Take a break (photographs by Matthias Klose)

“The breaks are the best part of the day” – this was the first line of a hit song in the 1970s, reflecting the work ethic in Germany of that time. In most companies, there are dedicated areas for those small breaks from routine – where you can drink a coffee standing, smoke a quick cigarette or have a quick chat. These areas are rooms that you might pass through without really taking any notice of them. And their function is the meaning: creating free space for people who want to switch off their work batteries and recharge for a moment. Matthias Klose has photographed these oases in the world of work. His pictures are devoid of people – intentionally so. What interests him is the room as he finds it and in which he changes nothing. For him, authenticity is important. Without being distracted by people, the rooms exhibit an aesthetic quality of their very own. Man is indirectly present in Klose’s pictures via the traces of the private mise-en-scène of the room. The gaze of the beholder alights on the structure of the room, on its contents, and starts to explore it on the look-out for characteristic features. And what he finds ranges from the amusing to the absurd. “Some rooms,” Matthias Klose says, “ could have relocated to museums without any changes being made.” These rooms are not intended for the public. In only the rarest of cases does the design of such break rooms correspond to the image of the corporations in question. And not every company felt at ease with this obvious contrast – indeed, some subsequently prohibited publication of the photographs. Matthias Klose loves irony, his photographs give us documentary moments with a wink. This is reflected in the pictures and the title of the series „...dann woll'n wir mal wieder...!“ (“That’s it, back to work!”). This was seized 4 u at Deutsche Boerse

posted by Roland at 4/30/2006 01:08:00 PM | links to this post | 0 comments | Listen to this article

Subliminal advertising may work after all

It was a stunt that launched a thousand conspiracy theories. Market researcher James Vicary claimed in 1957 that he could get movie-goers to "drink Coca-Cola" and "eat popcorn" by flashing those messages on the screen for such a short time that viewers were unaware of it. People were outraged, and the practice was banned in the UK, Australia and the US. Vicary later admitted that his study was fabricated, and scientists through the years who have tried to replicate it have largely failed. But now researchers have shown that if the conditions are right, subliminal advertising to promote a brand can be made to work. Johan Karremans at the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands and his colleagues wanted to see if they could subliminally induce volunteers to favour a particular brand of drink, Lipton Ice. For comparison, they chose a brand of mineral water called Spa Rood, as it was deemed to be as well known as Lipton Ice and equally thirst-quenching. The researchers asked 61 volunteers to perform a nonsense task - counting how many times a string of capital Bs was infiltrated by a lower-case b as they flashed up on a screen. The B strings appeared for 300 milliseconds each, and before them, a string of Xs always appeared, flanking a 23-millisecond subliminal message. For the experimental group, the message was "Lipton Ice". Controls saw "Nipeic Tol". When the volunteers had completed this task, they were asked to choose between Lipton Ice and Spa Rood by clicking one of two keys - though they were told this was part of a separate study. They were also asked how likely they would be to order either of these drinks if they were sitting on a terrace, and to rate how thirsty they were. Volunteers who rated themselves as thirsty were more likely to choose Lipton Ice, but only if they had received the subliminal message. In a second study the researchers made half of their 105 volunteers thirsty by giving them a very salty candy before the task. As predicted, among the thirsty, subliminal messaging had an impact. Eighty per cent of thirsty volunteers who had been exposed to the Lipton Ice message chose that product, compared to only 20 per cent of the controls. The thirstier volunteers rated themselves to be, the more likely they were to choose Lipton Ice. Those who were not thirsty were only slightly more likely to pick the iced tea (Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2005.12.2005). "Priming only works when the prime is goal-relevant," says Karremans. The researchers are now planning to study just how long-lasting these effects are. Meanwhile, advertisers have found alternative means of pushing their products. Earlier this month, the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine published a report showing that for each additional hour per day that a child watched television an average of one additional request was made for an advertised product. The effect of the commercials on children lasted up to 20 weeks. This was seized 4 u at New Scientist

posted by Roland at 4/28/2006 07:56:00 PM | links to this post | 1 comments | Listen to this article

