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Science in 1999
gfoyle writes "If you want a run down of the science highlights of 1999, read the Science News article Science News of the Year. I offer as a teaser an item on the technology list: "Some garments fought germs (Sept. 11, vol. 156: p. 170), others commingled with computers, furthering a trend toward wearable cyberassistants (Nov. 20, vol. 156: p. 330)." Unfortunately, not all articles are posted on their web site, but what you can't find on their site, you can find in your library. "
Popular Science also has it's rundown of this years greatest inventions, prety cool. http://www.popularscience.com/fea tures/bown/bown99/.
Why is it that people always hear what I say, and not what I mean?
Scientist/Venture capitolist is in it ;-). After all, he did discover a few GUT.
Was it only this year that scientists determined that they have cultural traditions?
I could've sworn I knew several years ago that chimpanzees had different cultural adaptations for eating and drinking: "Do I go with the long blade of grass, or will some bunched up leaves do the trick for getting at termites? Do I use some chewed up leaves as a sponge to get water, or is there a better way? Do I whack something with a log or do I use a rock?" and that these techniques were communicable from one population to the next via various interactions and learning.
Or is that all just what they found out this year and I just dreamed the rest?
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
The first item listed under technology leaves me wondering this. If you are going to attempt to grow organs, why whould you start with a bladder? I can think of a lot of organs that would be a bit more usefull to have lying around. If you lose your bladder you don't usually have time to go to the doctor and say, "hey, can I have a new bladder? Mine seems to have burst."
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I thought furbies were introduced in '98 :)
Two reasons:
1) It's just a bag (significantly uncomplicated) and that makes it a good organ to start with. The technology is still a ways off before we'll be growing complicated organs like artificial eyes, etc.
2) You wouldn't believe the number of chronic ailments that exist which would be solved by just replacing the whole thing. Interstitial cystitis comes to mind. If you're living with a disorder like that for twenty years, you'll start to hope that someone will just show up and yank the whole thing out and replace it.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
I am kind of partial to yogurt myself.
Is every year as fruitful as this past one? This is a really impressive list - except for the NASA crash on Mars and a couple of other setbacks. A bunch of surprises in there too: we're nearly finished the Human Genome project and somebody thinks we have twice as many genes as previously estimated? And 3 new elements were created for the first time this year? Some of the stuff seems a bit superfluous though. Pi to over 2 billion digits? And the return of cloud seeding... But generally a very very impressive list. Science has been pretty busy at the end of this millenium.
Energy: time to change the picture.
Yeah I know that the linked article was really about wearables, but since germ-fighting clothes were mentioned I think this post is on topic.
Germ fighting clothes (toys etc) is bad because:
A) Some bacteria is actually good for you. You dont want them killed.
B) Give a child a sterile environment and the first flu that gets through will kill it
C) If you knock out 99.99% of the bacteria with a substance, those that survive and multiply will be those with recistancy to that substance.
DONT BUY ANTIBACTERIAL STUFF!!!
Then again if by jacket could identify and destroy that special kind of germ called Spammer... moahahahaa!
All opinions are my own - until criticized
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Efforts to avert year-2000 computer-chip and software problems held the attention of computer experts, engineers, and public officials throughout 1999
The Melissa computer virus exposed new software vulnerabilities, while researchers looked for ways to render computers immune to such digital pests
Advances in computer technology and mathematical techniques threatened the security of the current standard encryption system
superblog.org: all your favourite blogs on o
While I realize that "Top-n"-style lists like this are subjective, I find it amusing that the Earth Science section mentioned the (relatively insignificant) fact that people sweated out tornadoes in concrete rooms, while ignoring the launches of the Landsat 7 and TERRA spacecraft. The Landsat 7 spacecraft's Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus instrument and the TERRA spacecraft's vast array of instruments will be invaluable to Earth scientists studying climate change, urban sprawl, deforestation, drought, famine prediction, and dozens of other scientific disciplines.
I'm not saying that any of the items listed in the review are not noteworthy; I'm just pointing out that the list does not appear to be particularly exhaustive.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
I may have missed it at first glance, but I didnt see anything on nano-technology. I would think that 3 atom wide wires and 67 (i think) atom large motors were pretty important discoveries. I know that neither of these technologies are finished (the wires can only be permanently set and the motor cannot make a full revolution) but they are the first steps into a technology that will change every form of science known to man. But then again, I may have just missed it in the article.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
I think that all of these things are great, but I just hope that next year they can list "Evolution again taught in Kansas." Here is to wishing.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
I found the article on the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider very interesting, but they didn't go into very much detail on exactly how black holes could be formed by these collisions. I know black holes are formed by lots of matter getting packed into a small space (to put it very simply), but I don't see how a few particles could create something like a black hole. Here's the article, in case you're interested:
5 .htm
http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc99/8_7_99/note
My question is, does anyone have any further articles I could read? I've done a few searches on the RHIC, but nothing came up with any fruit. Anyone have any more info on this? I love this kind of stuff.......
Buses stop at a bus station
Trains stop at a train station
On my desk there's a workstation....
Science News is a publication for those people interested in intellectual pursuits, but who are not technical enough in nature to read a peer-reviewed journal such as Science or Nature. Science News, IMHO, is a very good publication for children, as it will keep them intellectually stimulated every week. It also provides a written history of most major achievements, giving an alternate view of historical events as they happen.
Another neat thing about Science News, is that they recently 'discovered' a number of older documents from the last millenium and published these in their most recent issue. An online version is at http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc99/ 12_18_99b/.
Here I was, expecting to just click in and browse the list, then post the standard "they missed this one" or "yeah, that one was cool", but WHOOOOMPH! here's this monster list, with links to fabulously long articles...
