Technology

The trouble with drones is proliferation and sovereignty.  Take this story for example where the Pakistan's minister of Information and Broadcasting urges the United States to "transfer drone technology to Pakistan as deadly attacks are proving counter productive." The Minister goes further to mention "he said government will not allow drone attacks in Balochistan.It would be better if Pakistani agencies conduct operation inside its territory.The US was not mulling any drone attacks in Balochistan." This story brings up a question in my mind: Are drones and by extension robots the new…

A meeting of the San Diego Software Industry Council. The subject: What will Web 3.0 look like? “Why don’t we know?” asked one venture capitalist. “Are we idiots?” The VC was pandering to an in-group audience. The implied answer was, No, we’re not idiots, we are successful, sophisticated investors, entrepreneurs, and scholars of the web! But y’know what? The truth is, yes, we are idiots. We are idiots because of technology colonization, and we fall for it every time. Fifteen years ago the World Wide Web came along, and what did we do with it? We used it for push-publishing, for banner ads,…

DAVIS, California, December 7 /PRNewswire/ -- Are you at risk from a large, damaging earthquake? A new online tool developed by OpenHazards Group, Inc., http://www.openhazards.com, quickly estimates the chances of a future earthquake and how much property damage it will do in any time period, anywhere in the world. OpenHazards is the creator of the first free, public earthquake hazard tool that offers vital information about earthquake hazards worldwide. The online Hazard Viewer shows earthquake forecasts and predicts how often and how much shaking might happen at any location. The Home…

The use of pilotless drones are up 94% in 2008.  The flight hours graph is particularly enlightening; 400,000 hours logged for all of 2008 between the military services. I wonder what the numbers will be in 2009 and in 2010 as the United States escalates in AfPak.

Agendia, a molecular cancer diagnostics company, announced today that Palmetto GBA, California's Part B Medicare administrator, has established coding guidelines for the company's MammaPrint test. MammaPrint is Agendia's FDA-cleared breast cancer recurrence test, which has been reimbursed by payors since 2008.  Patients across the United States can now submit claims for the MammaPrint test directly to Palmetto GBA in California where the test results are analyzed. The coding guidelines for healthcare providers are available at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) website…

The article, "Supercomputing for the Masses," caught my eye. The key quote of the article, "Seven of the world’s top 10 supercomputers use standard chips from A.M.D. and Intel, as do about 90 percent of the 500 fastest machines. “I think this says that supercomputing technology is affordable,” said Margaret Lewis, an A.M.D. director. “We are kind of getting away from this ivory tower.” Often in political science and social science we talk about as the world globalizes more and more, more and more is democratized, that is more and more individuals are empowered over the group or organization.…

Since budget cuts and the inability to overcome problems like boredom and high radiation doses have ruled out any manned mission to Mars in the foreseeable future, NASA has shifted gears back towards a program of robotic exploration. To that end, NASA now wants a rocket-powered airplane to fly around the Red Planet, photographing the surface. The plane, repetitively named ARES (not to be confused with NASA's shuttle replacement, also named ARES), would fly to Mars in a regular rocket. Once it reaches the fourth rock from the Sun, it would pop out of the capsule, deploy its wings, and…

LONDON, November 25 /PRNewswire/ -- At an awards dinner held at Chelsea Football Club last night, London-based IT managed services provider was awarded membership of the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 for the EMEA region as part of a celebration attended by more than 500 people.  Mitesh Patel, managing director of IT managed services provider Fifosys said, The tremendous growth in our business is derived from helping to save our clients significant sums of money on their IT spend, while consistently adding value and delivering peace of mind from reliable infrastructure and systems.…

For people confined to wheelchairs, the proliferation of ramps has greatly enhanced their mobility. Unfortunately, opening doors remains an omnipresent, and frustrating, challenge. Oddly enough, opening doors also presents a serious impediment for anthropomorphic robots. Now, robotics engineer Erin Rapacki has solved both problems with a single stroke. Continuing a student project she began at University of Massachusetts, Lowell, Rapacki has created a cheap robot arm that can serve as a door-opening assistant to wheelchair bound humans, or as the primary arm for mobile robots. The…

Adding a new wrinkle to the 'droid versus iPhone debate, a project at Keio University in Tokyo have created iPhone software specifically designed to control androids. More specifically, they've created an interface that puts control of a humanoid robot right at your fingertips."Walky" takes advantage of an iPhone or iPod's touchscreen to create an intuitive interface that requires virtually no learning. Your fingers simulate the robot's legs: a walking motion using the index and middle fingers makes the robot walk, tapping the screen makes it jump up and down, and a flicking motion…