Disc News Details: Mouse Virus Link to Fatigue Retracted

Dec 22 2011

"The prominent journal Science on Thursday retracted a 2009 report linking a mouse retrovirus to chronic fatigue syndrome after it was disproved by researchers earlier this year."

http://m.discovery.com/s/4737/1932?itemPos=3&catIndex=

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Best Of TED 2011 : Pictures, Videos, Breaking News

  

 

  

18 Great Ideas From 2011 That Can Shape 2012

Arianna Huffington and Chris Anderson, 12.08.2011

On behalf of The Huffington Post and TED, we are delighted to invite you on a year-end journey of ideas that can help shape the world in 2012. Starting today, we will be counting down 18 of 2011’s most impactful TEDTalks.

Read Post | Comments (62)

via huffingtonpost.com

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detikInet : Kuliah di MIT Bisa Virtual

Jakarta – Bagi mereka yang memiliki minat di bidang teknologi, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) mungkin menjadi salah satu kampus impian untuk menuntut ilmu.

Ada kabar baik bagi Anda yang termasuk salah satunya. Kampus IT terpandang yang berlokasi di Cambridge, Massachusetts, Amerika Serikat ini membuka kelas online berskala global.

“Tujuan program ini adalah menjangkau siapa saja di berbagai belahan dunia yang ingin belajar di MIT, namun tidak bisa ke sini,” kata Rektor MIT Rafael Reif, dikutip detikINET dari Reuters, Senin (19/12/2011).

Di kelas online ini, siswa bisa menggunakan fasilitas laboratorium simulasi, berinteraksi dengan profesor dan siswa lain dari berbagai negara secara virtual. Selesai mengeikuti program ini, mereka akan mendapatkan sertifikat kelulusan dari MIT.

Ini bukan pertama kalinya MIT membuka kelas online. Sebelumnya, MIT telah dikenal dengan program bernama OpenCourseWare, yang menawarkan 2.100 kelas online secara gratis.

“Program seperti ini membuat MIT tersedia dalam skala global. Ini adalah cara terbaik menggabungkan misi kami dalam bidang pendidikan dan riset,” kata Direktur Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Anant Agarwal.

Calon mahasiswa yang ingin mendapat sertifikat dari program kelas online MIT pastinya diwajibkan membayar sejumlah biaya yang tidak sedikit. Hanya saja tidak disebutkan berapa besarannya. Sebagai gambaran, untuk kuliah di MIT selama satu tahun, biayanya adalah USD 40.732 (sekitar Rp 370 jutaan). Kelas online kabarnya akan lebih ‘murah’ dari kisaran itu.

Pihak universitas menekankan, kelas online semacam ini tidak akan menggantikan pengalaman berkuliah di kampus yang sesungguhnya. Terlebih kelas online akan menerapkan peraturan yang sama ketatnya dengan suasana kampus asli.

( rns / ash )

via detikinet.com

Ini berita bagus untuk meningkatkan persaingan global terhadap pelayanan yang sesungguhnya bagi para mahasiswa.
Pelayanan, pelayanan, pelayanan.

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Meet Arduino 1.0: The Official Software Release Is Here | PCWorld

[Photo: arduino.cc]

I have to admit I am fascinated with Arduino, the microcontroller that allows you to build all sorts of devices and projects. Awesome examples of Arduino’s application include the µWave microwave that play YouTube videos while your food cooks and the eSleeper cat bed that glows when a cat enters it.

While people have been using Arduino hardware and software for a while now, to make some of the coolest things I’ve seen, up until now the software has been in beta. On November 30, the official Arduino blog posted that Arduino 1.0 is available for download.

Many updates have come with version 1.0, including changes to the IDE in the form of a new color scheme, new toolbar icons and progress bars. Aside from aesthetics, some of the programming language has changed and the company made improvements to several software libraries.

For a complete list of the changes, check out the release notes. Also, head on over to the Arduino site to download version 1.0.

Hopefully with all of these changes we can see even more awesome Arduino powered projects and gadgets emerge. If you make anything cool and geeky with the new Arduino software, be sure to send it our way. I for one can’t get enough.

[Arduino Blog via The Verge]

Like this? You might also enjoy…

• Portal Becomes A Reality–Sort of–With This Kickstarter Project
• Meet eSleeper, The Automated Arduino-Powered Kitteh Bed
• Floppy Quartet Sings Portal’s ‘Still Alive’–Ironically

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Control which blogs you autopost to. And WordPress categories – The Official Posterous Space

Many of you maintain multiple twitter accounts and multiple blogs, and want a way to specify which of those to Autopost to.

