Paul's Blog

Those folks up in the cold Canadian north have some scientists at Blueprint, led by Dr. Christopher Hogue at Mount Sinai Hospital's Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute, who have created a new symbolic language called OntoGlyphs.

This new collection of glyphs has 34 functional, 25 binding, and 24 location categories populated with Gene Ontology (GO) terms. It appears that with this awesome new visual language, scientists of the world will now be able to more quickly identify the attributes of proteins, particularly those in the BIND database.



About The Blueprint Initiative
The Blueprint Initiative is a research program of the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute (SLRI) at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. Blueprint has recently opened an affiliated node in Singapore. Led by principal investigator Dr. Christopher Hogue, Blueprint develops, hosts, and maintains public biological databases and bioinformatics software tools such as BIND, SeqHound, and Distributed Folding. For more information on Blueprint, visit www.blueprint.org.

[Via: Bioinformatics]

It looks like Dominique Mottas, an avant-gare entrepeneur and car enthusiast, created something great when - in the late 80's - decided to invest in some technological and biotech fields. With the many projects that he had, he'd invested in some designs of special sports cars. What he found was result was very interesting by it's design, but not sufficiently innovative from a technology perspective. So, back to the drawning board they went... during the process of searching for an idea to satisfy a customer's requires, he decided to do something radical: reinvent the wheel!

So, there's this guy, who decided to shove an RFID sensor into his hand and plans on wiring up his house and car with sensors that will allow all sorts of wireless-fairie magic to occur when he waves his new "wrist-wand" around. Well, he actually had a doctor implant it, but, that's just not a sensational first line to a story.

ROBART III uses "head-mounted sensors, including two Polaroid sonar transducers, a Banner near-infrared proximity sensor, an AM Sensors microwave motion detector, and a video surveillance camera" to spot infiltrators.

Last month, National Geographic reported that some engineers at the University of Pennsylvania had plans to develop and create a cloaking device with similar appeal to that of what can be found in almost any Star Trek episode. But their's isn't going to be quite as fancy - at least not yet.

They've got their plans for how they can create a device which will make items "nearly invisible to the observer." So, I'm guessing this means that it'll be a little more like the cloaking system that the "Preditor's" use? Maybe not...

The folks at the U of Penn say that their contrivance functions causing objects to appear so small that it almost disappears, by preventing light from bouncing off of the surface of the object. Supposedly, the proposed device would not require peripherals such as antennas or computer networks, and would reduce object visibility no matter what angle it is viewed.

The concept is based on a "plasmonic cover," meaning it can prevent light from scattering; the light bounces off of an object and makes it invisible to an observer. The cover stops light from scattering by resonating at the same frequency as the light striking it. If such a device could cope with different wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation (including visible light), in theory, the object would vanish into thin air.

So, look out you ID4, Preditor, Alien beings: We people here on Earth can disappear, too! The cool thing? These people don't live too far from me... that either means that there's something wrong with the water that comes out of the Schulkyl river, or it's making brains work better!

Via: [National Geographic]

Physicists have been scouring the galaxy to find further signs of life and the meaning of it. The theory that there is other intelligent life in other galaxies and planets has been a discussion for scientists and sci-fi buffs, everywhere. Whether or not you subscribe to this theory or another more spirtual one, there are some physicists that believe that a recent discovery of two look-alke galaxies may, indeed, move us one step closer to the scientific theory.

The question remains: could two lookalike galaxies, with marginally a hair's worth of difference apart in the night sky, herald a revolution in our understanding of fundamental physics?

Some physicists believe that the two galaxies are the same - its image has been split into two, they maintain, by a "cosmic string"; a San Andreas Fault in the very fabric of space and time.

If this interpretation is correct, then CSL-1 - the name of the curious double galaxy - is the first concrete evidence for "superstring theory": the best candidate for a "theory of everything", which attempts to encapsulate all the phenomena of nature in one neat set of equations.

Via: [Physics.org]

You know, you'd swear I'm a Windows/Microsoft hating, Mac Bigot, but the truth be told, I do all of my work on Windows systems. That includes my digital studio recording, video editing, and all of my Websites. OK, with that said...

If you want to see a truly technologically fancinating digital camera, or at least the photographs from said camera, you really need to visit GigaPixl.ORG. You can do a little people watching (or Pixel-watching, if you prefer), where four-gigapixel images are a reality: but no reality you'll be able to buy soon, or would want to.

Physicist Graham Flint has been working on an ultra-high-resolution portrait of America, creating a series of truly enormous gigapixel images taken with a camera made up of decommissioned Cold War hardware. Pieces of salvaged parts of spy planes and nuclear reactors have combined to create a camera capable of capturing an astonishing 4 gigapixels of detail.

Physics Professor Ronald L. Mallett, at the University of Connecticut, has created the blueprints for a true "time machine". The machine, which uses circulating beams of light, is currently being built.

You truly have to read the report to get a good understanding of what he's talking about (and by "understanding" I mean be completely confused or at least question his sanity - kidding!), but I think the most important thing to remember is that people who want to do this are completely nuts! ;) No, seriously, it's intriging but complicated and currently a bit difficult to phathom the requirements for what we've seen in the movies - let alone the science of understanding of what's actually going on with time.

My suggestion is that you also check out the comments people have had on digg.com's site. It's more interesting, to me, to hear what directions people go with their opinions. Obviously there are people, like me, that enjoy hearing themselves talk... so, feel amused!

But, if I could go back... I wouldn't have eaten that burrito for lunch... ;)

Via: [Digg]