The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences gave an important math prize to two U.S. mathematicians for their pioneering work in harmonic analysis.

Professor Anders Bjorner from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm says, “These are two of the best problem-solvers alive and even on an historic scale this is totally unique that so many important problems have been solved by individuals as is the case for each one of these.”

Jean Bourgain from the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and Terence Tao from UCLA claim the 2012 Crafoord Mathematics Prize for, “their brilliant and groundbreaking work in harmonic analysis, partial differential equations, ergodic theory, number theory, combinatories, functional analysis and theoretical computer science.”

What is unique with these two laureates is they worked in so many areas and they very quickly moved from one part of mathematics to another and see connections and solve big problems in many areas.

Dr. Bjorner says, “It is like coming back from the Olympics with 20 gold medals in different sports.”

But the common mathematical thread the Drs. Bourgain and Tao share is an area of math called harmonic analysis. In a nutshell that sub-discipline is the ability to find patterns in seemingly random masses of information.

By studying overlapping integer multiples, mathematicians can better sense the world. For example if f stands for a frequency in music (a note), then multiples of that frequency 2f, 3f, 4f and so on would be considered the corresponding harmonics.

Terence Tao

Tao initially said it was an impossible task. Then within a few minutes he told applied mathematician Emmanuel Candes that he was on to something. The next day, Tao had solved the problem himself, creating compressive sampling in the process.

As a result of the Candes-Tao quick collaboration engineers are busy building faster MRI scanners and one-pixel cameras. Tao is not an engineer but he saw a connection that no engineer noticed.

Candes says, “Whenever he touches a subject, it becomes gold very quickly.”

Ben Green, who collaborated on him with the prime number problem says, “Terry is unusual in how open-minded he is.”

That ability to follow an idea wherever it may roam has allowed him to be named the youngest full professor in UCLA history, to collect every notable math prize, including the coveted Field’s Medal, known as the Nobel Prize of math.

Jean Bourgain won the Shaw Mathematical Prize in 2010 for his work on psuedorandomness, the kind of math that generates random numbers used in advanced cryptography, slot machines and videogames.

Alex Kontorovich, one of Bourgain’s post doc research fellows says, “He is one of the 21st Century’s absolute giants of mathematics.”

Jean Bourgain, Institute for Advanced Studies Mathematician

Bourgain describes himself as a pure mathematician who says his greatest contribution to the field of mathematics is psuedorandomness.

He says, “The question is how to produce something that has many features of the truly random coin flipping. This is where the mathematics comes in.”

While conventional math theory holds that having a larger period between repeating sets of numbers, the greater the appearence of randomness. Take a slot machine for example. A computerized one-armed bandit has software that spits out billions of binary digits, ones and zeroes. That determines who wins and who loses. But those random number generators appear less predictable if there is a greater period between repeating sequences of numbers. At least that’s what most mathematicians thought.

But Bourgain shows that random number generators can be equally strong using shorter periods. Selecting jurors, compiling statistics or generating a quote of the day on a website are just a few applications that random number generators have found in the digital age. They can also be used to encrypt secrets or simulate weather patterns. The numbers are considered pseudorandom because they aren’t quite as random as flipping a coin.

He has found that he can create short sequences that seem just as random as long sequences.

He says, “My contribution is to show mathematically that you still have a lot of randomness when this period becomes much smaller.”

In awarding the Crafoord Prize, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences says that Bourgain and Tao “have solved an impressive number of important problems in mathematics. Their deep mathematical erudition and exceptional problem-solving ability have enabled them to discover many new and fruitful connections and to make fundamental contributions to current research in several branches of mathematics.”

Right now there are about one million magnetized atoms involved in one bit of information. A bit is defined as a variable that can have only two possible values, 1 or 0. In computing those values are interpreted as binary digits. And IBM just lowered that minimum threshold from one million to 12.

For years computer scientists have been trying to figure out how small a storage device can be before it runs into the laws of quantum dynamics. The answer IBM recently learned is 12. Data can be stored and retrieved using just 12 atoms.

While that is all well and good it is not terribly useful in the real world. To figure out the bottom threshold for non-quantum computing researchers had to build the miniscule storage device atom by atom, which is an extremely labor-intensive and expensive process not suited for mass manufacturing. And the whole process is only stable at the mind-freezing temperature of five degrees above absolute zero.

So while the 12-atom hard drive doesn’t make much sense, a larger 150-atom storage device may not have the same limitations. With that in mind pinhead-sized hard drives could store a terabyte of information or a thumb drive could potentially store every movie you’ve ever seen.

Andreas Heinrich, a physicist at IBM’s Almaden Research Lab says, “At IBM we are interested in finding out how the magnetic properties evolve from single atoms to something that might be useful for technology or data storage.”

This figure shows the a magnetic byte imaged 5 times in different magnetic states. A white signal on the right edge corresponds to logic 0 (and is labeled as such) and a blue signal to logic 1. Between two successive images the magnetic states of the bits were switched to encode the binary representation of the ASCII characters "THINK"

Computing follows a theory called Moore’s Law which dictates shrinking the size of computer components over time. The general timeline goes like this. The number of transitors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit doubles every 18-24 months.

Currently, Moore’s Law has indicates one million iron atoms can store one bit of information. After five years of hard work, IBM smashed that incremental process and drove that down to just 12 atoms. They didn’t do it inexpensively as Moore’s Law requires but the experiment does show the limit of this technological trend.

Opposites Attract

In performing this experiment IBM basically put an new spin on the old addage, “Opposites attract.”

Storage devices like hard drives and flash drives use ferromagnetic materials where the spin of the atoms is aligned in the same direction.

IBM figured out how to fit more atoms in less space by using antiferromagnetism, which allows atoms to spin in opposite directions.

Heinrich and his team created an atomic-scale magnet memory device that is at least a hundred times denser than today’s hard drives or solid state memory chips.

By spinning atoms in opposite directions with the help of an scanning tunneling microscope, IBM created iron atoms with opposite magnetization. Atoms with the same spin need space. Opposite spin pulls the atoms more tightly together, making it possible to squeeze more of them in less space.

The team started with just one atom and continued adding atoms until the little magentic memory could store one bit of information. That is the same amount of information stored in one binary digit. Then the team continued building and used 96 atoms to store one byte of information (equivalent to one letter or number on a keyboard.)

To show their proof of concept the team spelled IBM’s signature THINK using 480 magnetized atoms.

While still impractical for computer hardware applications this research proves previous theoretical limits to data storage do not exist.

A spokesman for IBM says that 150 atoms per bit is the most stable configuration at room temperature. For the purposes of this experiment the team used iron atoms on a copper nitrite surface. The spokesman says that other materials would likely yield even better results.

Detailed explanation of the IBM research in atomic scale magnetic memory

Principia Mathematica, Original Manuscript

Cambridge University Library houses the Newton Papers, which includes the 17th Century thinker’s papers, research and the writings. In a combined grant with the Newton Project at University of Sussex, Cambridge is unveiling many never before seen writings by the man who revolutionized science in the 17th Century.

Grant Young helped digitize the Newton Papers and says that before the works went online this week researchers would have to write to the university librarian and get special permission to go to Cambridge to look at the documents. Now, people from all over the world can see the same documents, written in tight, tiny prose from the comfort of their own homes.

Cambridge librarian Anne Jarvis says, “Cambridge University Library contains evidence of some of the greatest ideas and discoveries over two millennia. We want to make our collections accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world with an internet connection and a thirst for knowledge.”

Since 1998 the Newton Project has created a place for Newton’s work online. It now contains 4.8 billion words comprising over 130 of Newton’s documents, correspondence and notebooks.

Isaac Newton Notes on What Becomes Calculus

The project to put Cambridge’s science superstars online began last year and will continue through 2013 thanks to a generous donation from Dr. Leonard Polonsky.

The Newton Papers is the first foray for the university but will be followed by other science luminaries. In addition to the extensive Newton collections, the library holds the papers of Charles Darwin, Lord Kelvin, Adam Sedgwick, J.J. Thomson, Ernest Rutherford, James Clerk Maxwell and Sir George Gabriel Stokes. The Library also holds the archives of Cambridge’s famous Cavendish Laboratory and is the repository of the Royal Greenwich Observatory archives, which includes the papers of the Astronomers Royal and the Board of Longitude.

Young tells the BBC, “Anyone, wherever they are, can see at the click of a mouse how Newton worked and how he went about developing his theories and experiments.”

The university says that another 8,000 pages of the Newton Papers will be added over the next few months so the archive will be grow over time until most of Newton’s works are online.

