Technology
Interesting Times For Chess and Go Players
Posted by jrosenhouse on March 11, 2016 For the chess fans, the big candidates tournament begins in Moscow tomorrow. Eight of the top players in the world will be competing for the chance to face Magnus Carlsen in a match for the title. As it happens, the US has two representatives: Fabiano Caruana and Hikaru Nakamura. Going strictly by ratings, they are…
New chemical mapping technique could help fill big gaps in safety knowledge
Posted by Kim Krisberg on March 3, 2016 In the U.S., just a tiny fraction of the chemicals used in consumer products have been tested for human health effects. And with the current climate in Congress, it feels unlikely that we’ll see any true reform of the nation’s terribly outdated chemical safety rules anytime soon. In the meantime, scientist Thomas Hartung may have created the next best thing.
Ten Years Of Portable Internet Access
Posted by Martin R on March 1, 2016 On 2 February 2006 I took delivery of my first smartphone, or handdator as I called it in my diary – “hand computer”. On the following day I got the machine on-line. It was a Qtek 9100, with a slide-out mechanical keyboard that I still really miss, a tiny screen, a stylus and a crappy…
Mystery of the buzzing ocean discovered
Posted by Dr. Dolittle on February 23, 2016 I love a good mystery. This one has puzzled scientists for several years now…ever since they discovered a humming or buzzing noise in the Pacific ocean, an otherwise rather quiet place. This was no ordinary noise, that they knew of. In a recent interview on NPR, Dr. Simone Baumann-Pickering, Scripps Institution of Oceanography (La Jolla,…
Blog Business: Mobile Sb comment problem fixed!
Posted by Greg Laden on February 19, 2016 
Back in the old days, yesterday, making comments on the mobile version of Scienceblogs.com was sometimes difficult because the thingie at the bottom of the post that suggests the other wonderful blog posts you might want to visit tended to cover up the comments. That has been fixed! That is all, thank you very much…
Celebrating African American History Month with Role Models In STEM: Dr. James West
Posted by carlyo of USA Science & Engineering Festival on February 12, 2016 USA Science & Engineering Festival Speaker, Dr. James West, an Acoustical Scientist from Johns Hopkins University turned his childhood curiosity into a career of invention! Looking back on his childhood days in Prince Edward County, Virginia, acoustical scientist James Edward West, says curiosity ruled his life. “If I had a screwdriver and a pair of…
Twitter Is a Cocktail Party That I’m Not Invited To
Posted by Chad Orzel on February 9, 2016 As I go through my daily routine, I find myself sort of out of phase with a lot of the Internet. My peak online hours are from about six to ten in the morning, Eastern US time. That’s when I get up, have breakfast, and then go to Starbucks to write for a few hours.…
Copy.com (Barracuda) is shutting down
Posted by Greg Laden on February 1, 2016 
Suddenly my computer tells me that copy.com is shutting down as a cloud storage service. That sucks, since I had a few terabytes of free storage with them. I will now have to seek an alternative. What are your experiences with cloud storage, free or otherwise?
How Machines Work Zoo Break: Excellent New Macaulay Book
Posted by Greg Laden on January 29, 2016 
David Macaulay is famous for his “how things work” books. How Machines Work: Zoo Break! is a new book that is really fun. So fun that it took me a long time to get it back from Amanda and Huxley so I could review it. The concept is simple. A story, a simple story, is…
Computer Go Player Defeats Top Human Player
Posted by jrosenhouse on January 28, 2016 For about a year in graduate school, I was a serious Go player. I read a few books and even played in a tournament. It’s a beautiful game, no question about it, but after wasting so much time just to become a mediocre chess player, I eventually decided not to repeat the process with Go.…