Insect eye inspires future vision

An artificial insect eye that could be used in ultra-thin cameras has been developed by scientists in the US. The dimpled eye, contains over 8,500 hexagonal lenses packed into an area the size of a pinhead. The dome-shaped structure, described in the journal Science, is similar to a bee's eye. The researchers, from the University of California, Berkeley, say the work may also shed light on how insects developed such complex, visual systems. "Even though insects start with just a single cell, they grow and create this beautiful optical system by themselves," said Professor Luke Lee, one of the authors on the paper. "I wanted to understand how nature can create layer upon layer of perfectly ordered structures without expensive, fabrication technology," he said. As a result, the team of bioengineers came up with a relatively cheap and easy method for creating the artificial eyes that may in part mimic natural processes. Insect eyes, known as compound eyes, usually consist of hundreds of tiny lens-capped optical units, known as ommatidia. For example, a dragonfly has 30,000 of the structures in each eye. Individual ommatidia guide light through a lens and cone into a channel, known as a rhabdom, which contains light-sensitive cells. These are connected to optical, nerve cells to produce the image. The ommatidia are crammed side by side into bulges that create a wide field of view for the insect. As each unit is orientated in a slightly different direction, the honeycombed eye creates a mosaic image which, although low in resolution, is excellent at detecting movement. The team created the artificial eye by first creating a tiny, reusable mould with 8,700 indentations. The pock-marked hemisphere was then filled with an epoxy resin that reacts when exposed to ultraviolet light to create a harder material with different chemical properties. After being baked at a low temperature to set the material it can be extracted from the mould. Read more... This was seized 4 u at BBC News

posted by steve at 4/28/2006 03:32:00 PM | links to this post | 0 comments | Listen to this article

Beat Streuli's photographs

When studying Beat Streuli's photographs, one or two viewers might be tempted to think "I could do that, too." Or, to put it a little more bluntly: "Why are these photographs hanging on the wall there supposed to be so much better than my own snapshots?" Streuli is not surprised by such responses. He is not afraid of contact with the broader public. And one of the things he particularly likes about photography is that, unlike media which rely on complex technology, it is easy to use and easy to view. Millions of hobby photographers cannot be wrong. But what exactly are the photographs hanging there on the wall? Most of them are of people, shots Streuli has taken over the past ten years on the shopping streets of the world’s big cities: London, Tokyo, New York, Sydney, etc. Contemporary social portraits, a heterogeneous mix of people, repeatedly featuring the local urban youth. The photos look as if they have been staged, but actually they have not. Streuli does not approve of working with models, preferring to use a telephoto lens instead. Although he is not really hidden, he does work from a distance. And people do not notice that they are being photographed. Admittedly there is an element of voyeurism involved here. The camera allows us an insight into other people's lives – specifically because Streuli only presses the shutter release when the people think no-one is looking at them. To be more precise, when they let the mask of their public persona slip in order to be alone with themselves for a moment. The photographer is fascinated by the thrill of the quotidien. And in his portrait work he endeavors to find it in the tension between public anonymity and complete self-absorption. Nothing is more interesting than reality, or so Streuli's pictures seem to say. But it would be wrong to think that it is possible to capture this reality simply by taking a picture. "If you hang a real snapshot on the wall, you'll notice the difference," explains Beat Streuli. "Hundreds of thousands of chance elements will get in the way and prevent reality from looking realistic." Indeed, just as the photos are the product of careful reflection, so, too, their presentation is the result of compositional deliberation. Streuli opts for large-format projections, poster work, and video installations to heighten the natural quality of the images. And increasingly frequently, he also exhibits them where he originally took them: on the street. (Deutsche Boerse will be open for the public this saturday as part of the "Nacht der Museen" event.) This was seized 4 u at Deutsche Boerse

posted by Roland at 4/27/2006 12:53:00 PM | links to this post | 0 comments | Listen to this article

