IBM is developing a pretty clever search engine named WebFountain. The engine indexes the web in a similar way as typical search engines do, but additionally uses automatic annotation modules that “makes sense” of the meaning of the indexed documents. Sadly for us nerds, they don’t plan to make this a public search engine, but rather a tool for data analysts and research companies, paying substantial amounts for access to the engine. But this is certainly one of the hints that search engines are becoming a smarter breed (see also Google’s Director of technology’s comment here in Wired’s 2004 predictions).
– A Fountain of Knowledge
Author: Hjalmar Gislason
New Year, New Features
Happy new year everybody! To celebrate the new year I made some minor changes to the Wetware site. Most notable is the Trendwatch section.
Instead of posting the news links I find once a week, I will be sending them directly to the Trendwatch as I come across them. There should be a couple of new links there several times during the week. Trendwatch also has its own RSS feed so you can subscribe to it separately from the more lengthy articles that will still keep coming at a similar rate as before.
Thanks for reading Wetware last year and please keep sending me tips about interesting stuff that could make good articles or Trendwatch links.
Teaching Kids Media Literacy
A thought provoking article from Technology Review about teaching kids to understand and deal with the media that is involved in their lives on all levels.
– Media Literacy Goes to School (subscription required)
Scientists Have Found That Scientists Are Often Wrong
I tend to be very skeptical about news articles where the headline reads: “Scientists have found that…”. Too often the scientist or researchers involved aren’t even named and there is no way of digging in further to see if it was indeed professional scientific work that led to the conclusion.
This is especially annoying as research that makes headlines is usually negative and or contradictory stuff: something may cause cancer, something contradicts common beliefs, something radically new has been discovered or invented. And these are exactly the research findings that are most likely to be wrong. The criticism that may follow the new discoveries hardly ever makes the news so the public sits up with the headline as THE TRUTH and never learns that the research was fundamentally flawed or the “scientist” was actually a fabulation of a reporter at “The News Of The World”.
Continue reading
Colors Used to Speed Neural Networks
Researchers from the University of Tokyo are using light with different wavelength to encode information to speed up information transfer in neural networks.
– Colors expand neural net
Robots and Humans Play Soccer Together
A research team from Carnegie Mellon University is exploring man-robot interaction by programming robots to play a special kind of soccer on teams with both human and robot players playing together.
– Bots, humans play together
Vibrating Gel Mimicks Animal Locomotion
A strip of gel on a vibrating plate can be made to mimic three types of animal style locomotion.
– Gels Gain Life-Like Motion
NASA Helps Biologists in Chameleon Research
NASA teams with biologists to predict the geographic distribution of 11 known chameleon species in Madagascar. The model also helped lead to discovery of 7 previously unknown chameleon species.
– NASA Helps Forecast Reptile Distributions In Madagascar
Robot Does Forest Research
A solar-powered robot helps scientists monitoring environmental changes in forests.
– ‘Robot Tarzan’ helps forest work
How the Brain Predicts Other People’s Actions
An article in Nature suggests that the brain actually simulates another person’s brain processes when trying to predict their actions.
– A system in the human brain for predicting the actions of others
hjalli.com - Hjálmar Gíslason 