nicht." [Êmehr... ] (September 15., 2001, )

Ol' Protozoans compute better - ... and they don't use Windows XP

[ BBC ]: "One of the oldest forms of life on Earth has been revealed as a natural born computer programmer. Scientists studying a species of single-celled protozoans called Ciliates have found that the organisms are experts at sorting, shuffling and splicing DNA when they reproduce.

Some of the repertoire of tricks Ciliates use to untangle their DNA resemble the techniques that computer programmers use to make software more elegant and robust. (...) Dr Rozenberg and his colleagues have found that the techniques used to create the strands of common genes bears a strong resemblance to the "linked lists" technique employed bt many computer programmers since its first use in the late 1940s." (September 11., 2001, )

Dark Spots on Mars - Large groups of dark spots in the southern craters of Mars which spread every Martian spring could prove there is life on Mars, Hungarian scientists said Friday.

[ SpaceDaily ]: "We cannot find anything else to explain it," said evolutionary biologist Tibor Ganti, a member of the three-man Hungarian team that believes it has discovered life on the red planet. "The organisms live between the surface of Mars and a thick ice cover that isolates them extremely well from Martian temperatures of around minus 120 degrees Celsius (-184 degrees Fahrenheit)," Ganti told Agence France-Presse. [ more... ] (September 10., 2001, )

British Scientists Studying Humour - British scientists are hunting the nation's funniest joke to explain why laughter is beneficial.

Research shows that the ability to laugh plays a vital role in promoting our psychological and physical well being.Ê Social psychologists have demonstrated that the ability to laugh ourselves and make others laugh is central to the success of many everyday interactions.Ê Laugh Lab, devised by Psychologist Dr Richard Wiseman, aims to uncover the nationâs best-loved joke, told in optimum timing.Ê Laugh Lab is the biggest ever experiment in the area, and will examine many different aspects of the science of humour.

As you might have guessed already, there is also a scientific "International Society for Humor Studies" (ISHS). Most members are university professors, in such disciplines as Psychology, Medicine, Linguistics, Literature, Education, Philosophy, Fine Arts, Religion, Politics, and Sociology. That sounds funny. (September 9., 2001, )

The Giant Jump - Initial Results - Over 1 million children jumped up and down at the same time

[ÊScience Year ]:"The Giant Jump was a huge success. Over 1 million children jumped up and down at the same time and measured the effects on their own homemade seismometers. Together we set Guinness World Records for the largest simultaneous jump, and the largest number of people participating in a World Record. The Giant Jump generated high frequency waves that are rapidly absorbed in the earth. So we definitely rocked Britain - especially in the locality of all the schools taking part."

[ Reuters ]: "Schulkinder erzeugten Erdbeben in Großbritannien. Britische Schulkinder haben am Freitag ein Erdbeben erzeugt. Landesweit seien am Vormittag rund eine Million Kinder gleichzeitig für einen wissenschaftlichen Großversuch eine Minute lang auf Schulhöfen und Spielplätzen 20-mal auf und ab gesprungen, sagte der Direktor der Forschungsinitiative "Science Year", Nigel Pain, am Freitag."
[ Ananova ]: "A million youngsters have jumped up and down on the spot to try and create a small earthquake. Scientists will take around a fortnight to discover whether the Giant Jump released enough energy to create an earthquake which is so small it cannot be felt under the feet"
[ ITN online ]: "
One million British school children have jumped up and down simultaneously in a bid to create an earthquake and enter the record books as the world's largest scientific experiment."
(September 7., 2001, )

[ Karl ]: "Die letzten Sekunden verstreichen, und um Punkt 11 Uhr (12 Uhr Sommerzeit) wissen wir uns eins mit Millionen Menschen rund um den Globus, die nun für eine Minute dem Boden unter ihnen Saures geben.

In unserem Falle reicht die Energie offensichtlich nicht einmal aus, um die Nachbarn auf uns aufmerksam zu machen (was vielleicht auch ganz gut ist). Spürbare Schwankungen des Untergrundes bleiben leider aus.

Um 12:00 Uhr wird im Radio über das Ereignis berichtet. Die aufgebrachte Energie hat zumindest in Großbritannien für ein Erdbeben der Stärke 3 (!) gereicht. Kleinere Beben wurden auch von hemmungslosen Teilnehmern in Australien und in Neuseeland verursacht." ( Karl on September 7., 2001)

Bei TextLab fiel 3 Stunden später immerhin ein "Spiegel" vom Schreibtisch - sicherlich die Spätfolgen einiger von Australien reflektierte Erdbebenwellen... (September 7., 2001, majo)

Tomorrow - HOLD ON EVERYONE! - As we reported on August 14., The Giant Jump. will take place tomorrow in the UK and elsewhere.

[ Science Year ]: "Itâs UTTERLY IMPERATIVELY CRUCIAL that everybody in the UK jumps for the same minute ö ie 11.00am to 11.01am on Friday 7th September. "We hope this is a challenge that will be taken up around the world but we suspect that possibly the UK will hold this one for some time." says David Hawksett of the Guinness Book of Records that will make it all official. And to continue our international update, the Giant Jump doesn't just stop in the UK. We have had confirmed sightings of people limbering up in Australia, New Zealand and the USA, and hear that many people are planning to log on to our website no matter what the hour of day or night.

Our special correspondent Karl will join in the experiment with his family and report from the spot tomorrow. (September 6., 2001, )

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