The world's Web-savviest nation is Denmark, India & China are closing digital gap

Berlin, Germany (Reuters) -- The digital divide is narrowing as citizens in emerging markets get online via computers and mobile phones, with some regions now on a par with developed nations, a ranking of Web-savvy nations showed on Wednesday. "Encouraging is the apparent narrowing of the digital divide," said the annual study published by U.S. computer company International Business Machines Corp. and the intelligence unit of British magazine The Economist. "This is particularly evident in basic connectivity: emerging markets are providing the vast majority of the world's new phone and Internet connections," the study found. Within China and India, regions such as Shanghai and Bangalore have almost the same level of Internet and mobile phone connections as developed nations, said Peter Korsten, European director at IBM's Institute for Business Value. "This is the first time we see a level playing field between developed and developing nations in terms of connectivity. It's up to governments to take advantage with education and other initiatives," he said. The survey looks beyond basic connections and also studies how the Internet is being used to improve productivity and reduce costs, including online access to public services. "Virtually all countries have improved their scores over the past year. The improvement is greater in the lower tiers of the rankings than at the top. As a result, the distance separating the best from the rest has declined," the study said. The difference between the world's Web-savviest nation Denmark and the least "e-ready" country Azerbaijan remains nevertheless huge, with respective scores of 9.0 and 2.9 out of a possible 10. India and China, including their less developed provinces, scored 4.25 and 4.02, ranking No. 53 and 57 respectively. Switzerland entered the top three, replacing Sweden which dropped to fourth place, while the United States held on to its No. 2 spot. Denmark remained No. 1 in taking advantage of the Internet, both connecting citizens securely over broadband and wireless networks as well as using its near ubiquitous hook-ups for Internet banking and government services such as tax returns. "E-procurement (for public services) is saving Danish businesses 50 million euros ($62.1 million) and taxpayers as much as 150 million euros per year. The rest of Europe is expected to follow Denmark's lead," the study said. Six nations in the top 10 are European, taking advantage of cheaply available broadband offerings and good education. The U.S., Australia, Canada and Hong Kong complete the top 10. In central and eastern Europe, the new European Union member states formed an upper tier while other nations lag far behind. Mobile phone penetration is ubiquitous, but fixed line Internet connections are not widely available, while the business and legal environment is weak. Overall, the region remains well behind the EU, North America and developed markets in Asia Pacific. This was seized 4 u at CNN

posted by Roland at 4/26/2006 10:41:00 PM | links to this post | 0 comments | Listen to this article

World Bank acused to cheat with anti-malaria projects

A group of public health experts has accused the World Bank of publishing false statistics to exaggerate the performance of its anti-malaria projects, and of funding inappropriate treatments against the disease in India. But in a rebuttal the World Bank counters that the accusations include many “inaccuracies and misunderstandings”. It does concede that its past efforts to fight malaria were understaffed and under-funded, but says that its recently amended strategy to fight malaria will function better. The World Bank launched the Roll Back Malaria campaign in 1998 and in 2000 pledged $300-500 million to fight malaria in Africa. But Amir Attaran at the University of Ottawa in Ontario, Canada, and his colleagues claim that the organisation has failed to lend Africa the promised funds and has obscured its allocation of money with “Enron-like accounting”. Attaran, a lawyer and biologist, says that the organisation should not have set a target it could not reach: “They should not have done it unless they had a means of honestly meeting it.” The World Bank admits that it did not reach all of the 2000 funding goals, but says that it had already readjusted its targets when it launched its Global Strategy & Booster Program in 2005. In this new scheme, it hopes to commit $500 million to $1 billion towards fighting malaria with help from partner organisations. The new approach involves a greater emphasis on malaria prevention, according to Suprotik Basu, a public health specialist for the World Bank’s Booster Program for Malaria Control. He says that this includes more emphasis on the distribution of tools such as mosquito netting to keep away the insect that transmits the disease. Attaran and colleagues also accuse the World Bank of downsizing its staff of malaria experts from seven to zero, soon after promising to do more to combat the disease. Read more... This was seized 4 u at The Lancet

posted by Roland at 4/25/2006 09:39:00 PM | links to this post | 0 comments | Listen to this article