It sounds like a plot line from a fictional page turner. Locked inside a coded message is the politics and rituals of a secret society. The message is 105 pages long and contains a combination of Greek, Latin and abstract symbols.

This is not the latest novel from Dan Brown. This is a real document that has stymied code crackers since the document was unearthed in East Germany after the Cold War ended. Even that part sounds contrived.

But USC computer scientist Kevin Knight and two colleagues from Sweden (I can’t make this stuff up, really) applied some complex computer algorithms to solve the 250-year-old mystery. He, Beáta Megyesi and Christiane Schaefer transcribed the yellowing tome into a machine-readable version and then began work cracking the centuries-old code.

Facing Pages from the Copiale Cipher, A 105-page Book by a Secret Society

Even though Knight is no cryptographer he was able to crack the 75,000-character Copiale Cipher (PDF) by applying a statistical translation technique he uses to better translate languages.

The hardest code for computers to crack is definitely human speech. Companies are striving to figure out how to translate casual conversation into computer code which will allow us to talk to our smart devices without having to type, push a button or even touch the screen.

And they work toward this goal by applying their complicated math formulas to less tricky puzzles. Knight approaches language translation as a cryptographic problem, which he hopes can be used not only to improve human language translation but it could also be useful in translating languages that are not currently spoken by humans, including ancient languages and even animal communication.

To crack the Copiale Cipher, the team ran the whole thing through 80 languages and came up empty. Then they started isolating categories, thinking that perhaps they were the true code.

After a lot of automated trial and error they soon realized that the Roman symbols and Greek letters were part of a ruse placed deliberately to mislead the reader.

When they focused on the abstract symbols they recognized groupings and patterns. Then they began putting this new alphabet together. When they ran the whole cryptogram through a German language translator, words began to emerge. Then it all began to make sense.

Except that the document showed that this secret society had an unhealthy fixation on eyes. The members apparently participated in eye surgery, rituals involving eyeballs, plucking eyebrows and even ophthalmology.

Knight is now targeting other coded messages, including ciphers sent by the Zodiac Killer, a serial murderer who sent taunting letters to the the media and has never been caught. Knight is also applying his computer-assisted codebreaking software to other famous unsolved codes such as the last section of Kryptos, an encrypted message carved into a granite sculpture on the grounds of CIA headquarters, and the Voynich Manuscript, a medieval document that has baffled professional cryptographers for decades.

Within hours of his death, Apple co-founder, inventor and innovator Steve Jobs was being compared to scientist Albert Einstein and inventor Thomas Edison. Though he lacked formal scientific training and had no PhD I think most people would consider Steve Jobs a scientist.

He tinkered, explored and experimented as he found ways to bring aesthetic balance to the uber-geeky world of computer science. In fact, he went so far as to turn computer science into a liberal art, a move that resonated with hundreds of millions of people around the globe.

During an NPR interview Jobs said, “In my perspective … science and computer science is a liberal art, it’s something everyone should know how to use, at least, and harness in their life. It’s not something that should be relegated to 5 percent of the population over in the corner. It’s something that everybody should be exposed to and everyone should have mastery of to some extent, and that’s how we viewed computation and these computation devices.”

That was back in the 1996 when he ran a computer company called Next, which was busy experimenting with ways to make computers less business and more friendly. He sold his company to Apple the next year and then went on to create the iPod, iTunes, iPhone and iPad. From the beginning he recognized that pretty fonts, eye-popping colors, high-quality images and eventually top notch audio and high resolution video were the necessary ingredients to make the personal computer more personal.

Along the way, the visionary who got a reputation as a business anathema for never doing market research, rode his gut feelings all the way to the bank. He started Apple in the 1970s, was ousted in 1987 and returned ten years later to run the company until resigning as CEO in August.

The global reaction to Jobs’ death is a clear indicator of the impact he had on our lives. He helped push computers down in size and put the Internet in all of our pockets. He took the promise of tablet computing and created a new gold rush for touchscreen technology.

But above all, Steve Jobs touched our lives so deeply because he stood for what is possible not just what is available. In tributes outside Apple stores from San Jose to Sydney mourners lay tributes in front of the 300 worldwide Apple retail stores.

Jobs demonstrated what it is to be a citizen scientist and gave us all the impetus and encouragement to follow our passions. Sure, he and his company gave us the devices and put the tools in our hands. But then he stepped back and let us create, collaborate, communicate and innovate.

When digital music almost destroyed the record industry and piracy was replacing valid music sales, Jobs opened iTunes and invented the 99-cent song. Not only did that stave off online anarchy in unlicensed music, it helped the music industry reinvent itself and created new opportunities for unsigned bands and indie artists to find followings and make a living. Jobs created jobs.

Then in 2007, the biggest disruption came as Jobs in a dramatic yet to-the-point product launch announced the reinvention of the telephone with the iPhone. Not only did that change the telephony game but it created mechanism for individuals to innovate applications that can run on the iPhone and all smartphones. Jobs created more jobs. A lot more jobs.

Now, four years after opening the App Store, there are over 550,000 applications available for free or for purchase. App makers are busy innovating solutions to minor and major problems, ranging from how to get a date to where to find the nearest bus.

The elegance of Steve Jobs lies in his ability to listen to his gut as he presented a new technology product to an audience that had never imagined such a thing before. Then he stepped back and watched what the user did with the technology.

Science like many other sectors of our culture embraced Steve Jobs’ products with open arms. Now thousands of applications for iPhone and other smartphones are making collection of big data easy and affordable. As a result, crowdsourcing is becoming routine, for everything from counting animal species to measuring happiness through social utilities like Facebook or Twitter.

The deep sadness that total strangers felt upon learning the news that Steve Jobs had died shows the intimate impact the visionary citizen scientist had on our lives. Many feel that something big has been lost. While that’s true. Steve Jobs is gone and with him all of his future ideas. But he inspired us all to create our futures, follow our passions and innovate for a better tomorrow.

In describing the corporate culture at Apple Jobs said, “There wasn’t a hierarchy of ideas that mapped into the hierarchy of the organization. In other words: great ideas could come from anywhere.”

Now it’s up to us to continue where he left off.

Steve Jobs changed how we integrate technology in our lives. He made it more attractive and more personal. But he also made the leap from us being run by technology to using technology as a tool to pursue our dreams, invent, and make the impossible possible.

He will forever be remembered as the man who made the world a little more science fictional.

Apple’s Impact is in our DNA

excerpted from Callie Neylan’s NPR blog post about news of Steve Jobs’ resignation in August

Why do so many of us get so emotional about Steve Jobs, to the point of crying upon hearing he had cancer and tearing up last week while reading his poignant resignation letter? The answer to all of these questions, I think, lies in mathematics and our own DNA.

I’ve been researching design aesthetics recently, and in a nutshell here’s what I’ve found: Beauty is more objective than you might think. It’s based on numbers and proportions. As humans, we’re biologically programmed to seek out and respond to these numbers and proportions because they indicate superiority, in everything from the human form, to great works of art, to musical patterns, to plants, to architecture and to product design. The screen of a Macbook, for example, is a Golden Rectangle, which is based on this magical number: 1.6178, also known as the Golden Ratio, the Golden Mean or the Divine Proportion.
And the pulsing light that softly undulates to indicate that your Macbook is asleep? Well, that mesmerizing light mimics the rhythm of a human heartbeat, a deeply resonating mathematical pattern which can also be found in tidal flows, DNA sequences and blissful cognitive states.

The inclusion of these patterns in Apple’s designs is no accident. Steve Jobs knows better than any other modern-day CEO our biological attraction to beautiful things. With the help of Jonathan Ive, Apple’s VP of industrial design, he exploits our biological tendencies to give us exactly what we want. He has an uncanny ability to tap into our genetic propensity toward beauty, seducing us through exquisite product design.

For years, scientists have been saying that some of the biggest discoveries in science will come from non-scientists. And now that prediction is showing promise as two teams of online video game players have helped solve the structure for an important enzyme found in the HIV virus.

After medical researchers had repeatedly failed to piece together the structure of a class of enzymes called retroviral proteases, they turned to the biology video game Foldit, an online puzzle that has users score points by folding proteins and ultimately helping science make key advances like this. The protease enzyme plays a critical role in how the AIDS virus matures and multiplies.

In the hunt for AIDS drugs and a vaccine, scientists are focused on blocking these enzymes but until now they have been stuck, trying to figure out what the molecule looks like.

Foldit was created in 2008 by computer scientists at the University of Washington Center for Game Science in collaboration with biochemist David Baker’s lab.

In the last three years the game has evolved. To piece together the retrovirus enzyme structure, Seth Cooper, the game’s co-founder says, “Gamers used a new alignment Tool for the first time to copy parts of known molecules and test their fit in an incomplete model.”

