Wide Angle: Technology to Save the World

May 04, 2009

Scientists are harnessing computing systems such as the Internet and embedded sensing networks to keep tabs on the world. What they learn could help us observe ecologies we've never seen before, identify endangered species and even see health trends that could adversely affect large populations. In this wide angle, we'll take a look at the technologies on mission to save the world.

• Podcast: Vodafone Wireless Innovation Project
  Vodafone operates in 25 countries, some of them developing nations, where things like infectious diseases and sudden natural disasters take heavy tolls. In response, it sponsored the Wireless Innovation Project. One hundred applicants submitted ideas that harnessed new and existing wireless technologies in pursuit of social good. Clark Boyd talks with the top three winners.

• Blog: Will the Internet Say "I Told You So"?
  The Internet is being eyed as a way to warn us about ecological catastrophe. Our current ecological monitoring systems just aren't fast enough -- looking for key words and patterns online from scientists, government officials, and casual observers could be more effective.

• IEEE Spectrum Feature: How To Master A Seismic Disaster
  When the next big earthquake strikes Tokyo, an early-warning system could help save lives and property.

• IM Interview: Curing the Mosquito to Stop Malaria
  Malaria is a complex disease that involves the interactions of three organisms: human, parasite, and mosquito. If scientists can interrupt any of these interactions, they could control the disease. Tracy Staedter chats with George Dimopoulos about the methods researchers are developing.

• Blog: Tech for the Developing World, Stat! Malaria
  Dr. Robert Malkin is a professor of bioengineering at Duke University and director for the Engineering World Health program. He recently spoke with me about key problem areas in the developing world and emerging solutions.

• News: Technology Saving the World
  From tagging to Twitter, researchers are developing and using new technologies to track endangered species, population growth and even diseases like the recent swine flu outbreak. Read how they do it and how it's helping people all over the world.

• Blog: Surgery Light, MacGyver-Style
  Periodic power outages are more than just annoying. They're dangerous, especially if one happens in the middle of surgery. Enter the pie-plate-bike-part-LED-battery lamp, designed by a University of Michigan student group.

• Blog: Tracking The Spread of the H1N1 Flu Virus
  People are going out of their way to track the H1N1 influenza virus (that's the swine flu) in real time over the Internet. HowStuffWorks explores how and why.

• Puzzle: Tracking the World
  Secret surveillance cameras and Internet maps are used to track everything from animals to flu outbreaks.

• Video: Text Messages Save Lives
  A text messaging-based program, called Mobiles in Malawi, is saving lives by connecting rural communities to hospitals. Kasey-Dee Gardner explain how it works.

• Top 10: Ways Cell Phones Help People Living in Poverty
  Cell phones are becoming ubiquitous, even in underdeveloped countries. This unprecedented penetration by a communications technology is clearly changing the face of the developing world for the better -- in some cases, in ways that not even the most visionary leaders anticipated.

• Top 10: Innovations for Impoverished People
  Two billion people in the world don't get enough to eat, approximately one billion live on less than a dollar a day and every year 1.4 million children die because they lack sanitary conditions and access to clean water. Some humanitarians think these numbers can be lowered with simple technologies. Here are 10 that are making a difference.

MORE DISCOVERY TECH WIDE ANGLES

Variety is the Spice of Tech

March 16, 2009

This week on Discovery Tech, we have a mix of stories, news, podcasts, blogs, puzzles and other articles. Come back daily to check 'em out.

Monday: Clark Boyd's Technology Podcast. CCTV in the U.K., Corporate Snooping in Germany, U.S. DriveCams, and the EYEborg.
A bit of theme runs through this week's Technology Podcast from PRI's The World. That theme is surveillance. In fact, we take a hard look at all manner of technologies and entities that are, in fact, looking at you.

Tuesday: Puzzle. Biofuels made from sustainable crops are showing promise. And scientists are looking at everything from Algae to Jatropa.

Wednesday: Engineering Works podcast. Gene Charleton looks at how food engineers are using a microwave-like device and irradiation to get rid of unpleasant bacteria like salmonella and E-coli that can make us sick.