Convicted because of digital camera 'fingerprints'

A new forensic technique means many digital photographs can now be traced to the individual cameras that took them. The method works by analysing imperfections in the cameras' light sensors. Jessica Fridrich and colleagues at Binghamton University in New York, US, analysed more than 3000 digital images taken using 11 different models of digital camera. They found that minute flaws in each camera's sensors left their mark on the images, making it possible to link each picture to a particular camera. Inside each camera, a light-sensitive chip called a charge-coupled device (CCD) converts incoming photons into electrons. Each CCD is covered with millions of individual light-sensors. But these individual sensors do not capture light with uniform efficiency and leave a subtle pattern of variation, or "noise", on each digital image. Fridrich's team developed an algorithm that identifies the noise produced by a particular camera's sensor by analysing scores of images taken using it. "No two CCD sensors are alike," Read more... This was seized 4 u at New Scientist

posted by Roland at 4/24/2006 06:43:00 PM | links to this post | 0 comments | Listen to this article

Switch between biological and silicon worlds

Scientists have created a molecular switch that could play a key role in thousands of nanotech applications. The Mol-Switch project successfully developed a demonstrator to prove the principle, despite deep scepticism from specialist colleagues in biotechnology and biophysics. "Frankly, some researchers didn't think what we were attempting was possible because standard descriptions in physics, for example the Stokes equation for viscosity indicated that the system might not work. But viscous forces do not apply at the nano-scale," says Dr Keith Firman, Reader in Molecular Biotechnology at Portsmouth University and coordinator of the Mol-Switch project, funded under the European Commission’s FET (Future and Emerging Technologies) initiative of the IST programme. "However, we got our molecular switch to work." The upshot is that the Mol-Switch project was far more successful than expected. The team's switch works with a number of DNA-based motors and can achieve incredible performance. Specific sensors, which emit electrons, can tell if the biological motor is working, so the switch links the biological world with the silicon world of electronic signals. Here's how it works. The team uses a microfluidics chip that includes a number of channels measured in nano-metres. The novelty of microfluidics is that it can channel liquids in laminar, or predictable, flow. The floor of this channel is peppered with Hall-Effect sensors. The Hall Effect describes how a magnetic field influences an electric current. That influence can be measured to a high degree of accuracy. These measurements link the biological motor with the electronic signals of the silicon world. The biological element of the device starts with a DNA molecule that's fixed to the floor of the microfluidic channel. This strand is held upright, like a string held up by a weather balloon, by anchoring the floating end of the DNA strand to a magnetic bead, itself held up under the influence of magnetism... "The light switch, the button that makes a retractable pen, all these are actuators, and by developing a molecular switch we've created a tiny actuator that could be used in an equally vast number of applications," says Firman. This is particularly important because a nano-scale actuator will be immensely useful. An actuator is a mechanism that supplies and transmits a measured amount of energy for the operation of another mechanism or system. It can be a simple mechanical device, converting various forms of energy to rotating or linear mechanical energy. Or it can convert mechanical action into an electrical signal. It works both ways. The number of potential applications is staggering. They can be used for flow-control valves, pumps, positioning drives, motors, switches, relays and biosensors. The system could be used to develop molecular circuits, or even molecular scale mechanical devices. The potential applications are difficult to predict, but are only limited by the imagination of researchers, such is the versatility of an actuator on this scale. "It could be used as a communicator between the biological and silicon worlds. I could see it providing an interface between muscle and external devices, through its use of ATP, in human implants. Such an application is still 20 or 30 years away," says Firman "It's very exciting and right now we're applying for a patent for the basic concepts." One hugely important application is DNA sequencing, discovering the order of the four DNA-bases, the absolutely fundamental step for genetic research. This is almost a 'bonus' application, a happy side effect of the actuator's operation. The team used the Mol-Switch with time-resolved fluorescence for DNA sequencing. Read more... This was seized 4 u at Information Society Technologies