The puzzle they were working on was called “Unsolved Monkey Virus Protein” and within three weeks two teams had solved the problem, which Dr. Baker then took from the 3-D computer world into the real world.

For the monkey virus problem, Foldit players began with a scientific rough draft of the protease enzyme. During three weeks of play, hundreds of teams and individuals generated over a million structure predictions. And the solution, found by the winning team in 10 days, is nearly perfect. It gives Baker and his colleagues all the information they needed to pinpoint the structure down to almost the last atom.

Postdoctoral researcher Firas Khatib says, “It’s the power of citizen science.”

Before Foldit launched, Dr. Baker’s lab created a program called Rosetta@home which allowed computers to run simulated protein folding while the machines sat idle. It worked much like the SETI@home screensaver. Instead of searching for extra terrestrial signals from space it ran quick simulations of protein folding. It used distributed processing to crunch massive amounts of data but it was all automated. The user could just sit back and watch the process unfold.

Foldit came into being after some Rosetta users suggested that the computer was making wrong assumptions because it could only follow a logical path. And the solutions to these complex proteins probably required some intuition and exploration, two things a computer can’t stomach.

Once Dr. Baker’s lab combined the power of its artificial intelligence with human intelligence he stumbled on a winning combination that could lead to a cure for HIV and other diseases.

Foldit Contenders Group and Foldit Void Crushers Group are the two teams that received co-authorship on the protease structure paper which was just published in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology.

A member from the Foldit Contenders named “Mimi” says, “It is a team thing. Everybody contributes.”

And that’s just the motivation Dr. Baker is using to solve the big biological questions.

He says, “Competitive social interaction is a very strong driving force.”

Video all about Foldit (By the end you’ll want to sign up. It’s infectious.)

Bre Pettis used to be a school teacher in Seattle. Then he began doing weekend projects and podcasting about them for Make: magazine. But when he found 3-D printing he found a home and turned that passion into a company, where he is bringing science fiction-style replicators a step closer to reality.

Now he is democratizing manufacturing by turning a digital model into a physical object, using computer aided design software originally built for the architecture industry.

While moving from 2-D blueprints for buildings to the 3-d models plastic is the medium of choice for the MakerBot for now. Those days of conjuring up a four-course meal with a voice command while cruising through interstellar space are a long, long way off. But 3-D printing is making big strides. A few years ago only engineering departments at universities and a few medical researchers had clunky oversized printers that could make ceramic or plastic models.

Now 3-D printing is moving to the real world, where it has the possibility of turning consumers into creators. The first company called MakerBot Industries began just over two years ago. Now over 5,000 Thing-O-Matics are out in the world, making…well, things.

From shower curtain rings to plastic paperweights and piggybanks, the 3-D printer is turning manufacturing on its head.

For about $1,300 anyone can purchase a Thing-O-Matic, a funky, scruffy-looking box that you assemble. It may not look like much but it might change the way we build everything.

Pettis says, “My mission in life is to provide infrastructure that gives rise to creativity in humans.”

In August, the New York-based company secured $10 million in venture capital to grow the business and create the next generation micro-manufacturing unit.

Those 5,200 Thing-O-Matic owners gather at Thingiverse.com to compare notes, share ideas and show their wares.

What started out as an educational lesson turned into real-world adventure for five high school students from Sagniaw, Michigan. The students from Arthur Hill High School, near Michigan’s Shipwreck Alley on Lake Huron located two missing ships at the bottom of the lake.

In a science outreach collaboration called Project Shiphunt, Sony and Intel partnered with NOAA’s Dr. Mark Delgado, the chief scientist responsible for mapping the Titanic wreck and invited the students to map the lake bottom in an effort to locate the Merrick and the Laurentian, both of which sank in the late 1800s.

Much to their surprise the students were able to find the exact location of the shipwrecks after creating millions of sonar data points and mapping the bottom of Lake Huron. They then directed divers and a submersible robot with a camera to go inspect the wreckage.

Tiesha Anderson researched historic shipping lanes on Lake Huron and the other Great Lakes before embarking on their ship hunt. The students learned how to plot possible shipwreck locations. James Willett helped plot possible wreck locations with the help of Stan Stock, a local shipwreck hunter.

After eliminating several locations to narrow the search, the students worked with a hydrographer to learn about tracking coordinates before hitting the water to look for the ships.

The teen team consisted of James Willett, Cody Frost, Tiesha Anderson, Yer Vang and Tirrea Billings.

17-year-old sophomore James Willett dabbles with guitar when he isn’t searching for shipwrecks. In school he likes math and is going to try out for the football team this year. He wants to be a video game designer.

A Junior at Arthur Hill, Cody Frost helps out his dad at the family-run auto body shop when he’s not busy looking for 100 year old ships. He describes himself as a laid back, glass half-full kind of guy. Rather than worrying about not having enough he focuses on what he can do with what he has.

Tiesha Anderson is a 15 year old sophomore who has been playing basketball since she was in 3rd Grade. That instilled a competitive drive in her that has motivated her to be a straight-A student. She likes science because she is a curious person with a big imagination. She is hoping that finding ships will help her decide what she wants to do in life. She just knows it will be in the sciences.

Yer Vang struggled her first year of high school because she was quiet. But her sophomore year she helped find two ships and discovered that high school can be pretty fun. She’s not sure if she wants to be an astronaut but she definitely wants to ride a rocket into space some day.

Tirrea Billings is a 16 year old junior who loves math and science. She is interested in how the environment is being destroyed by pollution and forest degradation. Until Project Ship Hunt she had never been on a ship and says she really had no intention of going on one.

The rest of their story will be told in a one-hour documentary about the project on August 30 on Current TV.

Ultrathin, flexible circuit boards that attach to the skin could replace conventional wired medical equipment, especially when it comes to monitoring vital signs.

New electronic tattoos, also known as epidermal electronics are taking state-of-the-art wireless medical technology and sticking it to a patients’ skin, much in the same way a temporary tattoo is applied.

University of Illinois researcher John Rogers is co-author of the paper which appears in the current issue of Science. He shows how scientists created s-shaped circuits which can bend and flex with the elasticity of skin.

The thin-skinned electronic medical device can last up to two weeks and in the short term could replace bulky devices that monitor a patient’s heart rate, blood pressure, brain activity or other vital signs.

In preliminary tests if the tattoo is attached to a video game player’s throat, muscle contractions in the neck can be translated to allow limited vocabulary in controlling the movement in the game. This can also be used to help people with disorders of the larynx speak again.

Not everyone is hailing this breakthrough in electronics. Some conservative Christian groups are terrified that this scientific advance could also be interpreted as the Mark of the Beast described in the Bible, signaling the end of days.

And at least one bioethicist is already concerned that while voluntary monitoring of someone’s condition is a good use of this technology, forcing another person to wear an electronic tattoo to see if they are taking their medication or present a security risk is another story altogether.

Northwestern University civil and environmental engineering professor Yongang Huang explains the interest in combining flexible electronics with the human body. He’s and Dr. Rogers have been working on this technology for six years.

Now that we’ve been living in the Information Age for over 50 years, it’s safe to say we’ve become quite proficient at gathering data. We’ve built elaborate systems to collect and transmit data. We’ve also built elaborate systems to protect and encrypt personal information so it can’t be misused.

Scientists are just beginning to understand the power of the people in gathering, processing and analyzing huge amounts of data. Peer to peer computing networks and citizen scientists are helping the scientific world gather an entire world of data. But automated systems are churning out more data than we know what to do.

Some clever artists are sensing that within each piece of data there is a single artifact of humanity. When pooled together, those data points become a catalog, documenting human moments. The patterns that can be derived from the information clearly document our culture.

It turns highly impersonal data into a very intimate portrait of humanity.

Artist Aaron Koblin gave a TED Talk at this year’s technology, art and design demonstration. The video is 18 minutes but is very powerful. Here’s some background on what he mentions during his talk.

“The 19th Century culture was defined by the novel.
The 20th Century culture was defined by the cinema.
The culture of the 21st Century will be defined by the interface.” — Lev Manovich, media theory professor of Visual Arts, University of California, San Diego

He sets the scene by saying, “Interface can be a powerful narrative device.” Marshaling the power of the Internet, powerful home computers running on a protocol that showcase the power of audio and video, Koblin puts an artsy twist on the hustle and bustle of modern life while leveraging the latest technology to help refine the information, tranforming it into art.

First he visually represents one statistic – there are 140,000 airplanes flying at any given time – and turns it into an art project called Flight Patterns. Then he creates a map with routing information, makes it come alive by color-coding different aspects. The overall image is a dynamic system that could just as easily be a snapshot of our brains in action as the U.S. flight system.

