N Y B B L E M O N T H L Y N E W S L E T T E R
A Free Ezine about Anything Tech and Everything Else
2010.04.28 Issue No. 219
Just came back from Singapore for some training/OJT. Of all the things I've seen in Singapore, I'm most impressed with its taxicab system. Booking a taxi is dead easy. Just type in your , send the SMS to the taxi company, and that's it. Usually within seconds, you'll get a acknowledgement SMS with the taxi number and ETA. And if you're thinking how the taxi can locate you based simply on the postcode, you don't need to worry. I was told that every building in Singapore is assigned a unique postcode. Most cabs come standard with a touchscreen display for pending jobs and realtime maps. Some even come with rear passenger touchscreen that displays scrolling news, video segments, information on pubs/restaurants, movies, tourist attractions, etc. Pretty neat. Parking on certain carparks makes use of the same passcard for the toll roads. However, for some old-school car parks, you'll have to buy these prepaid car tickets, punch in your entry time and display it on top of the dashboard. A bit of the old and the new.
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_________SAVE MONEY WITH NEW FONT_________
Diane Blohowiak is the school's director of computing. She says the new font uses about 30 percent less ink than the previous one. That could add up to real savings, since the cost of printer ink works out to about $10,000 per gallon.
The decision is part of the school's five-year plan to go green. Aside from being eco-friendly, this measure also saves money.
_________BEIJING'S GIANT DEODORANT GUNS_________
Beijing's waste problem - and China's - is expanding as fast as its economy, at about 8% each year. With millions more people now able to afford Starbucks, McDonald's, KFC and other elements of a Western, throwaway lifestyle, the landfill sites and illegal tips that ring the capital are close to overflowing.
According to the local government, the city of 17m people generates 18,000 tonnes of waste every day - 7,000 tonnes more than the capacity of municipal disposal plants. Less than 4% of Beijing's rubbish is recycled – the UK recycles 35% – but is still near the bottom of the EU recycling league. Two per cent of Beijing's rubbish is burned but the rest is dumped in landfill sites, which cover an area of 333,000 sq m. Cities throughout the country face a similar problem. Government plans to build 82 incinerators between 2006 and 2010 have encountered an increasingly hostile "not-in-my-backyard" movement. According to Chinese media reports, at least six incinerator projects have been put on hold due to public opposition.
The quick fix? Beijing is to install 100 deodorant guns at a stinking landfill site on the edge of the city in a bid to dampen complaints about the capital's rubbish crisis. The high-pressure guns, which can spray dozens of litres of fragrance per minute over a distance of up to 50m, are produced by several Chinese firms and based on German and Italian technology. The giant fragrance sprays will be put in place by May at the Asuwei dump site, one of several hundred tips that are the focus of growing public concerns about sanitation, environmental health and a runaway consumer culture. Municipal authorities say they will also apply more plastic layers to cover the site in response to furious protests by local residents who have to put up with the stench when the wind blows in their direction.
In the longer term, the government plans massive investment and new legislation to double the capacity of waste disposal facilities, increase the incineration rate to 40% and to cut the growth in the volume of rubbish to zero by 2015 through recycling.
_________TINY BUBBLES TO COOL PLANET________
In a bid to counter global warming, scientists have come up with zany ideas such as launching sunlight-blocking dust into the stratosphere to boosting the number of carbon-sucking algae in the oceans. Add microbubbles to the list.
Harvard University physicist Russell Seitz has come up with a new idea of pumping vast swarms of tiny bubbles into the sea to increase its reflectivity and lower water temperatures. Natural bubbles already brighten turbulent seas and provide a luster known as “undershine” below the ocean’s surface. But these bubbles only lightly brighten the planet, contributing less than one-tenth of 1% of Earth’s reflectivity, or albedo. What Seitz imagines is pumping even smaller bubbles, about one-five-hundredth of a millimeter in diameter, into the sea. Such "microbubbles" are essentially "mirrors made of air," and they might be created off boats by using devices that mix water supercharged with compressed air into swirling jets of water.
Computer simulations show that tiny bubbles could have a profound cooling effect. Using a model that simulates how light, water, and air interact, microbubbles double the reflectivity of water at a concentration of only one part per million by volume. When Seitz plugged that data into a climate model, he found that the microbubble strategy could cool the planet by up to 3°C.
In addition to helping curb global warming, the microbubble strategy could also help conserve water by reducing evaporation in rivers and lakes. That’s a problem that leads to the loss of billions of tons of freshwater each year in California alone.