posted by Roland at 4/24/2006 10:48:00 AM | links to this post | 0 comments | Listen to this article

Jingjing and Chacha - The Great Firewall of China

China has two main methods for censoring the Web. For companies inside its borders, the government uses a broad array of penalties and threats to keep content clean. For Web sites that originate anywhere else in the world, the government has another impressively effective mechanism of control: what techies call the Great Firewall of China. When you use the Internet, it often feels placeless and virtual, but it's not. It runs on real wires that cut through real geographical boundaries. There are three main fiber-optic pipelines in China, giant underground cables that provide Internet access for the public and connect China to the rest of the Internet outside its borders. The Chinese government requires the private-sector companies that run these fiber-optic networks to specially configure "router" switches at the edge of the network, where signals cross into foreign countries. These routers — some of which are made by Cisco Systems, an American firm — serve as China's new censors. If you log onto a computer in downtown Beijing and try to access a Web site hosted on a server in Chicago, your Internet browser sends out a request for that specific Web page. The request travels over one of the Chinese pipelines until it hits the routers at the border, where it is then examined. If the request is for a site that is on the government's blacklist — and there are lots of them — it won't get through. If the site isn't blocked wholesale, the routers then examine the words in the requested page's Internet address for blacklisted terms. If the address contains a word like "falun" or even a coded term like "198964" (which Chinese dissidents use to signify June 4, 1989, the date of the Tiananmen Square massacre), the router will block the signal. Back in the Internet cafe, your browser will display an error message. The filters can be surprisingly sophisticated, allowing certain pages from a site to slip through while blocking others. While I sat at one Internet cafe in Beijing, the government's filters allowed me to surf the entertainment and sports pages of the BBC but not its news section. One mistake Westerners frequently make about China is to assume that the government is furtive about its censorship. On the contrary, the party is quite matter of fact about it — proud, even. One American businessman who would speak only anonymously told me the story of attending an award ceremony last year held by the Internet Society of China for Internet firms, including the major Internet service providers. "I'm sitting there in the audience for this thing," he recounted, "and they say, 'And now it's time to award our annual Self-Discipline Awards!' And they gave 10 companies an award. They gave them a plaque. They shook hands. The minister was there; he took his picture with each guy. It was basically like Excellence in Self-Censorship — and everybody in the audience is, like, clapping." Internet censorship in China, this businessman explained, is presented as a benevolent police function. In January, the Shenzhen Public Security Bureau created two cuddly little anime-style cartoon "Internet Police" mascots named "Jingjing" and "Chacha"; each cybercop has a blog and a chat window where Chinese citizens can talk to them. As a Shenzhen official candidly told The Beijing Youth Daily, "The main function of Jingjing and Chacha is to intimidate." The article went on to explain that the characters are there "to publicly remind all Netizens to be conscious of safe and healthy use of the Internet, self-regulate their online behavior and maintain harmonious Internet order together." This was and excerpt from Clive Thompson's splendid New York Times article "Google's China Problem (and China's Google Problem)". Its a long and very interesting story covering censorship, practicing democracy in the context of Google "entering" the chinese market. Read the full story! This was written by Clive Thompson & seized 4 u at The New York Times

posted by Roland at 4/23/2006 09:29:00 AM | links to this post | 0 comments | Listen to this article

Start confessing & lets 4give (i4giveu.com opened for the public)

