Month: May 2010

As technological skills become synonymous with literacy, it is imperative that students learn to use emerging real-time technologies for research, experimentation, problem-solving, collaboration and creativity. Tech-savvy teachers are already taking advantage of these very technologies to build their own skills and lesson plans.

Young digital natives are training their brains for technological expertise but are not developing neural networks that modulate the ability to maintain eye contact during a conversation, recognize non-verbal cues, and perceive and convey empathy.

Even with cheap printed books, you can tell that someone proofed every page. With many e-books, they’ve clearly just been run through a converter with no proofing whatsoever.

We realize that removing features and support is not easy, but with this spring cleaning done, we’ve laid the groundwork for more Reader improvements down the line.

We report the design, synthesis, and assembly of the 1.08-Mbp Mycoplasma mycoides JCVI-syn1.0 genome starting from digitized genome sequence information and its transplantation into a Mycoplasma capricolum recipient cell to create new Mycoplasma mycoides cells that are controlled only by the synthetic chromosome. The only DNA in the cells is the designed synthetic DNA sequence, including “watermark” sequences and other designed gene deletions and polymorphisms, and mutations acquired during the building process. The new cells have expected phenotypic properties and are capable of continuous self-replication.

While I am a Luddite who fears powerful folks sashaying with hubris, I cannot help but wonder:
Which came closer to preventing Dr. Venter from venturing this far?

At that time, Bent Stumpe was an electronics engineer, newly recruited to work on developments for the SPS Central Control room. One of the things his supervisor asked him to build as soon as possible was a device to control a pointer on a screen, also called a tracker ball.

Over and over again, I find that people’s mental model of who can see what doesn’t match up with reality. People think “everyone” includes everyone who searches for them on Facebook. They never imagine that “everyone” includes every third party sucking up data for goddess only knows what purpose. They think that if they lock down everything in the settings that they see, that they’re completely locked down. They don’t get that their friends lists, interests, likes, primary photo, affiliations, and other content is publicly accessible.