CUTE STUFF

International Children’s Day

May 30th, 2007

A group of Chinese kindergarten children perform at a show as part of the week-long celebrations leading up to the International Children’s Day on 01 June, in Shenyang, northeast China’s Liaoning province on 29 May 2007.

People release balloons during the 5th International Missing Children’s Day on 25 May 2007 at the Champs de Mars in Paris. “The main purpose of the International Missing Children’s Day is to encourage the population” and “to spread a message of hope and solidarity on an international scale to parents without any news of their children”.

Microsoft Surface - multi-touch table

Microsoft is showing off their multi-touch table "Surface" complete with RFID, wireless, sensors and a whole lot of other things (watch the Popular Mechanics video on how it works)... You can't buy one, but they will be appearing in a couple casinos and some stores to demo... Link.

More:

• Surface computing - Link.
• Surface @ on10 - Link.

Related:

• Multitouch table experiment - Link.
• Multi-Touch Interaction Research (video) - Link.
• The Future of Interfaces Is Multi-Touch - Link.
• LED Touch sensor - Link.

Microsoft unveils table computer

Microsoft has unveiled a new touch-sensitive coffee table-shaped computer called "Surface".

Designed to do away with the need for a traditional mouse and keyboard, users can instead use their fingers to operate the computer.

Also designed to interact with mobile phones placed on the surface, Microsoft says it will initially sell the unit to corporate customers.

These will include hotels, casinos, phone stores and restaurants.

'Multi-touch'

So-called "multi-touch" interfaces - which allow the user to move several fingers on a screen to manipulate data, rather than relying on a mouse and menus - have been making waves in tech circles for some time.

We envision a time when surface computing technologies will be pervasive, from tabletops and counters to the hallway mirror Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer

One of the most hotly-awaited examples is Apple's iPhone, which is scheduled to be released in June.

Hewlett-Packard has also been looking at expanding multi-touch technology, in addition to leading research scientists such as Jeff Han of New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences.

With a 30-inch screen, Surface will initially sell for between $5,000 and $10,000 (£2,525-£5,050).

However, Microsoft said it aimed to produce cheaper versions for homes within three to five years.

'Multi-billion dollar'

"We see this as a multi-billion dollar category, and we envision a time when surface computing technologies will be pervasive, from tabletops and counters to the hallway mirror," said Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer.

Microsoft says small groups of people will be able to use each Surface machine simultaneously.

They will be first deployed in November in Sheraton hotels, Harrah's casinos, T-Mobile stores, and numerous restaurants.

The computer giant has had a mixed record recently with new consumer products.

While its Xbox games console has been a success, its Zune music player continues to lag far behind Apple's iPod.

'Living' cyborg chip stores rudimentary memories

The journey to pack more (proverbial) internal storage into the human brain has been going on for years, but a recent development at Tel-Aviv University could actually bring us one step closer to storing rudimentary memories on a manmade device. Reportedly, a new experiment has shown that it is indeed possible to store said memories "in an artificial culture of live neurons," which is a fairly significant step towards the "cyborg-like integration of living material into memory chips." Essentially, Itay Baruchi and Eshel Ben-Jacob carefully examined the firing patterns of a sea of electrodes and found that they could "deliberately create additional firing patterns that coexist with the spontaneous patterns." These forced patterns could theoretically represent simple memories stored in the neuron network, and after giving it a go on their own, they were able to see "memory patterns" persist for over forty hours in a homegrown concoction. Of course, the duo isn't likely to stop before producing "the first chemically operated neuro-memory chip," and while we could all use a longer train of thought every now and then, the studies could also "help neurologists to understand how our brains learn and store information."

Turning off gene makes mice smarter

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Turning off a gene that has been associated with Alzheimer's disease made mice smarter in the lab, researchers said on Sunday in a finding that lends new insight on learning and may lead to new drugs for memory problems.

They said these mice were far more adept at sensing changes in their environment than their mouse brethren.

"It's pretty rare when you can make an animal smarter," said Dr. James Bibb, assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, who led the study published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

Bibb and colleagues used genetic engineering techniques to breed mice that could be manipulated to switch off Cdk5, a gene that controls production of a brain enzyme linked to diseases marked by the death of neurons in the brain, such as Alzheimer's.

