The weekly newsletter for Fed2 by ibgames

EARTHDATE: October 31, 2010

Official News page 11


WINDING DOWN

An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net and technology news
by Alan Lenton

Something of a polyglot issue this week, including some material on stuff that's not really high-tech. But the way I look at it is, if you only read about things that already interest you, then you will never find out about things that might also interest you. Well that's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it!

So, here goes...


Shorts:

I mentioned the problems with supplies of rare earth elements a few issues back, so I don't want to go through it again, but those of you interested might like to take a look at a recent edition of the EE|Times which has a useful analysis of the problems. Included in the article is an interesting breakdown of what rare earths a modern car uses. I have to confess that I was surprised at how many different rare earths were involved in its production. I wonder how many of these will be replaced by nano-materials in the long run?
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4210064/Rare-earth-supply-chain--
Industry-s-common-cause?cid=NL_EETimesDaily

How do you make a robot hand that can pick things up? It's not easy, because the human hand is an amazing piece of engineering. In a classic example of lateral thinking researchers at Cornell University, the University of Chicago, and iRobot have found a completely different solution - using coffee grounds!

Ground coffee is an example of a class of granules that flow like a liquid when there is little pressure, but act like a solid under reduced pressure. The researchers utilized this facility, together with a balloon, to design an entirely new type of robot gripper! The idea is very simple - the balloon full of coffee grounds 'flows' round the object to be picked up, then the air is pumped out of the balloon and the grounds solidify (just like they do in vacuum packs on the supermarket shelves), and the object can be picked up!

One caveat though, if you want to build your own robot arm, use good quality coffee, then if there is any left over you can make yourself a nice cup of coffee!
http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-10-robotic-gripper-coffee-balloons.html

R.I.P Sony Walkman (July 1979 - October 2010). Sony is no longer making tape-based Walkman personal portable players. The Walkman has an important place in history, since it marked the start of the move from communal listening to music to personal listening to music. As such it's got a lot to answer for! Personally, I thought it had been discontinued years ago, so did most other people I asked, but apparently it survived until now.
http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-10-walkman-obit-portable-player.html

Shivery thought for all of us. Last weekend the US Airforce lost control of a ninth of its nuclear missiles. That's 50 nuclear armed missiles capable of reaching a target anywhere on the planet. The missiles went to 'Launch Facilities Down' status, which means that no one could communicate with the missiles, and some of the security facilities, such as security and warhead separation alarms were also offline.

Not good, especially when you consider that these missiles date back to the 1970s, and that the USAF expects to keep them in service until 2040.
http://gizmodo.com/5674028/one+ninth-of-us-nuclear-intercontinental-missiles-
down-last-saturday


Homework:

Those of you who, like me, have an interest in anthropology might like to take a look at a new book about the controversy stirred up by Margaret Mead's work on ethnography - especially the classic 'Coming of Age in Samoa'. The new book is by Samoan specialist Paul Shankman of the University of Colorado at Boulder, and it's called 'The Trashing of Margaret Mead: Anatomy of an Anthropological Controversy', which gives some idea of the viciousness of the debate.

Margaret Mead's studies had a great deal of influence on the counter culture of the '60's, and the early feminist movement, especially the description of the sexual mores of young Samoans. It also generated a lot of hostility from those who objected to pre-marital sex. It also stirred up the nature v. nurture debate with its implication that sexual behavior is learned, making Mead a prime target for evolutionary psychologists and behavioral geneticists.

I thought 'Coming of Age' was absolutely fascinating and a classic piece of fieldwork when I read it. Paul Shankman's account of the whole controversy sounds, from the reviews, like it's well worth a read, and it's going on my Amazon wish list when I finish the copy for this issue of Winding Down!
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=margaret-meads-
bashers-owe-her-an-a-2010-10-18&sc=CAT_SP_20101025

And now we move from Samoan teenagers to a study on dead fish... Those of you interested in statistical methods may like to read a cautionary piece in the 'Journal of Serendipitous and Unexpected Results' called 'Neural Correlates of Interspecies Perspective Taking in the Post-Mortem Atlantic Salmon: An Argument For Proper Multiple Comparisons Correction'.

Yes, I was a bit stunned by the title too! Actually, it's a useful cautionary tale about how you can use statistics to find scientifically 'valid' correlations that are, in fact, random correlations. In this case they used fMRI scanners to produce correlations for 'activity' in the brains of dead salmon when they were shown the same social perspective-taking task as a group of humans.