Working with the Senseable Cities Lab at MIT he maps international communication in a way that could easily appear to be a giant solar flare erupting on the sun. By visualizing tiny bits of information a story emerges and it is one where the digital world looks like a mirror image of the natural world, an idea that should comfort some.

Drawing on a computer program developed by Amazon.com called Mechanical Turk, Koblin exploited the system for his own artistic pleasure. Mechanical Turk creates human intelligence tasks that allows access tens of thousands of people to perform simple jobs, like rating an item, drawing a simple picture or just giving an opinion. The idea is that there are some things people can do better, faster and more accurately than a computer. For their small effort they are given a small reward. Each task takes just a minute and participants are paid in pennies.

For his digital sheep project, The Sheep Market, Koblin asked for people to give him their two cents by drawing a sheep. For that, he would in turn pay them two cents. He collected 10,000 sheep for his project and then sold the sheep as stamps on an open sheep market in blocks of 20. He did similar projects with asking people to draw portions of a $100 bill as part of his Ten Thousand Cents project. This was to measure accuracy rather than creativity. Then he built an audio task to collect voice recordings which he turned into a crowdsourced version of “Bicycle Built for Two.”

He also decided to demonstrate the power of the modern web browser by challenging people to create music videos without using a digital camera, or any camera for that matter. He again had people draw images which he then stitched together into 24 frames per second. And the result was a collective tribute to Johnny Cash, honoring the last song he ever recorded before he died.

In another music video project, he personalized the video for the individual viewers by having them enter their street address before playing the song, We Used to Wait by Arcade Fire. In this ongoing project, Google Earth and advanced web browser features help serve up personal childhood information in the context of the music, giving the video a more intimate feel.

Through all of his artistic exploration with technology, Koblin’s message is clear. The data that is out there is not to be feared. He says, “I think data can actually make us more human.”

Koblin works for Google, where he is currently directing the Data Arts team.

“As we collect more and more personally and socially relevant data we have an opportunity and maybe even an obligation to maintain the humanity and tell some amazing stories as we explore and collaborate together.” — Aaron Koblin, media artist

It sounds like something from science-fiction — but it’s actually the latest brainchild from town planners in the western French town of La Rochelle. Small electric cars without drivers steer themselves through the streets taking locals and tourists around town in the first driverless car pilot program.

French law prevents vehicles without drivers from traveling on expressways so when those tests begin later this year, they will have a person in the vehicle as backup in case something goes awry.

The system works much like an elevator. A screen at stations allows passengers to enter their destination and the nearest vehicle comes to pick them up. Civic leaders want to add more automated vehicles to the fleet of five to reduce wait times at stations and get people where they need to go faster.

New Rochelle is hoping to roll out more driverless vehicles in time for the Christmas holidays.

In the U.S. tech giant Google is pressing Nevada to change state law and allow driverless vehicles on state roads and highways. The company would like to get permission to test its location software on driverless cars but must get permission from the state legislature before conducting any tests.

Volvo’s Senior Safety Engineer Thomas Broberg says that driverless cars will become a reality as they are a big part of the company’s initiative to eliminate fatalities in any of its cars by 2020.

Sydney’s iconic Customs House, Museum of Contemporary Art and Opera House are being given a psychedelic makeovers as part of the city’s annual festival of light, music and ideas. To weather the winter doldrums of the Southern Hemisphere, Sydney, Australia came up with a bright idea — The Vivid Festival.

Spectacular 3-D lighting installations and art sculptures across the city highlight the creative center of Australia during the three-week festival. Over 40 different illuminated art installations, musical performances and creative discussions shine a spotlight on creativity and ideas.

And what better way to spark creativity than by turning icons into art. The famous Sydney Opera House becomes the largest canvas electronic projection artists can digitally paint. The former gateway to Sydney also becomes a digital canvas as passers by can watch the Customs House melt, regrow and get pelted with virtual graffiti right before their eyes.

Using powerful computers, laser mapping of the famous buildings and some state-of-the-art projection equipment, the team of artists and engineers can project any image onto any structure and even coordinate it with music. The company hired to produce the light festival was responsible for the other worldly closing ceremonies for the Vancouver Olympic Games last year.

Students at the California Institute of the Arts have built an orchestra of interactive musical robots. Musicians use specialized computer programs to play the robotic instruments. The Associated Press sat in on a rehearsal for the group’s May 12 concert.

Tammy, BreakBot, NotomotoN, GlockenBot and a handful of other kinetic music machines round out the KarmetiK Machine Orchestra. Made from old furniture, scraps from electronic junkyards and other found objects, this robot orchestra combines synthesized music with programmed machines. When you put together you get beautiful music.

Four years ago Ajay Kapur decided that he wanted to create a full orchestra composed equally of humans and robots. He also wanted trained musicians and programmers to work together to program and instruct the robots.

He worked with Michael Darling, the CalArts’ theater program director to recruit musicians from their classes and to build robots from broken furniture and other discarded theater props.

After several months of collaboration, KarmetiK was born.

Kapur, who holds a doctorate in electronic engineering, says, “It’s like a symbiotic relationship between humans and machines.”

And the machines in the orchestra can do things humans can’t, including playing every note perfectly and faster than humanly possible.

This is not the first group of music-loving robots ever to perform. A few years ago a solo bot at Japan’s Waseda University played Flight of the Bumblebee flawlessly and faster than any human could. Jazz guitarist Pat Metheny also took a robot orchestra on the road with him last year. But like the Japanese robot, his bots played pre-programmed compositions.

Tokyo Electric Power is putting remote controlled machinery to use at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in northeastern Japan. Helicopters mounted with cameras can safely survey the damaged reactors to give clean up crews a clear view of the mess without exposing them to dangerous radiation, following the 9.0 mega thrust earthquake and tsunami on March 11.

To prevent a worse nuclear disaster, power plant workers allowed several hydrogen explosions to release pressure building inside the disabled nuclear reactors. Now workers nearby are relying on remote-controlled bulldozers, dump trucks and other heavy equipment to drive the clean up process while radiation levels are still too high for humans to be in the area for any length of time.

Why Not Robots?

Japan is known for being on the leading technological edge, with its earthquake early warning system and automatic seismic shutoff system at nuclear power plants. It’s also known for mechanizing the manufacturing process by employing robots do the work of humans, much more efficiently.

So it stands to reason that the now crippled nation would want to send robots to the hobbled Fukushima Daiichi power plant. But there are no robots to handle that kind of a job — yet.

The father of industrial robotics says that it is impossible to anticipate a disaster like this which would make programming a robot for this clean up task equally as impossible. But, Joseph Engelberger also says that now that Japan understands what job a robot could do under these conditions, it should be fairly easy to develop a series of commands to allow the robot to react in specific ways under specific circumstances.

The remote-controlled power plant clean up operation uses humans to control machines, also known as teleoperation. Robots act based on code that creates parameters under which they can operate while teleoperators rely on human-driven decision-making.

So until the robots can be made radiation resistant and get to the Japanese power plant we’ll just have to appreciate their aesthetic value as baby robots dance.

French company Aldebaran Robotics makes Nao human-like robots. Nao in Chinese means brain. These five sychronized robots recently performed at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.

The company just opened its first U.S. subsidiary office in Boston this month.

Now, we just need to get them to Japan to sift through radiation-contaminated debris.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No it’s SmartBird — the avian robot. German engineers claim they have succeeded in unlocking the secrets of bird flight.

For centuries man has tried to imitate nature by mimicking flight. Capturing the energy efficiency and subtlety of bird flight has proven to be tricky — until now. The German company Festo has created a bionic network where it takes what nature does best and tries to find automated applications, ranging from an elephant trunk-inspired handling assistant to jellyfish undulation and now the SmartBird.

From the company’s Bionic Learning Network engineers were able to solve the mystery of bird flight.

The herring seagull inspired the SmartBird, which not only can take off and land without any additional drive unit but it can flap its wings up and down. But the real breakthrough is an active articulated torsional drive unit that allows for extreme agility by letting the bird’s wings twist at specific angles while flapping up and down. This helps to maximize airflow around the bird and optimize the efficiency of its flight.

“In my estimation SmartBird is far more efficient and reliable than anything else ever before built in this field.” — Wolfgang Send, theoretical physicist, flight expert and scientist on the SmartBird project.

A new membership-based, do-it-yourself fabrication and manufacturing space allows engineers and inventors to work on their gadgets using the latest in high-tech equipment. Tech Shop has opened facilities in California with plans to expand across the country.

