ArsTechnica reports that NASA’s JPL scientists have identified optimal wind farm locations by analyzing eight years of global satellite data. And I missed this announcement: oil baron T. Boone Pickens (personal networth: $2.7bn) is investing $12 billion in a wind farm in west Texas. True to Texas mythology, it will be the largest in the world when completed, and it will start generating power in three years.
Newsweek compares the Pickens campaign with that of another Texan, H. Ross Perot in 1992. After all, oil prices and imports is not a headliner for either Sen. Barack Obama or Sen. John McCain, the presumed D and R presidential candidates. And Congress and the President aren’t talking about it either.
Pickens — who kicked off his $58 million campaign with an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal — thinks spending $700 billion annually on foreign oil — to import about 70% of the oil we use — is “dangerous, and it threatens the future of our nation.” He has done a complete about face on this topic (if he were a politician, someone would accuse him of flip-flopping) — in 2005, he pooh-pooed the idea of wind-based energy: Read the rest of this entry »
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Does this help explain learning styles?
A US study of 20 non-musicians and 20 musical conductors found both groups diverted brain activity away from visual areas during listening tasks.
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Data on broadband penetration from the Pew Internet & American Life Project is not as optimistic as that from Park Associates. Last week, Park Associates said 42% of US households have broadband access. Pew says that 39% of urban and suburban adults (not households) have broadband at home, compared with 24% of rural adults, for a total of 36% of all adults.
"Non-Internet users" accounted for 38% of the rural Americans interviewed and 30% of the suburban/urban adults. In rural areas, 29% connected to the Internet with dialup, compared with 21% of suburban/urban adults.
The report also says that cable and DSL "split" the broadband market share. However, access to broadband is limited in rural areas. However, the difference between rural and urban/suburban areas is not as great in the workplace as it is in the home.
Rural Internet users are less likely to make a reservation, bank online, peruse online classified ads or read a blog than their non-rural counterparts. However, rural adults are more likely to take an online class for credit.
Methodology: "[R]espondents are categorized as ‘rural’ if they reside
in a non-metropolitan statistical area (MSA) county. Respondents are
categorized as ’suburban’ if they reside in any portion
of an MSA county that is not in a central city. Respondents are
categorized as ‘urban’ if
they reside within a central city of an MSA."
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Monsanto is shelving its genetically modified wheat due to consumer reluctance to embrace the product. CBC reports that those most opposed live in countries that buy wheat from Canada.
Thus ends eight years of research into the latest “frankenfood.” Monsanto sought to create a crop that was resistant to disease by adding genes from soil bacteria, a petunia plant and a cauliflower virus. This is far cry from the genetic manipulation pioneered by Mendel in the mid-1800s.
Links: CBC (11 May); Seattle Times (11 May)
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The Mac has long been the dominant platform in graphic arts and now digital movie-making. A research survey indicates that approximately 30% of life scientists now use the Mac, suggesting the platform is on a comeback in science.
This is a different sub-set of science than that illustrated by the Virginia Tech super-computer, based on networked G5s. Not suprisingly, Apple has a web site devoted to science successes.
Links: ADTmag.com (6 Apr)
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It started as an effort to circumvent the lag time associated with using U.S. Department of Energy computers, according to Dr. Srindhi Varadarajan of Virginia Tech’s Terascale Computing Facility, speaking at the O’Reilly Mac OS X Conference.
The project was to build an academic supercomputer. Budget contraints caused him to envision a linked system of off-the-shelf 64-bit processors, bound together with an off-the-shelf backbone.
His first call was to Dell. Negotiations for 64-bit Intel Itanium 2 processors fell through. And IBM said that its PowerPC 970 wouldn’t be available until 2004. Quotes of $9 million to $11 million, well over budget, eliminated AMD and HP.
The unlikely project savior appeared in June, when Apple announced the G5. Three days later, Varadarajan was on the phone with Apple and the next day, on a plane to Cupertino.
When Apple representatives asked Varadarajan how long he’d been using Macs, the answer was “never.” He said, “I’m probably one of the few people who came to the platform by reading the kernel manual.”
Read the rest of this entry »
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