September Ideas and Innovation

Read the articles selected in September 2016

Burnt offering

Source: The Economist, 24 September

A team of archaeologists led by a computer scientist has succeed to read the Ein-Gedi scroll, a document turned out part of Leviticus that couldn’t be open until now because seriously damaged by fire.The technique that has been used combined technology, mathematical algorythms and craft.

The Paris climate agreement is now one step closer to reality

by Oliver Milman

Source: Wired, 22 September

Now 31 countries, representing 47.7 percent of global emissions, have formally signed up to the Paris deal. This climate agreement is too an innovation, because it compels to changement, realizing what once seemed impossible, and will be, after Kerry words, a story we will proud to tell the future generations.

Worldwide brain-mapping project sparks excitement –and concern

by Sara Reardon

Source: Scientific American, 22 September

US Under Secretary of State has announced at the United Nation’s General Assembly on September 19 the launch of the International Brain Initiative, that will attempt to gather and compare different areas of expertise in a global knowledge on the brain, with the creation of universal brain-mapping tools.

In a whole new light

Source: The Economist, 24 September

A technology that uses LED will be the new way of communicating. Li-Fi encodes messages in flashes of light, like in naval signal lamps, and can create a local –area network in a more secure way than using Wi-Fi, since light doesn’t pass through walls.

Bad Piggies is the best science game you didn’t know was about science

by Rhett Allain

Source: Wired, 15 September

Videogames have their physics. Objects moving in videogames show how physics works in concrete world. The most interesting part of this kind a lesson are the restrictions you have to deal with in creating experiments , just like in real science.

The design of Parliament has a funkadelic impact on politics

by Margareth Rhodes

Source: Wired, 15 September

A new book connects architecture to political process, observing the parliamentary halls of all 193 United Nations member states, instatiating that since the antiquity the seat layouts make a difference in the way decisions are taken. New designs could be necessary for changing political dynamics.

TV dinners

Source: The Economist, 17 September

Microsoft is developing technologies for a smart agriculture that uses sensors powered with solar panels and drones delivering data to farmers through Wi-Fi networks. This precision, hybrid agriculture is thought to help to feed a more and more increasing world population, but who will afford it in poor countries?

You say potato…

Source: The Economist, 17 September

The theory of arbitrariness of linguistic signs is questioned by a new study that observes in many words used for the same concepts across many different languages a commonality founded on deep reasons such sound symbolism or synaesthesia, aside from historical roots.

Oculus’virtual reality film Henry just won an Emmy

by Angela Watercutter

Source: Wired, 8 September

Henry, the story of a hedgehog and a birthday party, is an animated short in V.R. that has won an Emmy. This simple tale proves the narrative potential of Virtual Reality, and how different is the virtual experience from the view of a theatre spectator.

The next president will decide the fate of killer robots- and the future of war

by Heather M. Roff and P.W. Singer

Source: Wired, 6 September

Military research in robotics and artificial intelligence is moving a revolution in technology, forecasted by some science-fiction like Terminator. The upcoming United Nations Convention on Conventional Weapons will focus on what the norm of international behavior should be, but this is a pretty precarious field.

Top of the tree

Source: The Economist, 10 September

Wood is being rediscovered as material for tall buildings around the world, like the Tratoppen in Stockholm, and is being revalued for its sustainable, aesthetic, solidity and lightness qualities. The University of Cambridge is testing wooden materials for a 80-storey, 300 meter skyscraper in the City of London.

The power of learning

Source: The Economist, 20 August

Computers can be predictive and, crunching vast quantities of data, can give problem solutions to govenments. A chosen field of this kind predictions is criminal justice, but the risk of machine learning is to reproduce racial bias, then it must be a tool for human hands and human minds.

The mistery of how cancer cells barrel through your body

by Gabriel Popkin

Source: Wired, 27 August

Mechanical physics, in particular the concept of jamming applied to tumoral cells can help us undestand cancer and so can mechanical implications be not only a final effect of the the desease and its methastasis, but can direct biologic and genetic events.

Alzheimer’s treatment appears to alleviate memory loss in small trial

by Erika Check Hayden

Source: Nature, 31 August

Researchers are testing aducanumab, an antibody that brings hope to patients affected by Alzheimer, removing amyloid-β plaques at early stage of desease. The results experimented in 103 subjects seem confirm that the elimination of amyloid proteins might alleviate Alzheimer’s symptoms.

Meet the physicist searching for dark matter’s hidden light

by Joshua Sokol

Source: Wired, 2 September

Scientific experiments haven’t given until now any hard evidence of dark matter, but the open-source astrophysics data open a new era for important discoveries. Astrophysics can detect the luminous signals produced by particles responsible for the misterious matter.

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Pubblicato il : 03/10/2016
Modificato il : 07/12/2019

September Ideas and Innovation

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