OK, OK, like me, you can probably think of a few people for whom this is probably an accurate comparison! However, the absurdity of 'proving' that dead fish have meaningful brain activity is easy to see in this case, but similar correlations are often produced in other fields, including data mining (see, there is a link to techie stuff in this piece). In fact the bigger the data set you are mining, the more likely you are to get spurious results as well as meaningful ones. Rather worrying when you consider that data mining of large sets is now starting to become commonplace as the cost of gathering the data and processing it has dropped significantly in the last few years.
http://www.jsur.org/v1n1p1

And while we are on the subject of experiments, there is some rather worrying news just out about clinical trials. The approved way of doing clinical trials of drugs is double blind trials, which basically mean that a random sample is taken and divided into two matched groups, half of whom are given the drug and half of whom are given an identical seeming pill which is actually a placebo - an inert substance that doesn't do anything. Neither the doctors administering the drug, nor the patients taking it know whether the pill they are taking is the drug or the placebo.

The first crack in the system came a few years ago when it was realized that men and women could have different results from the same drug. Women are usually excluded from clinical trials on the assumption that their monthly cycle will screw up the results. That was bad enough, but now a study of 167 trials published in peer-reviewed journals in 2008 and 2009 has pointed out that there is no control to ensure that the placebo is truly neutral.

To figure out the implications, think of what would happen in a diabetes drug trial if the placebo happened to contain a significant amount of sugar? Basically, this is the first time anyone has pointed out that the composition of the placebo - which is not even mentioned in 92% of the reports studied - can distort the outcome of the trial. This isn't anything to do with fraud. It's simply something no one even thought about before. The problem is, though, that it potentially invalidates most clinical trials carried out so far.

I've no idea what the regulators and drug companies are going to do about this, but I do know that as a diabetic, I find myself looking at the medication I'm taking with some trepidation...
http://www.annals.org/content/153/8/532.abstract

This bit really does have something to do with tech as we know it! Most of you will have heard of quantum computers, but I bet most of you don't have the foggiest idea what it is about. No - 'sometimes you get the correct answer, sometimes you don't' - is not what quantum computing is about. It's much more sophisticated than that, but I've finally found an explanation that is (relatively) easy to understand. So, if you really want to know, point your browser at the URL.
http://www.silicon.com/management/ceo-essentials/2010/10/25/quantum-
computing-cheat-sheet-39746192/

And finally in this section, this week's recommended TED video. It's historian and diplomat Joseph Nye giving a talk on global power shifts - not just those between the USA and China, but also 'soft' power and the diffusion of power through the new technologies. An interesting analysis.
http://www.ted.com/talks/joseph_nye_on_global_power_shifts.html


Geek Toys:

OK - here's a little toy I think you will enjoy playing with, though you may have a little difficulty fitting it into the drive to park it. It's the Thyssen/Krupp version of a back hoe. In fact, it's got to be the world's biggest back hoe! It doesn't move along very fast - less than a kilometer/hour, but boy can it dig. I think this featured in a slide show I recommended a few months ago, but this picture of it crossing a road gives a much better idea of its sheer scale.

Capable, I'd guess, of ripping up a whole state's worth of fibre optics with a single scoop of its bucket wheel...
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap101024.html

And for those of my readers who prefer the dark side, here is a little something to keep you going. Christie's auction house is selling an original Darth Vader costume from the Star Wars movie franchise. While it is expected to sell for an eye watering US$250,000 or more, I don't doubt that a true fan will be able to use the force to stop other putative bidders from raising their hand (or the equivalent tentacle) to force up the price!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101027/ap_on_en_mo/eu_britain_darth_vader


Scanner:

Black Fire: De-orbiting spysats during the Cold War
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1715/1

DSL vendors closing in on 1Gbps
http://www.infoworld.com/d/networking/dsl-vendors-closing-in-1gbps-943?source=IFWNLE_nlt_networking_2010-10-26

Judge tosses lawsuit from copyright troll
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/26/righthaven_complaint_dismissed/

US builds net privacy brains trust
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/26/internet_privacy/

Climate Heretic: Judith Curry turns on her colleagues
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=climate-heretic&sc=WR_20101027

Amid criticism, WikiLeaks shifts focus
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20020996-281.html?tag=nl.e703

Marijuana web names snapped up, in case of legalization
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/28/us/28pot.html?_r=3


Acknowledgements

Thanks to readers Barb, Fi, Jason, and to Slashdot's daily newsletter for drawing my attention to material used in this issue.

Please send suggestions for stories to alan@ibgames.com and include the words Winding Down in the subject line, unless you want your deathless prose gobbled up by my voracious Spamato spam filter...

Alan Lenton
alan@ibgames.com
31 October, 2010

Alan Lenton is an on-line games designer, programmer and sociologist, the order of which depends on what he is currently working on! His web site is at http://www.ibgames.net/alan.

Past issues of Winding Down can be found at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/winding/index.html.


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