Have your bugs cataloged!

 This is an interesting citizen scientist site where for $99 you submit some samples and it determines the relative populations of different microbes. There is emerging research that our microbiome affects our weight, well being and much more.


http://humanfoodproject.com/americangut/

Fascinating Emigration Graphic

at http://peoplemov.in/ there is a cool interactive graphic that shows the movement of emigrants between countries.

Gaming as a path to longer life?

I recently listened to a TED talk by Jane McGonigal entitled "The game that can give you 10 extra years of life".  She is also the author of Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World. In her TED talk she talks about all the benefits of Playing Games.
 
I really have mixed feelings about this topic. I really do like playing games, once I have moved up the learning curve a bit. I do find that it is easy for me to spend lots of time playing, like when Lode Runner came out on MacIntosh (sp?) when I was in college, and I played all through the night. Even a few years ago, I would spend so long playing Civilization on the PC that my neck would freeze up in the position that I was holding it.

I have seen much recently in the business writing about the concept of gamification (not sure it is really a word yet). Basically we can take the concepts that draw people to games, and apply in the workplace, like having a leader board for a sales organization

Right now, I am just taking a break from my game addiction, Minecraft, and using it as a reward for completing some tedious Cub Scout rechartering.

 How do games make a difference in your life?

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A domestic fox as a pet!!!

Years ago I had read an article in Smithsonian Magazine about a research project in Russia where they raised foxes, and selectively bred them to bring out the friendliest characteristics. In each round they would take the kits that are most compatible with humans and mate them together to bring out those characteristics.

It was interesting that those foxes soon took on the characteristics we associate with domesticated dogs, such as being fertile only at certain times of the year, instead of all the time, like the dogs' wolf forebears were. 

I just found at www.domesticfox.com  that you can now adopt these foxes to the U.S. (probably from the same research facility). And they are soo cute!

Augmented Reality

I saw this video on TED about augmented reality app that run on your smart phone.

http://www.ted.com/talks/matt_mills_image_recognition_that_triggers_augmented_reality.html

I find this fascinating because of the possibilities to enhance the capabilities of the cell phone. They demonstrate that you can aim your camera at a painting in a museum, and it can replace the painting with a video that can explain the painting's history. I think that this can make for a very fun scavenger hunt experience. They also show where you can layer video over a live background. I wonder if the video is created using a Green Screen. They call it Aurasma.



I know that Qualcomm does something in this space called Vuforia. This is something I want to investigate more.

The top 1% and what they do

I find this interactive graphic from the New York Times, though not new, to be very interesting.

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/newsgraphics/2012/0115-one-percent-occupations/index.html

It shows where the top 1% are occupied. It is interesting because the 1% is really spread out a lot. Of course if you are a lawyer or doctor or work with financial securities, you stand a good chance of being rich.

I find that discussion of income and taxes to be oddly affected by individual's perceptions about the rich. Either we have a strong feeling about it, because we feel that some people are earning more than is fair, or maybe we are against some policy, such as the estate tax, because we think that that tax will impact us personally, even though we are not likely to be in that category. I think that I flip flop in my own thinking about this often.

A self driving car

The Google Blog just issued an update about their self driving car program. Their computer controlled cars have logged over 300,000 miles without an accident. Now members of the team are going to use the cars to do some limited commuting, with only a single human within the vehicle. Previously the humans were in two person teams. This is very remarkable for a number of reasons.

1. Image recognition is very hard, and so I guess video recognition is also hard. That said, there is probably a reasonable subset of features that are critical for the computer to recognize, for example. A person can easily tell the difference between a horse, or a cow, or a deer is in the road, which the computer will find difficult. However to avoid a collision, we do not care what the large obstacle is, we just need to know that it is in our way, or on a path to be in our way. The computer is probably much faster than a human in responding to an identified obstacle.

2. This is a very bold move by Google. They started out as a search engine company, and now they do so many things. I try to avoid hyperbole, but they are probably the most innovative company around. Now it might be that they are just the best at buying other companies of interest, but this foray into big hardware is significant. For Google this is a high level of diversification.

The idea of boldly going after an innovation is inspiring. Now I do not know about the self driving car niche, so I do not know how much of the techniques and algorithms are borrowed from academia etc., but Google is most certainly picking up patents by the basketful as they are figuring out how to make this work. There is a lot to be learned by putting yourself out there and making the effort. At some point you have to stop talking and thinking and start making something. I would love to see the full story about the prototypes and simulations and failed tests that went into this effort.

Also, given human nature, I wonder when people or the regulators will feel safe about people giving control over to the driving computer in even larger numbers. At what point do we determine that it is safer than a human driver? I am certain that we could achieve that pretty easily, but it still might have its flaws, and would we require it to be perfect? It is certainly an interesting question.