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Scientific American's Top 50
dptalia writes "It's that time of year again, where everyone is putting out their best of 2006 lists. Last week, Popular Science did it, and today, Scientific American has released their top 50 list. Of note are improvements in RFID technology, discoveries in nantechnology, and net neutrality."
Why not have a /. top 10 news stories of 2006, as slashback retrospective of the year 2006? Or something.
Then we can have a poll of the top five, to let the readers decide which one is the top story of 2006.
And I want my 15 min of slashfame for suggesting it.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Is it too much to ask that a summary say what this is a Top 50 of?
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
I thought it was interesting that the section on green cars ("on the road to green") mentioned GM and DaimlerChrysler for their work on new Hybrid technology, and HyMotion for their new plug-in Hybrid conversion kits, but didn't mention any of the advances with pure electric car designs. For example, the Tesla roadster has sold a couple hundred sports cars that perform well (0-60 in 4 seconds) with excellent range (250 miles). This achievement in a production auto certainly seems worthy of their top 50. While it's not exactly for your average consumer (it costs $100K), the company plans to offer family cars for their homepage.
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Next step, a top 50 list of the best top 50 lists. To be published when there is some space to fill....
So, is there a reason that advances in pure sciences (e.g. Theoretical Physics and Mathematics) are not mentioned in these lists?
/Rant
While some of those projects are science, most seem to be technology projects. The irony of this of course is that business and policy makers are given recognition, rather than some scientists and mathematicians, who probably make more significant contributions (e.g. Grigori Perelman).
What's ironic, of course, is that these magazines are called Scientific American and Popular Science.
Accomplishment #51: Building a robust enough server network to survive Slashdotting.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
More than 13 percent of the year is left, and "Bet of 2006" lists are coming out. Apparently, these folks are calendar challenged. PopSci, well, okay they're a pop rag with no pretension to the fact that they're out for profit. But am I the only person who expects better of SciAm?
-- Jim Crigler In 1937, I began, like Lazarus, the impossible return. -- Whittaker Chambers
Hrm i wonder, if build a main-frame that could slove cancer would get on that list, oh wait nvm, the goverment uses that system is listen in on phone calls (Thats just my view tho)
...why the Segway isn't on there. Wasn't the Segway supposed to the the "IT" that everyone was talking about? Hehehe.. I remember that when some rumours were leaked about what "IT" was, and the word transporter showed up, people started thinking transporter technology like on Star Trek. That WOULD have truly made it to this list, had it been the case. But it wasn't. However, considering how poorly the average American eats, and how fat those people are getting, I see a future industry for Segway. Imagine the day when Americans believe it's their right to enjoy the culinary delights of KFC, McDonalds, Burger King and the like and weigh 5000 pounds and have tons of health problems. To deny them the pleasures of these great dining experiences would rank up there with communism and gun control. So, Segway could then introduce the surgical leg replacements as most limbs would be unsuitable to move the typical American fatass. So people will voluntarily have their legs removed and replaced with industrial strength Segway devices so that they can easily maneuver their way into the next fast food joint down the street. ;P
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Australian air guitar t-shirt? I for one predict this to be the greatest breakthrough in modern music science. Australians, drunk, playing air guitar that makes noise...oh the stereotyping fun that one can have with that.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
By the way, has anyone noticed that "Scientific American" (SA) changed radically over the last 16 years. SA once rather appealed to the technical elite, and you can discern the elitism from the nature of the advertisements and the article format. They included ads about advanced microscopes for tumor analysis, the latest minicomputers, chemical spectro-analysis instruments, etc. As well, the titles of the articles were set in a modest font, and the pictures were dull and conservative.
SA now resembles "Omni". The ads include sun-tan lotion, motorbikes, STP oil, etc. The titles of the articles are set in a flashy font, and the pictures are gaudy. What happened to this journal? It degenerated from a journal into a banal magazine -- a sort of "National Enquirer" for the sciences.
The last article that I read in SA was written by the Dr. Ronald Bracewell, the god-father of 3-dimensional fourier analysis. That article is dated almost 16 years ago.
I particularly enjoy the developments in Garlic Nantechnology. Great with a Vindaloo.
[UID-HeinzIntel]
I can come up with a list of 50 things too...
How come you don't tell us WHY they are selected?
Poorly written article.
And BTW...it's FORMER vice president Al Gore. (Thank God.)
Get people predict the important stories of 2007 and then come back in a year to compare predictions. That'd sort out the real gurus and pundits from the wannabes.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Then we can have a poll of the top five, to let the readers decide which one is the top story of 2006.
Why don't we just pick the top 5, and they can dupe them to get the top "10"?
Not to question the integrity or sincerity of some of the "top 50" but I was expecting more of a top 50 in advancement instead of simply advocacy. While it is important that the public be informed on issues of a scientific nature to better understand there impact on the world around them I don't find it as noteworthy as people producing real solutions instead of simply putting their weight behind a movement.
I'm kinda borderline on this whole thing.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
You forgot the Cowboy Neal entry.
Everyone always talks about RFID as it is used by the end user, i.e. Wal-Mart, toll-ways, credit cards etc. However, where better improvements are really needed is on the factory floor for all the suppliers that Wal-Mart mandates must use the technology. If a vendor wants to be a supplier to Wal-Mart, they face mandates that they must tag at some level of pallet, box, item. Suppliers can do this, but it offers no value except that Wal-Mart will buy their stuff. So how do they add value? The idea is to implement the RFID tagging higher up the line into the manufacturing process so that each supplier can track their inventory as it rolls off the line, into storage, and out the dock doors onto the truck. However, current UHF RFID technology is pretty poor at integrating in the manufacturing environment. With all the metal, hot air, dust, etc. etc., the limitation of RFID is really shown. Plus, depending on your material (hmmm beverage makers? Sorry liquid is a pain to work with), the application may be near impossible to implement. Read rates are generally good, but encoding is very very difficult. Reliability is perhaps in the 90% range if you are lucky which is very bad for processes that generally require quality results in the 99% ranges. I'd like to see RFID developed so it can be used on the shop floor with high reliability and easier implementation.
That's funny that SciAm lists certain discoveries in Nanotech in it's list. May years ago they had a feature story about how Nanotech would never work because of the physics involved, among other things. Sounded very logical. Now they are praising it's discoveries lol.
I'm sorry, this is a crappy list.
There is very little "science" here. Some interesting engineering projects, to be sure.
But where does Al Gore have anything to do with science OR engineering?
Last I heard he was making documentaries about global warming that are being made fun of on South Park.
MANBEARPIG IS REAL!! FOR SERIAL!!
Stew
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.
I'm very disappointed that Dr Curt Conners didn't make the list in that section.
Once you're a President or Vice President, you keep the title. People who refer to you in voice or print need not use "former" to precede the title.
"Even for Slashdot, that was a very obscure reference!" - Anonymous Coward
You ivory tower intellectuals must not lose touch with the world of industrial growth and hard currency. It is all very well and good to pursue these high-minded scientific theories, but research grants are expensive and you must justify your existence by providing not only knowledge, but concrete and profitable applications as well.
Where's Windows Vista?
I know people are sick of the market hype, but 2006 is the year EVERYONE could publish and view video on the web. (And damn it, everyone did!) Before that video required special players, high bandwidth, and special web servers. And I dont think we've begun to the most creative and useful applications of that media yet.