I'll get back to you in February.
Meanwhile, I've got a new bookmark to sciencenews.org. It's like when I first saw slashdot.
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
Shit, are we all such cheap-ass bastards that we have to either read our magazines online or schlep down to the library so we can read them for free? Some of us have jobs, you know, and make enough that we can afford the odd indulgence, like a magazine, every now and then.
Just reading the bullets in Earth Sciences makes it hard to deny global warming any longer:
The carbon dioxide buildup in the air has stunted coral reef growth (April 3, vol. 155: p. 214).
Research linked ancient climatic chaos to the release of carbon-rich gas (Oct. 23, vol. 156: p. 260).
Global temperatures in 1998 proved the highest in 140 years (Jan. 2, vol. 155: p. 6).
Signs of climatic warming appeared in the Arctic Ocean (Feb. 13, vol. 155: p. 104).
Meteorologists predicted that La Niña will skew U.S. winter weather (Oct. 30, vol. 156: p. 278) and started factoring global warming into extended forecasts (March 20, vol. 155: p. 188).
Scientists studied ways to adapt to climate change (Aug. 28, vol. 156: p. 136).
But don't, like, panic or anything.
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
The IBM design cuts the number of instructions per processor down to a considerably more manageable 57.
This is from the piece about developing the supercomputer that will do a quadrillion instructions per second. Heinz always insisted his company have only 57 varieties because he was convinced 57 was a magical number. I guess he was right.
First, make it work, then make it right, then make it fast, then, make it bloated!
While I was driving to work this morning, I heard a NPR commentary on how there weren't many scientific breakthroughs this year unless you were a mouse.
Mice have been cured of several diseases, have been genetically altered to be smarter, healthier, and more romantic. They have had their lifespans lengthened by diet.
They even had an interview with the scientist who owned the mouse who set the longevity record for mice. They gave him 2/3 of the normal food to slow his growth, and then when he got older, they put him in a cage with a female to keep him warm.
Oh, to be a mouse.
I do what the voices on my console tell me to do.
That's when the only two big surprising eye openers of the 20th century occurred. The events which made America realize there's more to the universe than we'd ever previously dreamt possible.
In 1945 we split the atom and saw an explosion of unimaginable magnitude. Many people believed it was magic, including my much older relatives who said (right up until the Bikini Atoll event) that it had to be some kinda dark sorcery unleashed. In any case nuclear weapons and technology put humanity on a vastly new level, both good and bad.
In 1969 we left the Earth completely, and put a man way out on the moon. Even if it was just the tiny body in orbit around us, we put a man on another world!.
Compare that to what's going on in 1999, or any of the 30 years since 1969. Except for the fall of the USSR, it's been comparatively an uneventful time for us Gen-X'ers.
Maybe the Human Genome Project will do it for us in our lifetime. Or maybe we'll land a man or woman on mars.
Or maybe Microsoft will go bust?
We already know how to create a black hole.
It's really simple, actually.
In fact, America is known to orbit a black hole of our own invention, once every 365 days.
Here's how it was made. We packed 1 President, 100 US Senators and 418 Representatives, one welfare mom and one subsidy-begging corporate lobbyist dude, into Congress, and that's what caused the gravitational disturbance that we have all come to celebrate every April 15.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
If you dig a little past the article linked to, you can find the Science News folks giving way to a little bit of levity...
Check out this interview with the 2-million-year-old man from their "Top Stories of the Millennium", for example.
The dogs that were given lab-grown bladders interested me. Maybe some day customized body parts will be availible. Perhaps one day I'll be able to go in and get "performance lungs" or a stronger skeleton, or whatever.
Also maybe this sort of advance could lead to a greatly extended lifetime. If a body part is going bad, you could simply have a new one grown and attached. Lung cancer, just get new lungs. Heart trouble, new heart, and so on.
Now all that is left to do is find out how to dump a brain image and burn it into a blank brain. Then we will finally be free of decaying flesh.
"Reality is less than television."-Brian Oblivion
i personally enjoy the creamy goodness of natalie portman.
I have a broad definition of Kiddie Porn, maybe it should be broader and include "Science News". Is this really a list or is it merely a list of the things you better think of for SAT questions and Santa's "Who's been good or bad" list. Guran is right, "Some bacteria is actually good for you". What a radical concept! oh and as long as CorpGovLLC has you focused on your countertop at home, you're not looking at what CorpGovLLC is doing to your air and water. So keep that counter top clean and bacteria free. We'll fix everything with GMO and stuff at the corporate level.
an enigma wrapped around a paradox driven by a paradigm shift
Science News is a publication for those people interested in intellectual pursuits, but who are not technical enough in nature to read a peer-reviewed journal such as Science or Nature. Science News, IMHO, is a very good publication for children, as it will keep them intellectually stimulated every week.
Now while I agree that it's a good publication for children (bright ones over about 12 or so anyway) I also think that Science News is good reading for adults. And not just those who aren't technical enough to read peer-reviewed journals.
The wonderful thing about Science News is how it covers events from all areas of science. You can find articles about parallel processing on one page, and something about Neanderthal cave paintings or the sense organs of honey bees on the next. I doubt there are many people who would be willing to struggle through the peer-reviewed journals of computing, paleoanthropology and entomology, but lots of us have at least a passing interest in all of those subjects - and the many others that Science News covers.
Science and Nature are also fine periodicals, but they're not weekly, and they cost a good deal more than Science News. And the articles in Science News are shorter, so I can read them in the bathroom, or on my break at work.
we covered our top ten a couple of weeks ago. You may want to check it out. http://physicsweb.org