I have already written twice about i4giveu.com. After a long time of developement they finaly opened the page for the public. Here some of the new features : * Reputation system fully functional! * Anonymous Posting! You dont need to log or sign inorder to post! and even if you did sign and you want to post a few as Anonymous feel free its also possible! * Member Page for each user with detailed information about each user * Advance main page with a lot of statistics etc. The main reason for posting that article is of course the screenshot including my favorite "Top Saint" - me ;-) Go ahead and start confessing !

posted by Roland at 4/22/2006 10:52:00 AM | links to this post | 0 comments | Listen to this article

The Skyline Of Aalborg

In order to give Steve and some other skyline-lovers (like me) something to think about and as a tribute to a faithful reader I recommend the skyline of Aalborg (Ok - its only the Limfjordsbro at night) as this years (at least most original) skyline ;-) This picture was seized 4 u from Henrik Hansen

posted by Roland at 4/22/2006 10:44:00 AM | links to this post | 0 comments | Listen to this article

When you're in orbit, which way is Mecca?

Space Adventures is my favorite travel agency and New Scientist has developed to be my favorite "science for weirdos" hotspot. Digg that: Malaysia's National Space Agency is trying to determine how its astronaut candidates will practice Islam in space. Three of its four astronaut candidates are Muslim, and two will be selected for a future Russian space flight. Once in their orbiting spacecraft, they will circle the Earth once every 90 minutes. Traditionally, Muslims pray five times per day, at times connected to the position of the Sun in the sky. This will make prayer observance a challenge if they accept a "day" as being just 90 minutes long. A similar problem occurs for Muslims who live close to Earth's polar regions where there are long periods of daylight or darkness. Islamic legal scholars traditionally say that in such situations, a Muslim should pray as they would at a particular, relatively high latitude, even if they venture nearer the poles. "Any legal scholar advising these astronauts would have to simply pick various times that would roughly correspond to their morning, noon, afternoon, sunset and night prayers," says Alan Godlas, a professor of religion at the University of Georgia, US. Additionally, Muslims turn toward Mecca when they pray. Zooming around the Earth at 28,000 kilometres per hour might make pinpointing the exact location of Mecca pretty tricky. Godlas says that orienting oneself toward Earth might be good enough. "There are instances where the prophet indicated a wide swathe; kind of a general direction," Godlas says. Read more... This was seized 4 u at New Scientist

posted by Roland at 4/21/2006 04:57:00 PM | links to this post | 1 comments | Listen to this article

Digg Corrupted: Editor's Playground, not User-Driven Website

posted by Roland at 4/20/2006 09:43:00 PM | links to this post | 0 comments | Listen to this article

An antimatter spaceship for Mars?

If you're a science fiction reader, you know that spaceships are using antimatter to travel through space. Now NASA is working on such a spaceship to go to Mars in 45 days using only 10 milligrams of anti-electrons — or positrons — for the round trip mission. These positrons will emit gamma rays with about 400 times less energy than the ones emitted by antiprotons used in previous designs. Such a rocket would be much safer because it would reduce the time to travel to Mars and because there should be no leftover radiation after the fuel is used. There are still some remaining issues, such as the cost — $250 million for 10 milligrams — and the storage of antimatter which would have to be contained with electric and magnetic fields. But it's permitted to dream, isn't? If such a small quantity of antimatter can propel a spaceship to Mars — and even further — why hasn't been tried before? In reality this power comes with a price. Some antimatter reactions produce blasts of high energy gamma rays. Gamma rays are like X-rays on steroids. They penetrate matter and break apart molecules in cells, so they are not healthy to be around. High-energy gamma rays can also make the engines radioactive by fragmenting atoms of the engine material. The NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) is funding a team of researchers working on a new design for an antimatter-powered spaceship that avoids this nasty side effect by producing gamma rays with much lower energy. Antimatter is sometimes called the mirror image of normal matter because while it looks just like ordinary matter, some properties are reversed. For example, normal electrons, the familiar particles that carry electric current in everything from cell phones to plasma TVs, have a negative electric charge. Anti-electrons have a positive charge, so scientists dubbed them "positrons". When antimatter meets matter, both annihilate in a flash of energy. This complete conversion to energy is what makes antimatter so powerful. Even the nuclear reactions that power atomic bombs come in a distant second, with only about three percent of their mass converted to energy. Read more at NASA & Ermerging Technology Trends This was seized 4 u at Roland Piquepaille's post at ZDNet's Ermerging Technology Trends & NASA