It’s like your father’s workshop but better. The two shops–in San Jose and in San Francisco–have all the latest in technological assistance combined with typical fabrication equipment.

Tech Shop allows inventors, entrepreneurs and curious dabblers to try their hand at creating something without having to invest in all the equipment.

Community science labs, creative craft studios and now tech shops are dotting the landscape of major cities, filling a gap that opens when curious dreamers run headlong into reality.

Tech Shop is spreading to Detroit where it is advertising itself as a hands on way to fix the auto industry.

It looks like a giant hamster ball but it’s doing far more than exercising its occupants. The Virtusphere, which first rolled onto the scene during the reality television show Shark Tank in 2009, takes virtual reality to a whole new level.

For science, it gives the opportunity to walk through the bloodstream or to soar through the cosmos and understand spaces in a whole new way. Data that scientists have collected can finally be put to use in a meaningful way that gives depth and dimension to some hard to imagine worlds.

Harrisburg University of Science and Technology is only one of four institutions that has one of these giant balls of science. The Virtusphere was also a part of the USA Science & Engineering Festival in Washington D.C. last fall.

It has applications from training military personnel in a virtual environment and it can even be used to enhance video games. But get inside this ball and scientists can finally walk into the worlds they study, which will allow us all to better understand what’s going on all around us.

Call them operabots. In a marriage of music and media, a team at the MIT Media Lab has infused an opera with robotic technology.

In Death and the Powers, a new opera by Media Lab professor Tod Machover, the main character wishes to leave the physical world, but remain there digitally. He downloads himself into The System and continues to interact with the audience and other characters through robots using a technique Machover invented, called disembodied performance.

On stage the operabots appear more like podiums (podia?) than humans as they roll across the stage. But their movement and artificial emotion is controlled by sensors attached to the main actor who spends most of the show in a concealed booth in the orchestra pit.

His movement, heart rate, and other information is sent on stage to the robots who convey what he is experiencing below.

Known as America’s most wired composer, Machover has been trying to get audiences to see and feel sound for over 30 years.

Ever wish your eyes were lasers? A Lenovo laptop prototype brings that wish closer to reality.

Touch screen and movement based technology is quickly supplanting the mouse as the standard way to interact with computers. But a company is looking down the road to make our interface with machines more user friendly.

Tobii is perfecting eye tracking so that a user can merely peer at the screen to point and click. The technology measures the distance between the pupil and the glint in the eyeball using lasers. Then it creates a 3-D model of where the user is looking. From there it’s just a matter of seeing to make the laptop go.

The goal is to make PCs more personal, faster and less reliant on outside tools, like keyboards or even fingers.

Practical computer applications are about two years away but many see eye tracking just around the computing corner.

Ray Kurzweil, chairman and chief executive officer of Kurzweil Technologies, discusses artificial intelligence and the impact of computer technological advancements on society.

Based on the recent artificial intelligence accomplishment of a machine beating man at the game show Jeopardy!, futurist Kurzweil says computers are getting smarter and they will reach human levels by about 2029. He also adds that a singularity will occur in 2045 where computers surpass the intelligence of people and begin creating and thinking at a new level.

Kurzweil speaks with Margaret Brennan and Jon Erlichman on Bloomberg Television’s “InBusiness.”

Hundreds were put in jeopardy tonight at the Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute campus in upstate New York. But there was no danger. They were there to watch two humans take on a super computer named Watson on the TV game show Jeopardy!

Spoiler alert. The computer wins.

Bested by the super smart machine, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter–two top Jeopardy! winners–tried to outwit the computer but in the end machine dominated man.

Going into the Jeopardy! IBM Challenge, Chris Welty, a Rennselaer graduate and the man behind the machine didn’t think his next generation artificial intelligence could stand up to the brainpower of the two game show champions.

Dr. Welty says it was very hard to watch, especially when his creation failed to answer several questions. But those mistakes were few and far between.

Now the team that built Watson says they will try to apply this type of computer technology to medicine, government and law in an effort to advance computer-aided decision-making in those fields.

What weighs less than three pounds, fits into a shoe box and can fly around the Earth? The answer is, a CubeSat. These are the newest generation of satellites that will help NASA conduct educational and science missions in low-Earth orbit.

NASA has selected 20 of these nanosatellites to fly as auxiliary cargo aboard rockets planned to launch in 2011 and 2012. The proposed CubeSats come from a high school in Virginia, universities across the country, NASA field centers and Department of Defense organizations.

The 2011 State of the Union address, delivered by President Barack Obama, painted a solid picture of the future. Not surprisingly the President finds a secure and prosperous future filled with scientific and technological innovation. To create more jobs, he stresses better education including concentration on math and science. He emphasizes energy innovation and more investments in basic research. But overall he pressed all citizens to be creative and use their imaginations to conceive a better and brighter future where responsible government is open and accessible to the citizenry and where all people are given the same freedoms and choices.

Here’s a science, technology, engineering and math snapshot of our state of the union. Excerpts from President Obama’s January 25, 2011 speech before Congress and the American people.

Race to be #1 in Science
The U.S. is not going to be able to hold its lead over other nations as long as we lag behind in education and investment in research and technology. During his speech, the President said…

“Meanwhile, nations like China and India realized that with some changes of their own, they could compete in this new world. And so they started educating their children earlier and longer, with greater emphasis on math and science. They’re investing in research and new technologies. Just recently, China became the home to the world’s largest private solar research facility, and the world’s fastest computer.” (13:32-14:00)

Applied Materials Solar Technology Center is the biggest solar research facility in the world. And it’s located in Xi’an, China. Although, Applied Materials is a California-based company, it operates in 21 different countries.

Last fall American parts helped China speed past the U.S. in the computer race. It’s not quite as exciting as the space race 50 years ago but it’s still a mark of status to have the world’s fastest computer. And now that honor lies with Tianhe-1A which has a 2.507 petaflop system. That is currently 30 percent faster than any U.S. machine.

Though the U.S. had a hand in helping China reach these milestones, President Obama called for the U.S. to start innovating. He said…

“We need to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world.” (15:59-16:02)

“Our free enterprise system is what drives innovation. But because it’s not always profitable for companies to invest in basic research, throughout our history, our government has provided cutting-edge scientists and inventors with the support that they need. That’s what planted the seeds for the Internet. That’s what helped make possible things like computer chips and GPS.” (17:39-18:01)

New Moon Shot
During his speech the President called upon all Americans to dig deep and be creative to help build a stronger economy. He said…

“Half a century ago, when the Soviets beat us into space with the launch of a satellite called Sputnik, we had no idea how we would beat them to the moon. The science wasn’t even there yet. NASA didn’t exist. But after investing in better research and education, we didn’t just surpass the Soviets; we unleashed a wave of innovation that created new industries and millions of new jobs.”
“This is our generation’s Sputnik moment. Two years ago, I said that we needed to reach a level of research and development we haven’t seen since the height of the Space Race. And in a few weeks, I will be sending a budget to Congress that helps us meet that goal. We’ll invest in biomedical research, information technology, and especially clean energy technology.” (18:10-19:08)

Ready for the Challenge
The President told the American people that it’s up to the scientists, engineers, teachers and entrepreneurs, not the government to solve the big problems we face. He said…

“We’re not just handing out money. We’re issuing a challenge. We’re telling America’s scientists and engineers that if they assemble teams of the best minds in their fields, and focus on the hardest problems in clean energy, we’ll fund the Apollo projects of our time.” (20:12-20:25)

He added…

“At the California Institute of Technology, they’re developing a way to turn sunlight and water into fuel for our cars.” (20:27-20:34)

Sossina Haile at Cal Tech is taking a chemical ordinarily used in self-cleaning ovens — called cerium oxide — and is using it to concentrate solar energy in order to turn carbon dioxide and water into fuel. He said…

“At Oak Ridge National Laboratory, they’re using supercomputers to get a lot more power out of our nuclear facilities.” (20:36-20:40)

The Jaguar supercomputer at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory may have slipped to #2 in the world of speed but it’s still number 1 for many scientists, including those using it to build a virtual nuclear reactor to simulate ways for future reactors to last longer and burn at a higher energy efficiently rate and with less waste.