Thursday: Slideshow. Math Model Grows Snowflakes

Friday: Top 10 Uses for the Large Hadron Collider

Image: David Griffeath

Atom-Fusing Laser, Robotic Jellyfish, Invisibility Carpet, A Pregnancy Gene and More

July 18, 2008

These are the coolest tech stories I discovered this past week.

July 12 / The New York Times
Can’t Find a Parking Spot? Check Smartphone
If you live a big city, then you know what it's like to drive around and around looking for that elusive parking spot. But starting this fall, San Franciscans will be in for a treat. The city is testing the use of wireless sensors that will communicate to street signs or a smartphone the availability of free spaces. Now just don't run anyone over trying to get the spot first.

July 13 / Guardian
Doctors Rage At Being Rated Online
As a big fan of AngiesList and Yelp, I'm all for a Web site that will allow patients to rate their doctors online. Isn't it all about referrals anyway? And health care is a service for which we pay big bucks. So suck it up, GPs, and get with the times.

July 15 / Discovery News
Giant Laser in the Works to Achieve Fusion
Wouldn't Dr. Evil love this "laser?" It can't blow up the planet, but at 10 stories tall and 400 feet long, it will create enough heat and pressure to fuse atoms and create helium. The reaction will release massive amounts of environmentally friendly energy and enough helium to keep us all talking about it with high squeaky voices.

July 15 / New Scientist
Dirt-Repelling Tube Promises Cheap, Pure Water
Man, we've really messed up the world's water supply. Most of it can't be consumed without being purified first, and that's not good for people living in developing worlds. But a a new way of purifying water could offer a simple solution. The technique uses a material that naturally attracts water while at the same time repelling impurities.

July 15 / BBC
The Importance of Being There
You have to really not like your surroundings (or yourself?) to prefer a virtual world over reality. But even still, VR environments have a long way to go before they will supplant this world, says regular columnist Bill Thompson.

July 16 / Wired
Obama Wages Cyberwar
Even though the Bush administration has initiated a $30 billion effort to beef up cyber security, Obama says its too little too late.

July 16 / Popular Science
Robotic Jellyfish Just Like the Real Thing, But Without the Sting
Sure, it's great that the AquaJelly has sensors, a short-range radio system, LEDs for illumination and communication and is coated with conductive metal paint that helps it connect with a nearby charging station, but I think they're dern pretty and I sure wish I had one. Hint hint.

July 16 / Wired
Army Wants 'Psychologically Inspired' Robot Vision
Robots score a big "duh" when it comes to vision. They just can't see the world we do. That's why the Army has put out an APB for a "psychologically inspired object recognition system." But do we really want robots seeing the world through our eyes? What if they notice what a bunch of doofuses we are?

July 17 / Discovery News
Invisible Carpet Idea Close to Actual Invisibility
Invisibility cloaks are great for hiding giant spaceships, but an invisibility carpet is just way more practical. Scientists have created a material that can hide objects in visible light. My question: If we can't see it, how will we know it's working? (See what I mean about being a doofus.)

July 17 / Popular Science
A Gene for Baby Makin’
This could put an end to birth control pills, foams and devices and eliminate the need for testicle snipping. Scientists have located the gene that both regulates and blocks ovulation.

July 17 / Wired
Why China's Olympian Efforts to Clean Up Beijing's Air Won't Work.
China is doing a bunch of stuff to clean up the air in time for the Olympics. Smoking bans, traffic bans and turning off power plants to name of few. But it might not make any difference.

Photo: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

The Week (According to Me)

June 13, 2008

Starting today and every Friday hence, I'm going to post a summary of the coolest tech stories and blogs I came across over the past week. The post will be here and also on my website, Discovery Tech. This week: Engineered cells, shape-shifting cars, wirelessly networked cows, bacteria that eat plastic, and gold nanoparticles that block HIV caught my attention, among others. Enjoy

06 June 2008 / Wired
ITP: The Ultimate Sweet-Talking Jacket for Geeks
The CyranoSuit, uses a series of sensors embedded in the arms and chest to detect physical interaction with a woman and then a hacked receipt printer delivers romantic lines straight to the breast pocket.

07 June 2008 / Powrtalk
Un
The Man wants us to write about technology. Energy and technology. But sometimes we want to write about un-technology. About not doing things. Avoidance strategies. Nega-watts. Nega-barrels. Things that are related to energy but that are distinctly un-tech.