posted by Roland at 4/19/2006 09:29:00 PM | links to this post | 0 comments | Listen to this article

San Francisco faces big shaker

Another magnitude 7.9 earthquake in the San Francisco Bay Area would probably produce much stronger shaking than the catastrophic 1906 event of the same size. The wider region should also expect thousands of fatalities and economic losses in the billions. These conclusions are contained in two reports released to coincide with the 18 April centennial of the great quake that destroyed the city and killed 3,000 people. Scientists say the next big quake - a magnitude 6.7 or larger - will likely come within 30 years. The first study, When the Big One Strikes Again, was commissioned by conference organisers and provides an estimate range of the death and damage toll for Northern California if an earthquake similar to 1906 hit the region today. One of its shaking scenarios suggests that out of the 10 million residents in 19 counties, a 7.9 earthquake could kill 1,800 and seriously injure 8,000 if it hit at night; and kill 3,400 and seriously injure 13,000 if it hit during the day. "Daytime casualties are typically higher than night-time, when people are in homes that are less susceptible to collapse than commercial buildings," said Dr Kircher. However, the proportion of night-time deaths is raised slightly in San Francisco itself, where older homes are more vulnerable to collapse. Roughly one quarter - 800 - daytime deaths and almost a third of night-time deaths- 574 - would be in SF city districts. The estimates are based on death by building collapse by shaking alone; not by fire, which could raise the death toll. Of the city's 400,000 residents in 1906, it is estimated that 3,000 died from both building collapse and the conflagration that swept the city immediately afterwards. While it was unlikely a fire that size would rage again, smaller fires were very possible, said Dr Kircher. "We expect fires to contribute significantly to the total loss," he added. Adding in the cost of damage due to fire and lifeline infrastructure - such as highways - could raise the economic bill to $150bn. And this does not include long-term economic impact, the sort experienced in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The total is 10 times the loss from the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake, a 6.7 tremor on the San Andreas Fault centred in a mountainous region 100km (60 miles) to the south of San Francisco. This was seized 4 u at BBC

posted by Roland at 4/19/2006 08:49:00 AM | links to this post | 0 comments | Listen to this article

News getting into the internet age

European researchers hope to take news agencies into the internet age by commercialising a platform of integrated Web services that can automatically classify, annotate and analyse news stories. It will mean stories can be defined, on the fly, with a precision greater than a library's card catalogue. The News Engine Web Services (NEWS) platform is aimed at news agencies, governments and large enterprises and will enable them to develop highly advanced analysis to raw text, with a vast number of potential applications. News agencies will be able to automatically create very highly personalised news profiles for readers. Governments will be able to analyse social and political trends through newspaper reports, at a much higher level of detail than was possible previously, and large businesses will be able to study market and product developments. The project that developed the platform even managed to develop a proof-of-concept service for analysing audio, by combining their system with a commercial voice recognition programme. At the heart of this functionality is the powerful classification and ontology-based annotation system that can work across languages. "News classifications up to now typically consisted of about 12 terms, like sport, world news, finance, that a journalist knew off by heart," says Dr Ansgar Bernardi, deputy head of the Knowledge Management Group at DFKI, the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence, and coordinator of the IST-funded NEWS project. "That's not very precise. Our system can automatically analyse a story and access 1300 classification terms to define it," says Bernardi. What's more it can access a large ontology of terms related to the specific story definitions within a class, terms like president, head-of-state and government in the politics class, for example. The end result is a very large data set of standardised terms that define the story's content. That data set can then be used in a huge variety of ways to potentially answer almost any query a user can imagine. A simple example: “Show me news items about the US president in January 2006” will deliver news items about George W. Bush in this time frame. "We expect that platform users will take the basic functionality and develop around it to respond to the information they want to analyse," says Bernardi. Read more at the source... This was seized 4 u at Information Society Technologies

