Nanotechnologie heeft veel potentie, maar brengt ook risico’s met zich mee. Natuurkundige en filosofe Ineke Malsch boog zich over de vraag hoe we de toepassing van deze techniek in goede banen kunnen leiden, vóórdat het is geïntegreerd in de wereld. Dinsdag promoveerde ze aan de Radboud Universiteit.

Wal-Mart, a retail giant, handles more than 1m customer transactions every hour, feeding databases estimated at more than 2.5 petabytes—the equivalent of 167 times the books in America’s Library of Congress (see article for an explanation of how data are quantified). Facebook, a social-networking website, is home to 40 billion photos. And decoding the human genome involves analysing 3 billion base pairs—which took ten years the first time it was done, in 2003, but can now be achieved in one week.

All these examples tell the same story: that the world contains an unimaginably vast amount of digital information which is getting ever vaster ever more rapidly. This makes it possible to do many things that previously could not be done: spot business trends, prevent diseases, combat crime and so on. Managed well, the data can be used to unlock new sources of economic value, provide fresh insights into science and hold governments to account.

But they are also creating a host of new problems.

Scientists have discovered an area of the North Atlantic Ocean where plastic debris accumulates.

The new BBC science portal.

Once again, The Times Magazine looks back on the past year from our favored perch: ideas. Like a magpie building its nest, we have hunted eclectically, though not without discrimination, for noteworthy notions of 2009 — the twigs and sticks and shiny paper scraps of human ingenuity, which, when collected and woven together, form a sort of cognitive shelter, in which the curious mind can incubate, hatch and feather. Unlike birds, we can also alphabetize. And so we hereby present, from A to Z, the most clever, important, silly and just plain weird innovations we carried back from all corners of the thinking world. To offer a nonalphabetical option for navigating the entries, this year we have attached tags to each item indicating subject matter. We hope you enjoy.

Creativity is commonly thought of as a personality trait that resides within the individual. We count on creative people to produce the songs, movies, and books we love; to invent the new gadgets that can change our lives; and to discover the new scientific theories and philosophies that can change the way we view the world. Over the past several years, however, social psychologists have discovered that creativity is not only a characteristic of the individual, but may also change depending on the situation and context. The question, of course, is what those situations are: what makes us more creative at times and less creative at others? One answer is psychological distance.

Interesting article: Robots that care [New Yorker] #health #science

The first alarms about the sudden widespread disappearance of honeybees came in late 2006, and the phenomenon soon had a name: colony collapse disorder. In the two years that followed, about one-third of bee colonies vanished, while researchers toiled to figure out what was causing the collapse. A study published last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences surmises that there may not be a single pathogen involved but a collection of culprits. What have entomologists and beekeepers learned in the last few years of dealing with the crisis? We asked May R. Berenbaum, an author of the study, and other experts for an update.

When we tell you that there are teaching moments in every film that could get a conversation started about science, we really do mean every film. We can prove it too. We’re not afraid to put our money where our mouth is: HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE. Here’s a film about magic that takes place in a fantastical land where anything seems possible and Muggle science feels misguided and trivial… or so you thought. Dr. Roger Highfield, the Science Editor of The Daily Telegraph and BBC Commentator, wrote a book in 2002 called The Science of Harry Potter that covers many of the “teaching moments” that could get a conversation started using the brilliant world of J.K. Rowling.

Embedded in everything from cellphone bills to car-rental contracts, ''hidden fees" are hiding in plain sight. Two economists explain why they're likely to stay that way.

Rats and humans avidly consume flavored foods that contain sucrose and fat, presumably due to their rewarding qualities. In this study, we hypothesized that the complex mixture of corn oil, sucrose, and flavor is more reinforcing than any of these components alone. We observed a concentration-dependent increase in reinforcers received of sucrose solutions (0, 3, 6.25, and 12.5%) in both fixed ratio and progressive ratio procedures, but with equicaloric corn oil solutions (0, 1.4, 2.8, and 5.6%) this finding was replicated only in the fixed ratio procedure. Likewise, addition of 1.4% oil to 3% or 12.5% sucrose increased fixed ratio, but not progressive ratio, reinforcers received relative to those of sucrose alone. [...] These data suggest that, calorie-for-calorie, sucrose is the dominant reinforcing component of novel foods that contain a mixture of fat, sucrose, and flavor.

Een internationaal team met onder andere Leidse onderzoekers bouwde en analyseerde een lichtvangend systeem dat lijkt op het fotosynthetisch systeem van groene bacteriën. Dit systeem absorbeert licht zeer efficiënt en zet het om in bruikbare energie. Met meer kennis over de structuur van dit systeem komt de dag steeds dichterbij dat we deze natuurlijke zonnecellen op grote schaal kunnen gaan produceren.

Unless you’re enrolled at a top university or are an elite member of the science and engineering inner circle, you’re probably left out of most of the exciting research explored by the world’s greatest scientists. But thanks to the Internet, and our list of 100 incredible lectures, you’ve now got access to the cutting edge theories and projects that are changing the world.

A new sequencing service aims to take whole-genome sequencing mainstream.

