Technology

Explaining something simply is not easy.  Linus Tech Tips has done the best job I have seen of breaking down the computational aspects of how a project like LIGO works.  It helps to have a small video production studio to create good visual aids.  Physicist like me are most interested in the pure physics-based challenges in such a project.  Isolating a signal from all of various types of environmental noise involved in detecting tiny distortions in the distance between points, the space time metric (which is what gravitational waves are.) Gravitational Waves So, what is a…

KAIST International Forum on Asia’s Futures, Session 2 Seoul, December 13, 2018 I thank our conference hosts for the kind invitation to participate in this panel, and for the opportunity to assemble these thoughts on Asia’s Technology-Driven Futures. Let’s outline a context for these futures, before diving into the three questions posed to the panel. There is a global environmental crisis. For Asia, the most pressing consequences are water shortages in China and elsewhere, due to less Himalayan snow runoff, and coming mass migrations due to rising seas, stronger storms, and inundation of…

The Population Council is enrolling 420 couples to test NES/T, which is the progestin compound segesterone acetate (Nestorone) in combination with testosterone. Men have somewhat limited options for birth control compared to women; condoms are effective, as is vasectomy, but the latter is surgery and can be difficult to reverse. Over half of men would use a product like a birth control pill if it were similarly reversible and uncomplicated. But to-date none have been successful, including other combinations of hormones.  "Expanding male contraceptive options could help make family…

A polio vaccine that doesn't require refrigeration could be used all over the world, and that would bring an end to the devastating disease. With just 22 reported cases worldwide in 2017, the highly infectious disease, which causes lifelong paralysis and disability mostly in young children, is on the brink of complete eradication. Yet in Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Syria and Pakistan, countries where vaccination rates are spotty, young children remain at risk. The biggest hitch to complete eradication has been creating a temperature-stable vaccine for use in developing countries where…

Though anaphylaxis is rare, you are more likely to be murdered this Thanksgiving than die from a food allergy, companies and schools are increasingly buying epinephrine auto-injectors (EpiPens), which has led to shortages (government approval policies make it difficult for competitors to enter the market) and thus high costs. Though rare, the consequences of anaphylaxis are high, much more severe than using it when it might not be necessary. If you are one of the millions of people in the U.S. who now carries an epinephrine auto injector (EAI) you probably wondered if it will still work if it…

Medicine uses Latin because it is a 'dead' language - the meanings of the words will not change over time. But if you want to modernize translations to different languages, an ancient book may help: The Bible. Tools to translate text between languages are widely available - and rather awful. While they can create literal translations, style is hard to bring across without human intervention. If you tried to read a translation of China's Liu Cixin using a computer, you would miss everything, most importantly a great example of the best science-fiction culture since America of the 1950s. Big…

Vaccines are the most effective way to prevent and eradicate infectious diseases but many vaccines have to be manufactured in cell culture or eggs, which is expensive, and most vaccines must be kept refrigerated during the transportation from manufacturers to health care clinics. In tropical and subtropical regions, such cold storage requirements could contribute to more than 80 percent of the vaccine cost. A better solution may one day be available. Researchers have developed a less expensive way to produce vaccines that cuts the cost of vaccine production and storage by 80 percent…

Researchers at Carnege-Mellon University have found a way to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) schemes to transfer content from one video to the style of another. So they can make a daffodil bloom like the way a hibiscus bloom does or make clouds that are crossing the sky rapidly on a windy day be slowed to give the appearance of calmer weather during movie shoots. All very positive, but that is not what will happen. What will happen instead are "deep fakes." Whereas John Oliver's facial expressions can be transferred to look like they are the mannerisms of a cartoon character or…

There is a vicious cycle of vanity on social media, according to new results. College-age women who viewed positive feedback on Instagram selfies then experienced greater body dissatisfaction - because they put more focus on appearance and in the end fueled body dissatisfaction among viewers. 128 undergraduates (naturally) viewed images that had a short positive comment. For half the participants, comments were related to appearance 'she looks great') the other half viewed the same images with place-related comments ('that is a beautiful beach') and as predicted, participants own body…

Ray tracing has been a hot topic since...well, at least 350 B.C. in the western world, when Aristotle described his camera obscura and wrote that the eye is 'a darkened chamber awaiting light.' Da Vinci was fascinated by it, as was Descartes. And of course Einstein wanted to understand light quanta. In the 1990s, software and hardware companies began to tout it, but like Atari Jaguar's claim it was a 64-bit machine because it had two 32-bit processors, it was a lot of marketing. Ray tracing works because light won't interfere with itself if it crosses the path to the eye and it will travel in…