posted by Roland at 4/18/2006 03:31:00 PM | links to this post | 0 comments | Listen to this article

Study Shows Readers Often Scan Web Pages in an "F" Pattern

F for fast. That's how users read your precious content. In a few seconds, their eyes move at amazing speeds across your website’s words in a pattern that's very different from what you learned in school. In our new eyetracking study, we recorded how 232 users looked at thousands of Web pages. We found that users' main reading behavior was fairly consistent across many different sites and tasks. This dominant reading pattern looks somewhat like an F and has the following three components: * Users first read in a horizontal movement, usually across the upper part of the content area. This initial element forms the F's top bar. * Next, users move down the page a bit and then read across in a second horizontal movement that typically covers a shorter area than the previous movement. This additional element forms the F's lower bar. * Finally, users scan the content's left side in a vertical movement. Sometimes this is a fairly slow and systematic scan that appears as a solid stripe on an eyetracking heatmap. Other times users move faster, creating a spottier heatmap. This last element forms the F's stem. Obviously, users' scan patterns are not always comprised of exactly three parts. Sometimes users will read across a third part of the content, making the pattern look more like an E than an F. Other times they'll only read across once, making the pattern look like an inverted L (with the crossbar at the top). Generally, however, reading patterns roughly resemble an F, though the distance between the top and lower bar varies. Read more... This was seized 4 u at useit.com

posted by steve at 4/18/2006 02:23:00 PM | links to this post | 0 comments | Listen to this article

How does easter fit with eggs & bunnies?

posted by Roland at 4/17/2006 05:55:00 PM | links to this post | 0 comments | Listen to this article

The fish that hunts on land

Zoologists have found a remarkable fish that can wriggle from Africa's tropical swamps to snaffle a snack on land. The eel catfish,Channallabes apus, catches unsuspecting victims by arching upwards and descending upon prey, trapping an insect against the ground before sucking it up. It performs this trick thanks to a bendy neck supported by specialized vertebrae, which allows it to hover over prey without needing fins or arms to hold up its head. The same trick may have been used by the very first vertebrates to venture onto land, the researchers speculate. Sam Van Wassenbergh of the University of Antwerp in Belgium and his team present the observation, complete with video evidence, in this week's Nature. Most fish capture dinner by opening wide and expanding their mouth cavity: this pulls in extra water and sucks up prey. But this only works below the surface; animals cannot create the same amount of suction by opening their mouths in air, which is 800 times less dense than water. Animals have evolved various strategies to capture insects on land, from sticky tongues to lightning-fast lunges and snapping jaws. For C. apus, the solution consists of being able to loom over its target with its mouth in a position to engulf it from directly from above. Other fish known to hunt on land, called mudskippers, also have extremely flexible necks. It is suspected that this trick might be the best way for a fish to catch a meal on dry land. "I don't think there are any other options," he reflects. And the eel catfish, although a modern species, may demonstrate just how the first vertebrates graduating to land caught their dinner. Palaeontologists last week unveiled fossils of Tiktaalik roseae, a creature that had limb-like bones encased in fleshy fins. The fish that crawled out of the water'). Tiktaalik roseae certainly seems to have had a fairly versatile neck, notes Van Wassenbergh. This was originally written by Michael Hopkin & seized 4 u at Nature

posted by Roland at 4/16/2006 09:19:00 PM | links to this post | 0 comments | Listen to this article

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