Every year New York scientific literary agent and founder of The Third Culture movement John Brockman poses a question to over 100 of the top scientists, philosophers and thinkers alive. The responses, which are usually unexpected, sometimes provocative, and always fascinating, are published on January 1st on the website Edge.org. Psychologist Steven Pinker suggested this …
January 2006 archive
Jan 17 2006
First GPLv3 Public Discussion Draft Released
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) released the first draft of the General Public License (GPL) version 3 on Monday at the First International Conference on GPLv3, a two day conference held at MIT. As expected, the draft addresses patent litigation protection and digital rights management (DRM) systems among other issues. The new version, when finally …
Jan 16 2006
Survival Research Labs Returning to LA
Survival Research Labs (SRL), the performance art group infamous for their apocalyptic robot battles, is returning to Los Angeles this Saturday, January 21st to begin a one month exhibition at Fringe Exhibitions in Chinatown. There will be a two hour opening reception from 6 to 8 pm. The exhibition will include photos from past performances, …
Jan 13 2006
Cilia Direct Newborn Adult Brain Cell Migration
Neuroscientists have never fully understood how new adult brain cells are able to traverse the relatively long distances they need to cover in order to reach their final locations within the brain. LiveScience.com is reporting today that a recent study of mouse brains co-authored by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco sheds some …
Jan 12 2006
LinuxRobots.org aka Scare Michael Shiloh’s Dog
LinuxDevices.com has a posting about a newly launched website by one of its members that combines two of my favorite things: Linux and robots. The website, LinuxRobots.org, was created by Michael Shiloh, an electrical engineer, Linux buff, and robot builder for Survival Research Laboratories (SRL), the performance art group whose spectacularly noisy and destructive robot …
Jan 11 2006
First Draft of GPLv3 Due Next Week
The first major overhaul of the General Public License (GPL) in almost 15 years is set to be released to the public by the Free Software Foundation at the First International Conference on GPLv3 at MIT on January 16th. Monday’s draft, which will begin the public debate about the wording of version 3, is just …
Jan 08 2006
WowWee Announces Three New Robots at CES
WowWee announced three new robots at the Consumer Electronics Expo (CES) in Las Vegas last week, and the guys from both Gizmodo and Engadget were able to swing by their booth at the Sands Convention Center to get firsthand glimpses of the new bots, and to provide for us, the unfortunate non-attendees, some great pictures. …
Jan 06 2006
Astrocytes Can Independently Control Blood Flow
Astrocytes, also known as astroglia, are star-shaped cells in the brain whose function and importance has never been fully understood by neuroscientists. Once thought to be housekeeping cells under the control of neurons, LiveScience.com is reporting today that researchers have found that astrocytes can directly and independently perform the critical function of controlling blood flow …
Jan 05 2006
Lego Announces Mindstorms NXT Robotics Toolset
The International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) has been in full swing in Las Vegas for the last few days, and while there’s been a lot of cool gadget news and product announcements, there hasn’t been much worth mentioning here until today. To the surprise of many people, myself included, Lego announced this morning that the …
Jan 02 2006
Continuous Visual Guidance Important for Walking
A recent experiment by researchers from Great Britain finds that ongoing visual feedback during walking plays a more critical role than once thought. It was previously believed that vision was crucial only while lifting your foot to take a step and not as important once the target of your step was determined and your foot …
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