Revive Alt Energy
The President reached across the political aisle while talking about energy. The energy future requires all types of alternative energy, from solar and wind to clean coal and natural gas. He said…

“With more research and incentives, we can break our dependence on oil with biofuels, and become the first country to have a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015.” (20:41-20:52)

With the $4 billion President Obama says will be cut from annual oil subsidies, he will direct that money into electric car development. That includes:

$7,000 instant rebate when purchasing an electric car
30 percent increase in R&D for vehicle technology, including an energy innovation hub for batteries and storage
30 communities will get $10 million grants once they demonstrate a concrete plan to streamline regulations, develop infrastructure, make fleet conversions or offer electrical vehicle incentives, such as commuter lane access

He said…

“So tonight, I challenge you to join me in setting a new goal: By 2035, 80 percent of America’s electricity will come from clean energy sources. Some folks want wind and solar. Others want nuclear, clean coal and natural gas. To meet this goal, we will need them all — and I urge Democrats and Republicans to work together to make it happen.” (21:42-22:15)

STEM the Education System
All of the innovation the President envisions won’t be possible without future generations of competent workers. And that all starts in schools, which are not keeping students competitive, globally. President Obama said…

“The quality of our math and science education lags behind many other nations. America has fallen to ninth in the proportion of young people with a college degree.” (22:58-23:08)

Before the State of the Union, the 2009 report card on the nation’s schools was released. Secretary Arne Duncan was disappointed with the results, especially in math and science.

He says, “When only 1 or 2 percent of children score at the advanced levels on NAEP, the next generation will not be ready to be world-class inventors, doctors, and engineers.”

In one of the few standing ovations of the evening during his State of the Union address, President Obama said to celebrate science not celebrity. He said…

“We need to teach our kids that it’s not just the winner of the Super Bowl who deserves to be celebrated, but the winner of the science fair.”(23:39-23:46)

Get to Work
As test scores show that the U.S. is slipping behind other countries and losing its leading educational edge, the President told people to go to work and become teachers or get retrained and work in biotechnology. He said…

“And over the next 10 years, with so many baby boomers retiring from our classrooms, we want to prepare 100,000 new teachers in the fields of science and technology and engineering and math.” (27:21-27:33)

“One mother of two, a woman named Kathy Proctor, had worked in the furniture industry since she was 18 years old. And she told me she’s earning her degree in biotechnology now, at 55 years old, not just because the furniture jobs are gone, but because she wants to inspire her children to pursue their dreams, too. As Kathy said, “I hope it tells them to never give up.” (29:18-29:44)

We are a nation of immigrants. And those who come here are looking for a better life and for opportunity. Our schools still provide that service for foreign students. President Obama said…

“Others come here from abroad to study in our colleges and universities. But as soon as they obtain advanced degrees, we send them back home to compete against us. It makes no sense.” (30:55-31:06)

“But tonight, let’s agree to make that effort. And let’s stop expelling talented, responsible young people who could be staffing our research labs or starting a new business, who could be further enriching this nation.” (31:42-31:55)

Infrastructurovation
Building new roads, transportation and technology infrastructure have been endeavors that the U.S. has always done first and best. But our aging systems are causing us to lose ground to other nations. The President said…

“Our infrastructure used to be the best, but our lead has slipped. South Korean homes now have greater Internet access than we do. Countries in Europe and Russia invest more in their roads and railways than we do. China is building faster trains and newer airports. Meanwhile, when our own engineers graded our nation’s infrastructure, they gave us a “D.” (32:34-32:49)

South Korea offers its citizens the Internet everywhere and as a result 95.9% of Koreans enjoy that connectivity. In the U.S. the number of people with Internet access is growing but only at 63.5% of the population has an Internet connection.

China is investing 9 percent of its gross domestic product in roads and railways while Europe is investing 5 percent. The U.S. is only spending two percent of GDP on transportation infrastructure. But with the largest GDP in the world — at $15.2 trillion — our two percent is equal to $304 billion a year. China and Europe are still investing more at $576 billion and $805 billion respectively.

The Future Will be Open
With all the technology that has been created and built in the last 30 years now able to connect people more with the government, President Obama pledges to let the people see where the money is being spent. He said….

“Because you deserve to know exactly how and where your tax dollars are being spent, you’ll be able to go to a website and get that information for the very first time in history.” (49:57-50:07)

“The 21st century government that’s open and competent. A government that lives within its means. An economy that’s driven by new skills and new ideas. Our success in this new and changing world will require reform, responsibility, and innovation.” (50:50-51:17)

The American Dream
Every year a quintessential American story highlights the President’s address. This year a Pennsylvania drill operator held the dream. After hearing that the 33 Chilean miners who were trapped underground last August wouldn’t be freed until Christmas he knew his company had the technology to drill a hole through the hard, volcanic rock much faster. President Obama highlighted the tale of the American who helped save the Chilean miners last year. He said…

“And that dream is the story of a small business owner named Brandon Fisher. Brandon started a company in Berlin, Pennsylvania, that specializes in a new kind of drilling technology. And one day last summer, he saw the news that halfway across the world, 33 men were trapped in a Chilean mine, and no one knew how to save them.

But Brandon thought his company could help. And so he designed a rescue that would come to be known as Plan B. His employees worked around the clock to manufacture the necessary drilling equipment. And Brandon left for Chile.

Along with others, he began drilling a 2,000-foot hole into the ground, working three- or four-hour — three or four days at a time without any sleep. Thirty-seven days later, Plan B succeeded, and the miners were rescued. (Applause.) But because he didn’t want all of the attention, Brandon wasn’t there when the miners emerged. He’d already gone back home, back to work on his next project.
And later, one of his employees said of the rescue, “We proved that Center Rock is a little company, but we do big things.”(64:33-66:07)

And, science helps us do big things.

Here are a few future leaders, who had the privilege of sitting in the First Lady’s box during the State of the Union.

Amy Chyao
Richardson, TX

Amy, a sixteen-year-old high school junior from Richardson, Texas, has developed a photosensitizer for photodynamic therapy (PDT), an emerging cancer treatment that uses light energy to activate a drug that kills cancer cells. With her work, Amy won the first place Gordon E. Moore Award at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, a program of Society for Science & the Public, in May 2010. Amy met the President at the October 2010 White House Science Fair.

Brandon Ford
Philadelphia, PA

Brandon, a junior at West Philadelphia High School, is a leader of the West Philly Hybrid X Team, which includes students from an afterschool program at the West Philadelphia High School Academy of Automotive and Mechanical Engineering. Brandon and the Hybrid X team recently entered two cars in the Progressive Automotive X PRIZE competition, a global challenge that sought to deliver production-ready, highly fuel efficient vehicles. They successfully went head-to-head with corporations, universities and other well-funded organizations, even advancing to an elimination round with their Ford Focus that got an official 65.1 MPGe.

Mikayla Nelson
Billings, MT

Mikayla Nelson is currently a freshman at Central Catholic High School in Billings, Montana. As a middle schooler at Will James Middle School, she led her Science Bowl team to a 1st place finish at the National Science Bowl for the design document of their solar car. They also won 5th place in the U.S. Dept of Energy’s Junior Solar Sprint. Mikayla met the President at the October 2010 White House Science Fair where she represented her Science Bowl team and exhibited their solar car.

Kathy Proctor
Winston-Salem, NC

Kathy Proctor grew up in Trinity, North Carolina where, after graduating, she went to work in the furniture industry like many others in the area. When she was laid off in 2009, Kathy began taking classes in biotechnology at Forsyth Technical Community College. Kathy will graduate in July 2011, with an Associate Degree in Science, and hopes to attain a job working as a bio-fuels analyst. Kathy met the President when he visited Forsyth Tech in early December 2010.

Diego Vasquez
Phoenix, AZ

Diego Vasquez, currently a freshman at South Mountain Community College in Phoenix, Arizona, was a member of the team from Cesar Chavez High School in Laveen, Arizona that won a grant through the Lemelson-MIT Program’s InvenTeams initiative for their design of a fully adjustable motorized chair for persons who could primarily use it for physical therapy. Diego met the President at the October 2010 White House Science Fair where he represented his team and demonstrated their chair.

In Jeopardy’s! 47 year history, there has NEVER been a contestant like Watson. And who knew the first public face-off between man and machine would be a TV game show.

Jeopardy champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter represented humanity in a demonstration of intellectual prowess against a new IBM supercomputer named Watson.

Both seasoned human contestants say playing against Watson is like playing against a really tough competitor but it can be beat both on the buzzer and in answering the question.

IBM unveiled Watson, which is the size of ten refrigerators, not to beat Jeopardy champions but to demonstrate that it has the ability to take information from atlases, encyclopedias and other reference works and not just regurgitate facts. Watson has the ability to contextualize by taking all surrounding facts about a place, person or process and arrive at a likely conclusion based on the information presented.

The company is hopeful that this new generation of supercomputer will speed medical diagnoses and perform other useful real world computation in a fraction of the time.