_________SPRAY-ON LIQUID GLASS_________
Liquid glass might just become the miracle product of the future - a revolutionary invisible non-toxic spray that protects against everything from bacteria to UV radiation.
The versatile spray, which is a compound of almost pure silicon dioxide, forms an easy-clean coating one millionth of a millimetre thick – 500 times thinner than a human hair. Harmless to the environment, it can be applied to virtually any surface to protect it against water, dirt, bacteria, heat and UV radiation. It can be used to protect against disease, guard vineyards against fungal threats and coat the nose cones of high-speed trains, it has been claimed.
The spray forms a flexible and breathable water-resistant layer, meaning it can be cleaned using only water. Trials by food-processing companies showed that sterile surfaces covered with a film of liquid glass were equally clean after a rinse with hot water as after their usual treatment with strong bleach.
The patent for the technology is owned by a German company, Nanopool, which is in discussions with UK companies and the NHS about the use of liquid glass for a wide range of purposes.
_________SUPER-SECURE USB STICK_________
Sure, there are other secure USB sticks on the market, like the SanDisk Cruzer and Kingston Technology DataTraveler Vault Privacy USB stick, but neither has the extras that the Victorinox Secure boasts. The Secure features a fingerprint scanner and a thermal sensor "so that the finger alone, detached from the body, will still not give access to the memory stick's contents." There's also a self-destruct mechanism. Victorinox offers no explanation how this works, only saying that if someone tries to forcibly open the memory stick it triggers a self-destruct mechanism that "irrevocably burns [the Secure's] CPU and memory chip." The device also uses the Advanced Encryption Standard 256 to protect your data as well as its own proprietary security chip. Being a Swiss Army Knife, the Secure also comes with a variety of other features including an LED mini light, retractable ballpoint pen, blade, scissors, nail file, screwdriver, and key ring.
During the Secure's launch event in London, the company offered a team of professional hackers close to $150,000 if they could get past the Secure's security measures. The prize money went unclaimed, Victorinox says, and the company did not identify the hackers.
_________MAGNETS CAN MANIPULATE MORALS_________
The next time you make a wrong moral decision, you can always blame the magnets. According to a new report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, magnets can alter a person's sense of morality. Using a powerful magnetic field, scientists from MIT, Harvard University and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center are able to scramble the moral center of the brain, making it more difficult for people to separate innocent intentions from harmful outcomes. The research could have big implications for not only neuroscientists, but also for judges and juries.
For their experiment, the scientists had 20 subjects read several dozen different stories about people with good or bad intentions that resulted in a variety of outcomes.
One typical story was about a boyfriend who leads his girlfriend across a bridge. In some versions, the boyfriend harmlessly walked his girlfriend across the bridge with no ill effect. In other cases, the boyfriend intentionally led the girlfriend along so she would break her ankle. The subjects used a seven point scale -- one being forbidden and seven completely permissible -- to record whether they through the situation was morally acceptable or not.
While the subjects read the story, the scientists applied a magnetic field using a method known as transcranial magnetic stimulation. The magnetic fields created confusion in the neurons that make up the RTPJ (right temporo-parietal junction), which other studies had previously related to moral judgments. When a magnetic field was applied to the RTPJ, the subjects consistently focused on a bad outcome, rather than the intention, and rated the story as more morally objectionable. When no magnetic field was applied, the subjects focused more on the boyfriend's good intentions, rather than a bad outcome.
The effect was temporary and safe. On the scientists' seven point scale, the difference was about one point and averaged out to about a 15 percent change. It's not much, said Young, "but it's still striking to see such a change in such high level behavior as moral decision-making." Young also points out that the study was correlation; their work only links the the RTJP, morality and magnetic fields, but doesn't definitively prove that one causes another.
_________LIKEABLE LINKS_________
Backupify
Secure online backup and archiving for web services
Hunch
Hunch gives customized recommendations and gets smarter the more you use it.
TinEye Reverse Image Search
SCTP for Beginners
_________QUESTIONABLE QUESTION_________
If the universe is constantly expanding, why does it always take me exactly 26 minutes to walk to work every day?
_________QUOTABLE QUOTE_________
The most successful people are those who are good at plan B.
~ James Yorke
_________TRIVIAL TRIVIA_________
Which sense is the last to die?
When a person dies, hearing is generally the last sense to go. The first sense lost is usually sight. Then follows taste, smell, and touch.
Source: Arcamax Trivia
_________LAUGHABLE LAUGH_________
A magician was walking down the street, then he turned into a grocery store.
That's all for this week. Nybble is and will always be a work in progress. Please do send me your comments and suggestions on how to improve Nybble. Just hit the reply button to you know, reply.
