Technoscientific Disclosure
The ways that 21st Century humanity thinks about the world from at the intersection of technology & science.
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More pollution for less pollution?
Rocks unearthed here [in Indonesia] contain traces of nickel, a key ingredient in electric vehicle batteries. Extracting it, refining it and readying it for export is a gargantuan task. More than $1 billion has been sunk into the processing facility,… Continue reading
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Travis Wright reviews Latour’s Down to Earth
Bruno Latour’s Down to Earth is, functionally, a call to rethink and re-describe our political reality in accordance with the changing forces that shape it. Latour lays out his argument in 20 brief sections, each deceptively quick to read. Section… Continue reading
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Quest for Fire
Fire is just a particularly vigorous oxidation process, one that you can understand even if you weren’t paying attention in chemistry lessons at school, as indeed James May didn’t. So what’s need to create a fire, why is a flame… Continue reading
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Is there no-thing in the deep darkness?
Three experiments are starting to study dark energy, the most abundant stuff in the universe. But a theory has just been published purporting to show it does not exist IN THE 1920s astronomers realised that the universe was running away… Continue reading
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Mysterious Dancing Lights In Afghanistan
This isn’t a painting. It’s not from a movie. It’s not a strange astronomical event. This is real — what you can see when certain helicopters in Afghanistan touch down on sandy ground, raising dust, causing mysterious arcs of light… Continue reading
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Overstating Galilean Persecution Still Isn’t Helping
Originally posted on Pasco Phronesis: Professor David Nutt has a few reasonable points now and then. Recently he has criticized restrictions on research involving controlled substances such as opioids and hallucinogenics. While he’s not persuaded of the harms of these… Continue reading
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Irrationality: Factual Fictions
irrational (adj.) late 15c., “not endowed with reason” (of beats, etc.); earlier (of quantities) “inexpressible in ordinary numbers” (late 14c.); from Latin irrationalis “without reason,” from assimilated form of in- “not, opposite of” (see in- (1)) + rationalis “reason” (see rational). Meaning “illogical, absurd” is attested from 1640s. via etymonline.com… Continue reading
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Mysteries of ‘obesity gene’ revealed
An obesity gene that affects one in every six people could be partially treated thanks to a new study that’s finally determined how it works. Researchers led by Rachel Batterham at University College London were looking into an obesity gene,… Continue reading
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Big-Food’s Impact on the South: A View from Brazil
Traditional long-established food systems and dietary patterns are being displaced in Brazil and in other countries in the South (Africa, Asia, and Latin America) by ultra-processed products made by transnational food corporations (“Big Food” and “Big Snack”).This displacement increases… Continue reading
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Mystery Intergalactic Radio Bursts Detected : Discovery News
Astronomers were on a celestial fishing expedition for pulsing neutron stars and other radio bursts when they found something unexpected in archived sky sweeps conducted by the Parkes radio telescope in New South Wales, Australia. The powerful signal, which lasted… Continue reading
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How Twitter Is Changing the Geography of Communication
See on Scoop.it – Pahndeepah Perceptions New research suggests that location plays a smaller role now in who we talk to and what we talk about. Keith Wayne Brown‘s insight: “There are two ways to think about connectivity on Twitter:… Continue reading
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Major Players in the MOOC Universe
See on Scoop.it – Pahndeepah Perceptions Explore connections among the industry’s major players. Keith Wayne Brown‘s insight: Millions of students have signed up for massive open online courses, and hundreds of universities are offering some form of Web-based curriculum. Most… Continue reading
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Research impact: We need negative metrics too
My colleagues J. Britt Holbrook, Kelli Barr and I had a letter published this week at Nature. Exciting for a humble daoist anarchocynic like myself. The correspondence also contains a link to a slightly revised version of our original submission.… Continue reading
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Vernor Vinge on Technological Unemployment
What does the future hold, not only for the great hoard of folk who may not keep ahead of the ever-widening techno-chasm, but also the banks of thinkers/creators who have until now been busy at encoding the Book of Life?… Continue reading
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The ‘Broader Impacts’ of Sequestration on Science
My colleague Bob Frodeman has some suggestions about the interconnection of research & society in post-austerity world. Now that we’ve been driven off the “fiscal cliff,” perhaps we should look around and assess the results. It turns out that sequestration is… Continue reading
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New Test for Computers: Grading Essays at College Level
See on Scoop.it – Pahndeepah Perceptions “Software developed by a joint venture of Harvard and M.I.T. uses artificial intelligence to grade student essays and short written answers, freeing professors for other tasks.” See on nyti.ms Related articles Essay-Grading Software (florence20.typepad.com)… Continue reading
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Digital Disconnect: Life in the InterDebtWork
If we are going to stay on top of how the Interweb and its diverse intrusions into our life are in fact the very stuff of Control, it behooves us to never forget how global corporate capitalism–the InterDebtWork–is always after better… Continue reading
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