Wallops Island had its first big commercial launch last week. I see the spaceport as one of Virginia’s key assets for the future. Here’s Jack Kennedy’s op ed in the Richmond Times Dispatch, I agree with him.
Poets can be fraudsters too….
Apparently misconduct is not just limited to scientists, watch out for the poets! Story here. Money quote:
In poetry, at least, everyone agrees it’s not about the money. “One of the hardest things is that the stakes in poetry are not very high,” Kocher said. “I’m not a rocket scientist. I’m not going to cure cancer with one of my poems. I don’t get paid an extraordinary amount of money, and I don’t have any great notoriety outside of the writing community. So to take something that most people engage in as an act of joy and sully it this way—it just seems one of the most egregious offenses.”
IBM’s new cognitive computing business unit…
There are a lot of good stories on this. A good summary at The Economist, here. I’m particularly interested in the notion of cognitive computing. On the one hand, Watson looks to me to be a version of strong AI, using conventional high performance computing to drive an expert’s expert system. On the other hand, there are host of folks (including Dharmendra’s group out at IBM Almaden) who are using neurally-inspired architectures with an aim towards a new version of cognitive computing whereby the machine computes in ways that are like the way the human brain does. This latter approach is more interesting to me if only for its incredible efficiency (20 watts of energy in to power a human mind).
The hazards of neuroX in k-12…
Popular neuroscience myths are now considered a risk to k-12 education in the UK, story here. Money quote:
“Teachers have a very enthusiastic attitude towards the brain, but there’s no neuroscience in teacher training at the moment and that makes teachers a little bit vulnerable to the very skilled approaches of entrepreneurs in selling products that are supposedly brain-based but actually are not very scientific in their basis and have not been properly evaluated in the classroom,” warned Dr Paul Howard-Jones, a leading expert on the role of neuroscience in educational practice and policy at the University of Bristol.
Going long on Alaska wheat….
Story here. Short version: Monsanto just invested $1B in Climate Corporation and the purchase raises interesting questions.
Wind chill hype…
Story is here. I’ve always thought there was something fishy about breathless wind-chill reports. And yes, it is chilly here in DC. But science goes on…all the same.
Soros on the state of the global economy…
His op-ed is here. Short version: Japan possibly emerging from lost decade, Europe repeating old mistakes, US humming on all cylinders and China at a cross-roads. Well worth the read.
Colorado and Washington have options…
This report in SCIENCE provides evidence that the steroid precursor pregnelone can act to prevent marijuana intoxication. Interestingly there appears to be a feedback loop, THC-mediated activation of the CB-1 Receptor results in an increase in pregnelone synthesis which subsequently can inhibit CB-1.
The authors suggest pregnelone as a possible treatment for marijuana “intoxication and addiction”.
Discoverers and Discoveries 