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Simple energy innovation

Some energy innovations are pretty straightforward. White roofs save energy.

Highest paying college degrees have one thing in commmon

According to a recent blog post from the National Math Science Initiative,

The top 15 highest-earning college degrees all have one thing in common -- math skills. That's according to a recent survey from the National Association of Colleges and Employers, which tracks college graduates' job offers.

What can architecture learn from game design?

Though the answers are as yet unknown, the question intrigues: what can architects learn from game design?

Smart matter or fungible computing: "Claytronics"

Futurismic: Researchers at MIT and Carnegie Mellon are developing programmable matter that can become what it computes. One of the principles behind fungible computing, Neil Gershenfeld, explains that in the future you might "pour out as much computer as you might need".

The Mobile Difference

How mobile communications technology changed how we consume and pass on information? Check out the Mobile Difference from The Pew Internet and American Life Project. More recent research shows that in just the past year and half, one-third more people have obtained mobile devices that can access the Internet, and fully one third of all Americans have cell phones or smart phones that can use the Web.

Robot teaches itself to smile

Roboticists at University of California, San Diego (UCSD) have developed technology that will enable a realistic looking robot that to improve its own facial expressions through watching itself in the mirror, according to Technology Review.

Inspired by how babies babble to learn words and expressions, the UCSD researchers have now given the Einstein-bot its own learning ability. Instead of being preprogrammed to make certain facial expressions, the UCSD robot experiments in front of a mirror, gradually learning how its motors control its facial expressions. In this way, it learns to re-create particular expressions. The group presented its paper last month at the 2009 IEEE Conference on Development and Learning.

Here it is in all its "frubber" glory prior to gaining that ability.

Relativity on the Laboratory benchtop

In a demonstration that one never knows what a breakthrough will lead to, innovations in light-bending metamaterials could lead to testing of relativistic principles in the laboratory. Instead of patiently observing the principles in the heavens, physical theories could be tested on the bench top.

...[Xiang Zhang, a faculty scientist with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and professor at the University of California Berkeley] and his research group have demonstrated that a new class of metamaterials called 'continuous-index photon traps' or CIPTs can serve as broadband and radiation-free 'perfect' optical cavities. As such, CIPTs can control, slow and trap light in a manner similar to such celestial phenomena as black holes, strange attractors and gravitational lenses. This equivalence between the motion of the stars in curved spacetime and propagation of the light in optical metamaterials engineered in a laboratory is referred to as the 'optical-mechanical analogy.'

Zhang says that such specially designed metamaterials can be valuable tools for studying the motion of massive celestial bodies in gravitational potentials under a controlled laboratory environment. Observations of such celestial phenomena by astronomers can sometimes take a century of waiting....

In their paper, Zhang and his coauthors cite as a particularly intriguing prospect for applying artificial optical materials to the optical-mechanical analogy the study of the phenomenon known as chaos. The onset of chaos in dynamic systems is one of the most fascinating problems in science and is observed in areas as diverse as molecular motion, population dynamics and optics. In particular, a planet around a star can undergo chaotic motion if a perturbation, such as another large planet, is present. However, owing to the large spatial distances between the celestial bodies, and the long periods involved in the study of their dynamics, the direct observation of chaotic planetary motion has been a challenge. The use of the optical-mechanical analogy may enable such studies to be accomplished in a bench-top laboratory setting on demand.

Innovation requires Faith

BusinessWeek's "Using Design to Drive Innovation" makes this faith statement.

True innovation requires the adoption of a belief system that sometimes must prevail in the face of other data metrics. Read up on the great inventions and business wins and you will note that at the core of most of them lie belief, dedication, and the passion to succeed. Today's business leaders are often too afraid to move ideas forward without ironclad data proofs that they will be successful. All too often, they are the losers. Use your head, listen to your heart, and feel what's in your gut.

Back after a brief break

iMedia Kentucky will be back on Monday, July 20 after a brief break.

A Biology for Altruism

[cross-posted from the IdeaFestival web log] Dr. Lee Alan Dugatkin, a professor of Biology at the University of Louisville, has been doing research on the evolution of goodness in humans and non-humans for the last twenty years. As he points out here and in his 2008 IdeaFestival presentation, altruistic behavior can be found throughout the animal kingdom. His forthcoming book, "Mr. Jefferson and the Giant Moose" is a tale of both natural and American history and will be the subject of talk planned for IF'09.

Wayne