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Science and Technology In Y2K
sandman935 writes "The editors at Scientific American have a wrap up of the important discoveries in the year 2000. It's a good read." It covers the gamut from the Golden Rice, Gecko's Toes, DNA Microarrays, and the new extra-solar system planets.
If the folks who created it get their way it should go a long way to reducing world hunger.
The cure of the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
Imagine if G-d had said "In the begining was a mass of photons" to the Israelites, all that would have done is to confuse people who did not have the prior knowedge to understand it.
The cure of the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
What I think I have noticed is that technology seems to be changing away from critical systems to more fluid, biological systems.
It's definitely happening, but I doubt it's a conscious effort to drive research in that direction. Evolution has been in force for billions of years, and we're at the stage where we're beginning to realise that if there's an easy way to do something, nature's probably found it. As we dig more and more into the nature of plants and animals, we find more and more nifty tricks that can be applied to other areas.
Is it just me or is the thing about the study of the brain's mechanism for suppressing agressive responses to negative emotions a little scary? Don't get me wrong, i don't think there is anything wrong with brain research (or dna research or computer research or about any other research... It's what keeps our civilization going...), but the potential applications of this, espescially in the current fear-driven medication-crazy culture are really scary. Clockwork Orange, andybody?
They even mention screening people based on the activity of this neural pathway for their likelyhood to commit violent acts. This is really going to be a can o' worms...
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Play Six Pack Man. I
Any know how many qbits are they are up to in a single machine now? Last I heard it was around 7 or so. The article here is a bit fuzzy on details but includes a link to qubit.org's intro. Some of the stuff I have read about this seems amazing, almost SciFi like. Applying this technology to cryptography and computing in general could really change things. The "photon takes two paths at once" thing still blows my mind. The world of the very small is a very strange world indeed. I find the idea of qbit based storage and parallel processing the most interesting. Some say quantum computing will never really work but if it does...just imagine where this stuff is going to take us. I can't wait!
-- soldack
As a previous reply (by Zachary Kessin) to this posting mentioned, Golden rice was developed to add nutrients not found in white rice into it. All of the white rice in the world equaly distributed would not solve many of the problems that quite a few third world countries fight, known as malnutrition.
When Europe had their spheres of influence within Asia they introduced a method of husking the wild rice so that it becomes easier to harvest. The new found ability to create white rice was widely accepted because it allowed for higher production, but what they didn't know is that it strips many of the essential nutrients that the brown rice that they used to produce had. The husk of the rice contains things like beta caratine, and more importantly IRON, which is transfered into the rice if it is not husked early to produce white rice.
Golden rice causes the iron and beta caratine to accumulate within the meat of the rice rather than only on the husk. This allows farmers in third worlds to continue to produce the high volumes of rice necessary to feed their country while at the same time it prevents people from dieing of rickets or other diseases caused by malnutrition. Sure, if they did not husk the rice and went back to eating brown rice then they would not have the problem, but many of these countries try to produce as much food as possible to prevent malnureshment.
We cannot just order these countries to stop producing white rice in favor of brown rice. Nor is it feasible to redistribute the wealth in an even way. At the same time I believe that allowing corperations to run without restriction is an equally bad decision. Pure communism and pure capitalism are nice utopias that don't work.
Saying that all genetic engineering of plants should be stopped because "evil" chemical corperations use it is like saying that all atomic physics research should be halted because the government has nuclear bombs. It is rediculous and uninformed. Sure people will miss-use the technology but it doesn't mean we should ban it.
More research should be done on genetic/chemical engineering but allowing people to die because you fear technology is negligent. Preventing society from progressing because people fear technology is maladaptive.
Halting progress due to ignorance is as bad as letting it run rampent for the same reason.
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
Where from that quote did you get the idea that he is a creationist. Keep in mind belief in God != creationist. For example I believe in God but I am not by any means a creationist. A creationist thinks that the Earth is ~4000 years old was created at one time from nothing and has not changed and could not have changed since that time. Without going into alot of very long detail many people (like myself and I would suspect Francis although from the quote it is impossible to tell for sure)think that scripture tells us why we are here not how we got here. In their best forms both science and religion are searches for truth and are going to lead to the same place. It is true and sad that the best forms of religion in both theory and practice are very rare but they do exist. No irony here just a misunderstanding.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
This is quite a funny thing to learn that the disease that was first announced as so frightening by French media and then supposed to have disappeared can now be cured. :-)
BTW, you'll also love to browse a bit further on this excellent web site.
Two thumbs up for the link, Slashdot
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Trolling using another account since 2005.
It needs to be said. There is nothing in science today that precludes the existance of a or any god(s). Nor will anything in science ever confirm or deny the existance of god(s). Science explains how things work. They could work that way because they always worked that way, or they could work that way because that's how some divinity wrote the rules. Science cannot know which is true, it can only uncover and apply the rules.
As x approaches total apathy I couldn't care less.
Here is another related link to the Popular
Science Web site. It has their top ten science
stories for this year.
Has interesting stuff like -
Pig Organs for Human Transplants,
Water On Mars,
Sub Atomic Particals, etc.
But now we seem to be getting more biological type systems! Neural nets and DNA computers and suchlike are appearing, and they seem to be very robust and non-critical. You can monkey around with them quite a lot without breaking them! Would I be right in thinking, and please bear in mind that I am an ignoramus, that such systems will become more common in the future, and may be a replacement for the design methodologies we use at the moment? When you consider that the most complex thing we know of, the Human Brain, is built with this design philosophy, we can see just how powerful it is, I think. Anyway, thank you for reading my ramblings! I really am getting addicted to this Slashdot lark - work is so boring :-)
--Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The