NCSC Technology Division

Quantum Physics and the Counter-Intuitive

NCSC Chair of Technology — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 11:24:44 +0000

Spaceweather.com

NCSC Chair of Technology — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 11:24:22 +0000

If you are a space geek, check out Spaceweather.com.

Future Careers…2022

NCSC Chair of Technology — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 13:47:44 +0000

We (you, me and the rest of the world) are being buried under an avalanche of data. Facts are being collected at an increasingly prodigious rate, from millions of collection points around the world and the universe. But, facts are not knowledge. Knowledge is the ability to organize, sort, understand and use this monstrous mountain of information.

Facts:

https://proteomecommons.org/ is one independent project by a graduate student that makes available over 11 million data files (over 12 terabytes!!!) on proteins.
In 2008, Cisco announced the number of devices connected to the internet exceeded the number of humans on earth.
There will be over 50 billion connections to the internet by 2020.
According to the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI)”nearly all sectors in the US economy had at least an average of 200 terabytes of stored data” in 2009.
By 2018, according to the MGI report, “the United States alone could face a shortage of 140,000 to 190,000 people with deep analytical skills as well as 1.5 million managers and analysts with the know-how to use the analysis of big data to make effective decisions.”

CNNMoney projects the hottest tech career in 2022 well be the Data Scientist.

Forbes say Big Data Needs Data Scientists, Or Quants, Or Excel Jockeys.

New software companies are developing software to Make Sense of the Mountains of Data.

The Atlantic just published “To Know, but Not Understand: David Weinberger on Science and Big Data”. David Weinberger published a book titled “Too Big To Know”.

I’ll leave you today with this from SystemsThinking.org

A collection of data is not information.
A collection of information is not knowledge.
A collection of knowledge is not wisdom.
A collection of wisdom is not truth.

Seeing “Clearly”

NCSC Chair of Technology — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 15:20:03 +0000

If you are one of the dwindling number of people that still read and read a lot, Evernote’s “Clearly” is a browser add-on that you will love. Clearly will take a webpage, blog, etc, and with a quick click of the mouse, eliminate all the distractions, such as the pop up windows, adds, frames and hand you the article in one seamless page. Clearly gives you choices of text size and page layout.

Here is a sample of what Clearly does. The first picture is a snapshot of a CNN article I wanted to read.

The next picture is a snapshot of the article after using Clearly.

Same webpage, same article. Add “Clearly” to you browser. You won’t be sorry.

If you aren’t using Evernote yet for your online research you should. Check it out.

First All-Digital Science Textbook Will Be Free

NCSC Chair of Technology — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 14:27:29 +0000

Life on Earth, a completely digital textbook being developed by the E. O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation, is intended to use technology to revolutionize the way textbooks are written and used.

Jobs on Education

NCSC Chair of Technology — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 11:56:29 +0000

Today Apple is holding an “Education Event” in New York City. Apple is expected to unveil their “Garage Band” for eReaders which is supposed do for authors and writers what Garage Band does for the home composer…make writing interactive, web-linked textbooks easy.

Wired’s e-zine article ‘What’s Wrong With Education Cannot Be Fixed with Technology’ — The Other Steve Jobs discussing publishing for education and other problems education faces.

In other news this morning, Gumby ripped off Canadian iPad customers by replacing iPads with clay. And he didn’t even bother to add cuneiform.

Fake iPad 2′s Made of Clay.

Support The Use of Soap, Not SOPA

NCSC Chair of Technology — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:42:58 +0000

Today is a day of protest by internet users protesting the development of Senate 968 (PIPA) and HR 3261 (SOPA), to very unpopular bills that would purportedly stop online piracy. The problem with the proposed laws is that the media industry would be allowed to shutdown any website, such as eBay, Craigslist, Facebook, etc, without due process or judicial oversight.

Eighty-three prominent Internet Engineers (not including Al Gore) wrote an open letter to Congress. Here’s an excerpt: ”either of these bills will create an environment of tremendous fear and uncertainty for technological innovation, and seriously harm the credibility of the United States in its role as a steward of key Internet infrastructure. Regardless of recent amendments to SOPA, both bills will risk fragmenting the Internet’s global domain name system (DNS) and have other capricious technical consequences. In exchange for this, such legislation would engender censorship that will simultaneously be circumvented by deliberate infringers while hampering innocent parties’ right and ability to communicate and express themselves online.”

Call your Congress Critter today! Here is an easy way to get the phone number.

Smart Contact Lenses

NCSC Chair of Technology — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:59:18 +0000

Contact lenses are being developed with built-in electronic sensors. These sensors may someday monitor anything from cholesterol to blood sugar levels. One type is already being used in Europe to measure eye pressures in Glaucoma patients. The Trigger Fish contains a strain gauge and microchip, with an antenna fitted around the eye-socket. Clinicians may then monitor a patient’s intraocular pressure throughout the day.

Story Here.

Cold Fusion

NCSC Chair of Technology — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:44:00 +0000

http://coldfusion3.com/blog/nasa-publicly-reveals-lenr-research

MIT to Offer Free Online Courses

NCSC Chair of Technology — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:37:58 +0000

Although MIT has made their course content available online for 10 years through their Open Courseware program, it was not interactive or an actual online course. MIT recently announced their MITx project which will offer actual MIT courses online, in a teaching environment…for FREE! These courses will be offered in open admission format, to anyone in the world. MIT credit cannot be earned, but a student may earn a certificate for demonstrating mastery of the course. A fee will be charged for the credentials, fee to be determined. MIT hopes to start MITx this spring, 2012.

MIT’s Open Courseware program has served over 100 million students and offers content from 2100 courses.

Back in July, I wrote about the Kahn University, the brainchild of Salman Kahn which offers thousands of free video lectures on a plethora of academic topics, from STEM to the humanities. Since then I have also discovered Academic Earth, founded by Richard Ludlow, which also offers free academic video lectures from institutions like Harvard, NYU, Princeton, UCLA and Yale.

This is so exciting!