08 June 2008 / Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends
Wirelessly Networking Cows
U.S. researchers have developed a Walkman-like headset for cows. This device enables them to 'whisper wireless commands to cows to control their movements

09 June 2008 / New Scientist
Bacteria Make Major Evolutionary Shift in the Lab
A major evolutionary innovation has unfurled right in front of researchers' eyes. It's the first time evolution has been caught in the act of making such a rare and complex new trait.

10 June / Super Duper Sustainable Stuff
Los Angeles Has Got Some Balls. No, Really.
The the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power unloaded 400,000 black plastic "shade balls" into the 58-million-gallon reservoir to protect it--nearly one for every customer.

10 June 2008 / Wired
BMW Builds a Shape-Shifting Car Out of Cloth
Instead of steel, aluminum or even carbon fiber, the GINA Light Visionary Model has a body of seamless fabric stretched over a movable metal frame that allows the driver to change its shape at will.

10 June 2008 / Scientific American
The Midas Touch: Using Gold Nanoparticles to Block HIV
Researchers find that attaching 12 molecules of a drug compound to one gold nanoparticle restores the drug's ability to prevent HIV infection.

10 June 2008 / Scientific American
Scientists Close to Reconstructing First Living Cell
Harvard Medical School researchers report in Nature that they have built a model of what they believe the very first living cell may have looked like, which contains a strip of genetic material surrounded by a fatty membrane.

11 June 2008 / The Guardian
Can Mobile Phones Really Be Ssed to Cook Popcorn?
If four separate homemade videos on YouTube are to be believed, it's now possible to cook popcorn using the energy emitted from ordinary ringing mobiles.

11 June 2008 / Discovery News
Experiment Mimics Earth’s Spinning Core
By spinning a 26-ton steel sphere filled with boiling metal at about 90 miles an hour, Dan Lathrop, a scientist at the University of Maryland, hopes to unlock Earth's spinning magnetic heart.

11 June 2008 / New Scientist
Human Egg Makes Accidental Debut on Camera
These are the clearest pictures ever taken of what is the starting point of every human life: ovulation occurring inside a woman's body.

11 June 2008 / The Engineer
Towering Fuel Cell
The New York Power Authority (NYPA) has inked a $10.6m deal with UTC Power that will make the redeveloped World Trade Center the site of one of the largest fuel cell installations in the world.

12 June 2008 / Technovelgy.com
Bacteria Eats Plastic; What Could Go Wrong?
Microorganisms dine on polythene bags

12 June 2008 / Science Daily
U.S. Still Leads the World in Science and Technology
Despite perceptions that the nation is losing its competitive edge, the United States remains the dominant leader in science and technology worldwide, according to a new RAND Corporation study.

12 June 2008 / BBC
Thinking Up Beautiful Music
Musicians may soon be able to play instruments using just the power of the mind.

Photo: BMW

Locutus the Cowborg

June 12, 2008

When you think of wearable computing, a couple of things probably come to mind.

An iPod jacket, for example.

                                                                         

Or maybe some kind of vision display headset.

And that might remind you of Locutus of Borg.

But I'll bet "cow" never comes to mind.

Well, it does for the folks over at the USDA Agricultural Research Service. They've invented a Walkman-like headset for cows. They describe it as "Walkman-like." I would call it more 80s-boom-box-like. The headset, developed by animal scientist Dean Anderson, allows a person to whisper wireless commands to cattle to get them to move in particular directions or even self-corral from a distance. A communication scenario might go a little something like this:

ANDERSON: You don't need to graze here.
COWS: We don't need to graze here.

ANDERSON: These are not the droids you're looking for.
COWS: These are not the droids we're looking for.

ANDERSON: Go about your business.
COWS: We'll go about our business.

ANDERSON: Move along into the corral.
COWS: Let's move along into the corral.

Don't think of it as mind manipulation, though. Think of it as strongly suggesting. The idea is that smaller, less obtrusive headsets could be used on cows, in combination with GPS, as a kind of virtual fence. This way farmers could herd cows from a remote location and also prevent cattle from penetrating forbidden boundaries.