“I don’t know if there is a Vegas [betting] line, but always bet on humanity.” — Jeopardy champion Ken Jennings

An Ankeny, Iowa sixth grader surprised his teacher and his classmates when he took a classroom challenge to the extreme. During the annual memorization of pi — the non-repeating number that represents the circumference of a circle divided by its diameter — one student just kept going. The number that begins with 3.14159… intrigued Marcus Francis and now he’s memorized over 300 digits and is adding more every day.

In 2005, a Japanese man set the world’s record for reciting the most digits in pi. Then the magic number was 83,341. A year later the same record holder bested himself by reciting the first 100,000 digits.

Routinely, students–mostly teenagers–take on the big number. Now YouTube videos of their recitations appear online. Some students can rattle off over 8,000 digits, proving an aptitude for memorizing large chunks of information.

But computers still are beating people in the race to quantify pi. In 2002 a Japanese super computer calculated pi out to over one trillion digits. But last year a Frenchman set a new record of 2.7 trillion decimal places. Then in August of this year a Japanese and American duo smashed all previous records by using a souped up desktop PC and 20 hard drives to calculate pi out 5 trillion places. The count took three months.

The Goddard Spaceflight Center is NASA’s research center for studying climate change. There, scientists like Dr. James Hansen, use computer models to learn about how Earth’s complex system is changing over time.

The upcoming Glory mission will help NASA fill in more missing pieces of the climate puzzle. The mission, which is slated to begin in February — after being postponed this month — will gather data on solar irradiance and atmospheric aerosols to help clarify our understanding of Earth’s energy balance.

Aerosols are tiny particles in the air. Even if the air looks clear, it’s nearly certain that you’ll inhale tens of millions of solid particles and liquid droplets with every breath. Scientists want to learn more about the little specks and how they have an impact on our changing climate.

Solar irradiance refers to the amount and intensity of the radiation from the sun that reaches Earth. Scientists are hoping to better understand how the amount of sunlight that bounces off of or is absorbed by Earth affects the overall complex climate system.

President Obama bestowed medals on researchers and scientists in a ceremony in the East Room on Wednesday. The President presented the National Medal of Science to ten eminent researchers and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation to three individuals and a three-person team for a wide range of groundbreaking achievements. The medals are the highest honors bestowed by the United States government on scientists, engineers, and inventors.

And the National Medal of Science winners are…

Yakir Aharonov, Chapman University, CA
“For his contributions to the foundations of quantum physics and for drawing out unexpected implications of that field ranging from the Aharonov-Bohm effect to the theory of weak measurement.”

Stephen J. Benkovic, Pennsylvania State University, PA
“For his research contributions in the field of bioorganic chemistry, which have changed our understanding of how enzymes function and advanced the identification of targets and strategies for drug design.”

Esther M. Conwell, University of Rochester, NY
“For her broad contributions to understanding electron and hole transport in semiconducting materials, which helped to enable commercial applications of semiconductor and organic electronic devices, and for extending her analysis to studying the electronic properties of DNA.”

Marye Anne Fox, University of California San Diego, CA
“For her research contributions in the areas of organic photochemistry and electrochemistry and for enhancing our understanding of excited-state and charge-transfer processes with interdisciplinary applications in material science, solar energy conversion, and environmental chemistry.”

Susan L. Lindquist, Whitehead Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MA
“For her studies of protein folding, demonstrating that alternative protein conformations and aggregations can have profound and unexpected biological influences, facilitating insights in fields as wide-ranging as human disease, evolution, and biomaterials.”

Mortimer Mishkin, National Institutes of Health, MD
“For his contributions to understanding the neural basis of perception and memory in primates, notably the delineation of sensory neocortical processing systems especially for vision, audition, and somatic sensation, and the organization of memory systems in the brain.”

David B. Mumford, Brown University, RI
“For his contributions to the field of mathematics, which fundamentally changed algebraic geometry, and for connecting mathematics to other disciplines such as computer vision and neurobiology.”

Stanley B. Prusiner, University of California San Francisco, CA
“For his discovery of prions, the causative agent of bovine spongiform encephalopathy and other related neurodegenerative diseases, and his continuing efforts to develop effective methods for detecting and treating prion diseases.”

Warren M. Washington, National Center for Atmospheric Research, CO
“For his development and use of global climate models to understand climate and explain the role of human activities and natural processes in the Earth’s climate system, and for his work to support a diverse science and engineering workforce.”

Amnon Yariv, California Institute of Technology, CA
“For foundational contributions to photonics and quantum electronics, including his demonstration of the semiconductor distributed feedback laser that underpins today’s high-speed optical fiber communications.”

National Medal of Technology and Innovation

Individuals

Harry W. Coover, Eastman Chemical Company, TN
“For his invention of cyanoacrylates—novel adhesives known widely to consumers as ‘super glues’—which today play significant roles in medicine and industry.”

Helen M. Free, Miles Laboratories, IN
“For her seminal contributions to diagnostic chemistry through development of dip-and-read urinalysis, which gave rise to a technological revolution in convenient, reliable, point-of-care tests and patient self-monitoring.”

Steven J. Sasson, Eastman Kodak Company, NY
“For the invention of the digital camera, which has revolutionized the way images are captured, stored, and shared, creating new opportunities in commerce, education, and global communication.”

Team

Federico Faggin,
Marcian E. Hoff Jr., Stanley Mazor; Intel Corporation, CA
“For the conception, design and application of the first microprocessor, which was commercially adopted and became the universal building block of digital electronic systems, significantly impacting the global economy and people’s day-to-day lives.”

Scientists say they have taken a big step toward displaying live video in three dimensions — a technology far beyond 3-D movies and more like the Star Wars movie scene where a ghostly Princess Leia image pleads, “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

Researchers at Arizona State University and at MIT are hard at work trying to make holographic television a reality. While it is many years off, the holographic video technology right now is more like a slide show with a two second delay between slides and it lacks full 306-degree movement. Both of those elements need to be improved upon before holographic TV becomes the living room standard.

Citizen scientists Chris and Helen Colvin from Ames, Iowa, and Daniel Gebhardt from Mainz, Germany participate in Einstein@Home, a distributed computing program that involves a quarter of a million volunteers worldwide.

They donated their idle computer time to analyze data gathered by the world’s largest and most sensitive radio telescope, the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. Without even realizing it they discovered a fast rotating pulsar.

The citizen scientists remotely join National Science Foundation’s Lisa-Joy Zgorski along with Einstein@Home director Bruce Allen and Cornell astronomer and Arecibo researcher Jim Cordes for a lengthy (38:47) discussion. Their findings are published in the online journal Science Express.

The Imagine Cup, now in its eighth year, encourages high school and university students around the world to develop software aiming to solve global problems.

Team Skeek from Thailand took home the top prize for software design for creating a program that translates text into sign language using speech and facial recognition. Their application eyeFeel lets hearing impaired people communicate using a visual augmented reality environment.

Team Skeek Wins Top Prize at Imagine Cup, photo courtesy of Microsoft

SmarterME from Taiwan won the embedded development category with a device that targets the biggest energy-suckers in the home. The application lets homeowners see the appliances that use the most power and raise the electric bill.

By Implication from the Philippines won in game design for an X-Box enabled game that allows players to perform human intelligence tasks and gets young people interested in volunteering. It uses an X-Box controller and social media to encourage youth to help battle some of the worlds biggest problems, ranging from poverty to environmental disasters.

The game Wildfire was inspired byTyphoon Ketsana, a devastating storm that ravaged the island nation.

The winning team in each of the five categories took home $25,000. The other winners were:

• WeiQiu Wen from China, IT Challenge
• Mirror Vita from Taiwan, Digital Media
• Jigga-Dongxi from Taiwan, Envisioning 2020 Award
• Xormis from Jamaica, Interoperability Award
• Wanna Be Alice from Korea, Next Generation Web Award
• Team Note-Taker from the United States, Touch and Tablet Accessibility Award
• Beastware from the United States, Windows Phone 7 Rockstar Award
• Rhea from Poland, Internet Explorer 8 Award

The federal agencies submitted their budget requests to Congress this week, marking a big moment for all things science. According to preliminary reports about $148 billion of the Presidents full $3.8 trillion budget is heading for scientific research programs.

Photo courtesy of Brookhaven National Laboratory

Visualization of a river bed created using VisTrails, a system developed by University of Utah computer scientists Photo by: Juliana Freire and Claudio Silva, University of Utah

A two-year experiment to build a framework to analyze the massive amount of data scientists are collecting will push research to better understand our planet, our bodies and the limits of the Internet.

The National Science Foundation initiative called Cluster Exploratory or the CLuE program is a partnership between I.B.M. and Google to put scientists to work solving the problem of how to deal with so much information.

