Technology

Think University of Nottingham students enjoy a pint on occasion?   It's a safe bet, since the school is putting in a fully-functioning brewery, and brewing must be a key contributor to the East Midlands economy since it boasts some 78 small or medium sized micro-breweries.   The new facility, they say, will enhance its 'world leading' status in brewing science - and perhaps save SABMiller, one of the largest brewing companies in the world and financier, builder and operator of the new micro-brewery, some shipping and transportation costs.   SABMiller also says the new brewery…

Tangential Science: it's not necessarily science, but it's still funny. 1. Drought is a serious problem in many parts of the world, going well beyond our California 'limit the days you water your lawn' irritation and well into 'We are going to die without rain' territory. It's boom or bust in parts of India, where they actually look forward to monsoons - and sometimes they can't happen soon enough.  But what if the water gods are fickle?  Some crafty leaders in male-dominated Bihar think the solution is to have young girls walk around naked. How does it work?  Naked virgins…

A group called the Blind Driver Challenge team in Virginia Tech's Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory  has retrofitted a four-wheel dirt buggy with laser range finders, an instant voice command interface and a host of other cutting-edge technologies. Does it sound like Knight Rider's KITT or something out of a Terminator movie?   Only if those drivers are blind. It's still in the early testing stage but the National Federation of the Blind considers the vehicle a major breakthrough for independent living of the visually impaired.  "It was great!" said Wes Majerus, of Baltimore,…

When we were kids, you could do stupid things and, if you absolutely needed them to be left behind, you moved away and never spoke to your old friends again.   Now stupid things end up on YouTube.  Forever. What if you don't want your college-era rants showing up in a job interview?   University of Washington researchers say they have developed a way to make online information expire. After a set time period, electronic communications such as e-mail, Facebook posts and chat messages would automatically self-destruct, becoming irretrievable from all Web sites, inboxes, outboxes…

Who doesn't need a little more widsom in their daily lives? Well, now you can have it, thanks to a real-time Twitter-like search engine that "looks to organize and share information and 'wisdom' currently on the web." The mission statement of iWise, or Wisdom On Demand, is a slight tweak on Google's, says the techcrunch story: "To organize the world’s wisdom and make it universally accessible." It's not just a search engine, though; it allows you to receive daily quotes via Twitter or your iPhone, you can follow your favorite dead people (or living ones) in your own Wisdom…

Games2Win, an online game company, today announced the launch of Apollo 11: Mission to the Moon, which recreates the historic mission to the moon, without the mind-numbing terror of knowing you were sitting on top of a mess o' solid rocket fuel protected by nothing except parts contracted out to the lowest bidders. The game’s release is schedule to coincide with, and  commemorate, the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11’s success on July 20, 1969. "Apollo 11: Mission to the Moon" is what the vendor calls a "free-to-play Flash game" and you can find at http://www.games2win.com/ap1.   The…

SentForever are letting people transmit free messages into deep space through their Web site to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. So you can send a message to extraterrestrials at the speed of light, some 670 million miles per hour.   Mapping its progress is cooler than anything you will write in the message. After 8 minutes the messages pass by the sun and 5 1/2 hours later pass Pluto. In 14 hours the messages overtake the Voyager 1 probe, the most distant man-made object from Earth, launched by NASA in September 1977. Photo: Goonhilly dish. Credit: British…

Q: Which phrase, more than any other, surged in utilzation in the news during the final months of the U.S. presidential campaign? A: Obama's "lipstick on a pig" quip For the first time, the Web has been used to track and attempt to measure the news cycle, the process by which information becomes news, competes for attention and fades, says the NY Times. Researchers at Cornell developed algorithms to track frequently repeated short phrases, the equivalent of “genetic signatures” for ideas, or "memes," and story lines on blogs and mainstream media sites over three…

Nintendo is trying to sell you something so they will claim in marketing that Wii 'active' video games are good exercise for kids, but are they really? Yes, says a new study in the journal Pediatrics, though only if they are the kind of kids who are otherwise sedentary and at high risk for obesity and diabetes. Scientists at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center found that playing active video games like the Wii can be an effective substitute for moderate exercise.   No one is saying children should stop playing outside or doing real exercise but active video games can be a…

Cars that drive themselves?   Being cut up by some remote hand that never touches you?  It's not a Stephen King novel, it's the latest in robotics and it's coming to a Senate floor near you. Last week the National Science Foundation (NSF) presented took over the Hart Senate Office Building and had a luncheon briefing for Senate members and staff on cyber-physical systems (CPS). The basic concept behind CPS is straightforward--combine computing power with existing systems to turn them into "smart" technologies such as airplanes that can detect each other and automatically adjust…