Send an email to #url@posterous.com. If the part after the ‘#’ appears anywhere in your site url, we will autopost there.

 

For example, if you have:

username.wordpress.com

nickname.wordpress.com

username.typepad.com

twitter.com/username

 

If you email #wordpress+twitter@posterous.com, we will autopost to the two wordpress sites, and all your twitters. If you email #username@posterous.com, we will autopost only to the three sites with ‘username‘ in the url.

Also, we now pass categories to your WordPress blogs. Tag your posts by email using the normal syntax. If any of those tags exist on your WordPress blog as categories, they will get added. Click here to see how to tag posts by email.

  

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The “maker” movement [an excerpt from The Economist]

An excerpt from “The Economist”

… 

The maker movement is both a response to and an outgrowth of digital culture, made possible by the convergence of several trends. New tools and electronic components let people integrate the physical and digital worlds simply and cheaply. Online services and design software make it easy to develop and share digital blueprints. And many people who spend all day manipulating bits on computer screens are rediscovering the pleasure of making physical objects and interacting with other enthusiasts in person, rather than online. Currently the preserve of hobbyists, the maker movement’s impact may be felt much farther afield.

…

Applying the open-source approach to hardware has also driven the development of the maker movement’s other favourite piece of kit, which could be found everywhere at the Maker Faire in New York: 3D printers. These machines are another way to connect the digital and the physical realms: they take a digital model of an object and print it out by building it up, one layer at a time, using plastic extruded from a nozzle. The technique is not new, but in recent years 3D printers have become cheap enough for consumers. MakerBot Industries, a start-up based in New York, now sells its machines for $1,300. The output quality is rapidly improving thanks to regular upgrades, many of them suggested by users.

None of this action in hardware would have happened without a second set of powerful drivers: software, standards and online communities. Arduino, for instance, relies on open-source programs that turn simple code into a form that can be understood by the board’s brain. Similarly, MakerBot’s 3D printers depend on a standard way to describe physical objects, called STL, and affordable software to design them. Some basic modelling programs, such as Google SketchUp and Blender, can be downloaded free.

…

The ease with which designs for physical things can be shared digitally goes a long way towards explaining why the maker movement has already developed a strong culture—its third driver. “If you are not sharing your designs, you are doing it wrong,” says Bre Pettis, the chief executive of MakerBot. Physical space and tools are being shared, too, in the form of common workshops. Some 400 such “hacker spaces” already operate worldwide, according to Hackerspaces.org. Many are organised like artists’ collectives. At Noisebridge, a hacker space in San Francisco, even non-members can come and tinker—as long as they comply with the group’s main rule: to be “excellent” to each other. “The internet is no substitute for a real community,” says Mitch Altman, a co-founder of Noisebridge.

This sort of thing makes the maker movement sound a lot like the digital equivalent of quilting bees. But it has already had a wider impact, mainly in schools in America. Many have discovered 3D printers and Arduino boards—and are using them to make their science and technology classes more hands-on again, and teach students to be producers as well as users of digital products.

All this will boost innovation, predicts Dale Dougherty, the founder of Make magazine, a central organ of the maker movement. Its tools and culture promote experimentation, collaboration and rapid improvement. Makers can play in niches that big firms ignore—though they are watching the maker movement and will borrow ideas from it, Mr Dougherty believes. The Maker Faire in New York was sponsored by technology companies including HP and Cognizant. Autodesk, which makes computer-aided design software, bought Instructables in August.

… 

The parallel with the hobbyist computer movement of the 1970s is striking. In both cases enthusiastic tinkerers, many on America’s West Coast, began playing with new technologies that had huge potential to disrupt business and society. Back then the machines manipulated bits; now the action is in atoms. This has prompted predictions of a new industrial revolution, in which more manufacturing is done by small firms or even by individuals. “The tools of factory production, from electronics assembly to 3D printing, are now available to individuals, in batches as small as a single unit,” writes Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired magazine.

It is easy to laugh at the idea that hobbyists with 3D printers will change the world. But the original industrial revolution grew out of piecework done at home, and look what became of the clunky computers of the 1970s. The maker movement is worth watching.

Link: http://www.economist.com/node/21540392