The answer? Cloud computing. Using virtual locations online to cope with the large data stream will allow science to answer some big and complex questions.

Top 8 in the Science Cloud:

Sloan Digital Sky Survey–obtained deep, multi-color images covering more than a quarter of the sky and created 3-dimensional maps containing more than 930,000 galaxies and more than 120,000 quasars.

Visible Human–is an anatomical data set licensed from the National Library of Medicine, Visible Human Project.

IRIS Seismology Database–allows you to monitor global earthquakes in near real-time, visit seismic stations around the world, and search the web for earthquake or region-related information.

Protein Data Bank–contains information about experimentally-determined structures of proteins, nucleic acids, and complex assemblies.

Linguistic Data Consortium–supports language-related education, research and technology development by creating and sharing linguistic resources.

TerraFly–View images and data anywhere in the United States and in much of the World.

Large Synoptic Survey Telescope–A large aperture, wide field survey telescope and 3200 Megapixel camera to image faint astronomical objects across the sky.

Open Topography–provides integrated access to high-resolution topographic data and web-based processing tools as well as enables its user community to share knowledge, resources and build science collaborations.

When the ants go marching two by two, pay attention to what they are doing. Scientists are. And they are discovering clever ways to improve cyber security just by mimicking the behavior of ants.

The foraging insects use something called swarm intelligence to efficiently locate and gather food. Computer scientists are applying this behavior to computer networks to find viruses, worms and other electronic threats.

Story written and produced by Michelle Ma

Just as we have to monitor our own health, now we have to be more aware of our computer’s health. While high cholesterol and blood pressure aren’t issues for our machines, keeping them free of viruses and worms are.

A new piece of malware, known as the Conficker worm, that has been worming its way into millions of computers for the better part of a year is self-replicating–just like a human virus. And, it is raising new security concerns from experts in law enforcment, science and government.

It’s time for a new sub-discipline of computer science–computer virology.

To mark the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, Google Earth users can now search the moon.

Just over a year old, the Apple iTunes App Store is churning out–or rather independent developers are–applications to calculate tips, find restaurants and even play countless games. But there is little for the science-interested smart phone users.

Oh sure, among the tens of thousands of applications currently available there are a handful of sci apps but relatively few. The subject doesn’t even merit its own category.

But several lists have been generated, touting the few useful science applications currently available.

And, we’ve tried to separate the intelligent from the app crap.

Listen here.

A few Select SciApps:
Atoms in a Box
Molecules
EleMints
Starmap
Formul8
Genetic Decoder
Get All the Science
The Extraordinaires

The Extraordinaires–on-demand volunteering for citizen scientists

Story written and produced by Michelle Ma

Scientists at the University of California are developing a way for the public to contribute data to research projects using a ubiquitous sensing device – the smart phone. This is a great way to collect data in weeks that would otherwise take years.

It’s called participatory sensing and could be a new wave of citizens helping science.

For 35 years, the Rubik’s Cube has been puzzling people and teaching science. Starting with its inventor, Erno Rubik, first used his “magic cube” to demonstrate three-dimensional design to his architecture students.

Now mathematicians across the world are employing the brightly-colored plastic puzzle to demonstrate algebraic theories to high school students and even use the cube as a model for distributed computing.

Story written and produced by: Lee Fehrenbacher.

Listen here.

No one wants to hear that scientific journals fall prey to unscrupulous scientists who manufacture data or worse whole papers. And sometimes they even are the victims of hoaxes–even some conducted in the name of science.

Philip Davis and Kent Anderson pulled a fast one on an open access journal recently by submitting a paper that was entirely written by a computer program. Even though it made no logical sense the journal accepted the paper for publication, igniting a controversy and forcing and editor out of a job.

Summer is no time for idle minds. About 70 Georgia girls are getting a crash course in crime scene investigation, astronomy, dinosaurs and chemistry, neuroscience, computer science and mathematics.

The goal of the Women in the Sciences summer camp is to interest young women in pursuing careers in science.

Other summer science camps for girls.

Sally Ride Summer Camp

Summer Days Math and Science Camp

Girls and Science Summer Camp (GAS)

Girl Start

The four-day World Science Festival sated the minds of New Yorkers (or anyone in the vicinity) who attended the forty-plus events sponsored by the organization trying to examine the intersection of art and science.

REALscience correspondent Richard Romano tasted all the festival had to offer (minus the funnel cakes.)

Photo: Dr. Harold Varmus, interviewed by New York City high school student, by World Science Festival

Astronomers are looking for life on planets orbiting red dwarf stars because they are the most common in our neck of the universal woods. But new research from University of Washington is defining what is habitable using a new line of thinking.

In order to sustain life a planet must have liquid water. But a stable climate and tectonic activity are proving to be crucial as well.

Dr. Rory Barnes and his team used computer models to determine that gravitational forces acting on red dwarf stars makes most of the planets–even those believed to have liquid water–impossible for supporting life. Their work appears in a newly published paper in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

But why? Listen here.

Photo: Extrasolar planet Gliese 581d, courtesy of European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern
Hemisphere.

In a move to take science from the lab and place it in the public square, the World Science Festival is about to start its second year of inciting curiosity.

REALscience talked with organizer and physicist Brian Greene to hear what we can expect at this year’s festival.

Photo: Physicist and Co-Founder Brian Greene
Credit: Suzie Horgan for World Science Festival

Listen here.

Buy Tickets (if you are in the New York City area.)

REALscience correspondent Richard Romano will have a full report from the festival next week.

Festival highlights:
Opening Gala to celebrate E.O. Wilson’s 80th Birthday.

Pioneers in Science, a discussion with Harold Varmus and Sylvia Earle led by New York City high school students.

Transparent Brain, a neurological exploration of how close we are to reading the mind of others.

Watching Wilson and Watson, actress Anna Deavere Smith’s trip down the rabbit hole and into the minds of these two mega scientists.

Notes & Neurons, a musical adventure with Bobby McFerrin (of Don’t Worry, Be Happy fame.)

World Science Festival Street Fair, an all-day outdoor science fair with the Math Midway, Discovery Labs, CSI, and much, much more.

For 10 years over 5 million computer users from all over the world have been participating in a giant science experiment to Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence or SETI. The approach uses radio telescopes to listen for narrow-bandwidth radio signals from space. Narrow-band signals do not occur naturally and would indicate intelligent life somewhere in the universe.

But so far, there is no sign of E.T. Based on the Drake equation in 2004, astronomer Seth Shostack said an alien signal could reach Earth somewhere between 2020 and 2025.

You can join the search for aliens, monitor climate change and participate in other large-scale distributed computer projects by donating your unused computer processing time to collect data. Download BOINC here to get started.

See streaming video of SETI@home 10th Anniversary here.

Using brain waves to communicate sounds a lot like science fiction but it might be the answer for people with communication disorders.

In early April, Adam Wilson posted a status update on his Twitter feed using only his mind.

Scientists at Georgia Tech in Atlanta are trying to set the movements of fish and ants to music. If they’re successful, the results could help both humans and animals live richer lives.

Scientists are worried that the Internet is becoming a clogged superhighway, complete with bottlenecks where information seems to disappear.

These electronic misfires are called Internet black holes. And, they seem to be a result of limited routing architecture.

But a team at University of California, San Diego is trying to uncover the hidden shape of the overall network to help open up the information arteries that get information across the globe in just a few seconds.

A new math model is based on the 1990s party game, Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, which uses a sociology theory called the “small-world” paradigm.

While that team tries to understand the structure of the Internet, a team at University of Washington is mapping the black holes as they appear.

After a very private battle with cancer best-selling author Michael Crichton died in Los Angeles. The man who made a career of making scientists perpetually angry could not outwit a devastating disease.

He opened the minds of hundreds of millions of readers around the world to scientific possibilities. Unfortunately his what ifs were enough to terrorize and tantalize audiences.

But his nuggets of scientific truth were layered with intriguing fiction that often blurred the lines between the two. And that is what angered the scientific research community.

But I suspect even his most vocal critics will miss the fascinating machinations of this creative mind.

Thousands of spinal cord injuries and disease could disappear overnight if doctors and scientists could figure out how to turn some genes off and others on.

This medical mystery is getting a boost from the institute funded by billionaire Paul Allen. Today, the mouse spinal cord atlas was unveiled in Washington D.C. and it will provide a road map for neuroscientists asking specific questions related to the brain.

Animals roam across vast expanses, criss-crossing the world. And, now people can follow many different species fitted with satellite tags and tracked online using applications like Google Maps.

Peregrine Falcons

Porcupine Caribou Herd

Narwhals

Sea Turtles