In recent years, cognitive scientists have turned in increasing numbers to the study of human happiness, and one of their central findings is that we are not very good at predicting how happy or unhappy something will make us. Given time, survivors of tragedies and traumas report themselves nearly as happy as they were before, and people who win the lottery or achieve lifelong dreams don't see any long-term increase in happiness.

The classic book on statistical graphics, charts, tables. Theory and practice in the design of data graphics, 250 illustrations of the best (and a few of the worst) statistical graphics, with detailed analysis of how to display data for precise, effective, quick analysis. Design of the high-resolution displays, small multiples. Editing and improving graphics. The data-ink ratio. Time-series, relational graphics, data maps, multivariate designs. Detection of graphical deception: design variation vs. data variation. Sources of deception. Aesthetics and data graphical displays.

This week's Nature has an interesting article on the ethics of electronic brain enhancements. It does something quite unusual for an article on technological brain enhancements - it talks about the side effects.

A googol of Googlers published a paper at VLDB 2008, "Google's Deep-Web Crawl" (PDF), that describes how Google pokes and prods at web forms to see if it can find things to submit in the form that yield interesting data from the underlying database.

Creationist gets comprehensively pwned on Yahoo! Answers (via reddit)

Podcasts from the University of Oxford

Multitasking debunked on NPR: "People can't multitask very well, and when people say they can, they're deluding themselves," said neuroscientist Earl Miller. And, he said, "The brain is very good at deluding itself."

All known life on Earth is built upon carbon and carbon-based compounds. Yet the possibility has been discussed that life elsewhere may have a different chemical foundation – one based on the element silicon.

Postgenomic collects posts from hundreds of science blogs and then does useful and interesting things with that data.

23andMe offers a high-density, custom genome scan. A small saliva sample of you DNA is processed The resulting data is then presented on a secure website using interactive tools that offer information about ancestry, inherited traits and disease risk. It provides you with hundreds of insights into your genetics, and these are regular updated.

Eight-year-old children have a radically different learning strategy from twelve-year-olds and adults. Eight-year-olds learn primarily from positive feedback ('Well done!'), whereas negative feedback ('Got it wrong this time') scarcely causes any alarm bells to ring. Twelve-year-olds are better able to process negative feedback, and use it to learn from their mistakes.

It turns out that about 8 percent of the human genome is made up of viruses that once attacked our ancestors. The viruses lost. What remains are the molecular equivalents of mounted trophies, insects preserved in genomic amber, DNA fossils.

Maybe you've felt it - the buzz in a room, the tension in the air, the accelerating pace at which people are connecting and the realization that we're all in this together, even if we don't quite know what "this" is. At least in my small pocket of the world (wide web), something is brewing. That something is The Future of Science.

Why in the world would anyone take the time to write complicated software programs for free? It's a good question, one that has piqued the curiosity of a number of economists, who wonder what benefits, if any, lie behind the burgeoning "open source" move

A peer reviewed open access journal for empirical findings, methodology, and theory of social and behavioral science concerning the Internet and its implications for individuals, social groups, organizations, and society.

Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch (Oct. 23, 1960 - July 25, 2008) gave his last lecture at the university Sept. 18, 2007, before a packed McConomy Auditorium. In his moving presentation, "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams," Pausch talked about h

Too many people think cloning cells for the fight against disease is the same thing as creating Frankenstein's monster. Too many people think evolution is the idea that people are descended from apes. And too many people think that genetic modification of

Europe's demographic developments will strongly influence the future of the continent.

White light is composed of different colors and, depending on the type of light, has a different overall color. Incandescent light is more yellow than the light emitted by the sun. The unit used to describe the color of light are degrees Kelvin. It's an o

In many places — the atolls of the Pacific, the shrimp beds of the Eastern Seaboard, the fiords of Norway — some of the most advanced forms of ocean life are struggling to survive while the most primitive are thriving and spreading. Fish, corals and m

Wageningen Wall Charts

Uit een meta-analyse van een aantal onderzoeken naar de relatie tussen het langdurige gebruik van mobiele telefoons en het optreden van kanker, concluderen twee Zweedse professoren dat wie een mobiele telefoon meer dan tien jaar gebruikt een groter risico

Het moderne communicatieproces kenmerkt zich in toenemende mate door de aanwezigheid van registratie en controle. Vanuit juridisch perspectief leidt deze ontwikkeling tot uiteenlopende vraagstukken rondom de identificeerbaarheid en anonimiteit van communi

Reference list by Danah Boyd

Stellarium is a free open source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope.

Touted by politicians and industry as "green" energy, biofuels come with a high price tag.

De scheiding tussen een prive sfeer en een publieke ruimte hoort tot de grondbeginselen van een moderne en democratische samenleving. (conferentie 1 juni 2007)

Darwin exchanged letters with nearly 2000 people during his lifetime. These range from well known naturalists, thinkers, and public figures, to men and women who would be unknown today were it not for the letters they exchanged with Darwin.

De Nationale Proefschriftensite biedt een eenvoudige manier om te zoeken naar proefschriften van promovendi van Nederlandse universiteiten.