"Any time we're losing neurons, Cdk5 may be contributing to that process. That has made it an area of great interest," Bibb said in a telephone interview.

"We have shown that we can turn off a gene in an adult animal. That has never been done before," he added. When they had tried to breed mice that completely lacked the gene, the pups died at birth.

Bibb said they put the mice though a series of tests and found the altered mice did better than normal mice.

"Everything is more meaningful to these mice," he said. "The increase in sensitivity to their surroundings seems to have made them smarter."

Bibb said the mice were better at tasks based on associated learning, Bibb said.

"It's the most important kind of learning in the animal kingdom. It's how we know where our car is and that is our wife or our husband and that's our kids. It's how we connect things," he added.

The smart mice were better at learning to navigate a water maze and remembering that they got a shock when they were in a certain cage.

"It was very clear right off the bat that the loss of Cdk5 made them have a much stronger associative memory," Bibb said.

"What was really interesting is they not only remembered better, but the next day, if you put them back in those same circumstances, they noticed they were not getting shocked."

Bibb said his work was inspired by the 1999 discovery of "Doogie" mice, a smarter breed of mice developed at Princeton University that were named after the TV program "Doogie Houser," a show that featured a child prodigy.

Those mice were bred by manipulating NR2B, a gene that also plays a role in associative memory.

"It turns out Cdk5 was controlling the regulation of NR2B," Bibb said.

"Maybe by finding these new mechanisms we can find new drugs that improve the cognitive performance of people who have deficits."

He and colleagues are working on developing drugs that could create the same effect without the need for genetic alteration.

"There are other cases -- in post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction and depression -- where we may want to modulate memory not so much to improve it, but to selectively modify it to remove the negative memories that are causing the problems. I think that has a lot of potential," Bibb said.

However, he said the long-term effects are not yet clear.

"If all of your (brain) synapses were magically strengthened all the time, that might be good for the short term, but I'm not sure if it would be good all the time," he said.

One Laptop Project:

I’ve kept an eye on the One Laptop Per Child project since its inception, and I’ve been tempted to comment on its virtues since Nicholas Negroponte began the push to create sub-$100 laptops to distribute to children in Third World economies.

The latest news on the project — that Negroponte is irked with Intel for launching a $200 system to compete with his own AMD-based machine, which now carries a $170 price tag — really shouldn’t surprise anyone. Certainly, as Negroponte contends, Intel is not going to let AMD do anything without answering. Government contracts, even for sub-$200 mobile devices, are just too enticing to pass up for a big vendor.

I don’t know whether to think Negroponte’s reaction is based purely on ego, as blogger Om Malik suggests:

…since this seems to be a mission of charity (and not a play for Nobel Peace Prize), Negroponte should be happy that others are willing to follow his lead, and get more of these frankendevices into the hands of more and more kids.

I’m more inclined to believe that any incursion of the free market into what has been essentially a Socialist test-bed project from the start would just gall the guy who started it, on an intellectual level if nothing else.

That’s understandable, I suppose, but it’s also pretty much how the free market works. People grow on your ideas. Unless you want to go to the dark side and get something as loathsome as a patent — not that you could patent the idea of a really cheap laptop — folks are going to compete with you using stuff that looks pretty much like your own stuff.

I’ve wondered from the start why Negroponte and others interested in bringing technology to kids who can’t otherwise afford it haven’t launched a program by which they sell their sub-$200 devices to schools in the U.S., Britain and other G8 economies for, say, $325, and apply the excess — I won’t say “profit” — toward getting the devices into the hands of Third World kids. Lord knows all schools, including those in the richest countries, would jump at the chance to put a capable computing device into the hands of students at that price point. And educators would embrace the social upside of such a program.

The free market doesn’t always have to be evil. Toyota actually does charge money for the hybrid Prius.

This could ultimately extend to the consumer market, as well — that crank-powered battery sounds pretty cool.

Negroponte finally said last month that he would consider selling the machines to U.S. schools at a higher price point, but his statement didn’t make it clear whether this shift would specifically benefit Third World kids. It could offset the cost to those governments (good), it could simply help OLPC make its initial order volume to move into production this September (OK), or it could just just make AMD and other providers a little happier (not so bad, but not noble).

In reading up on the latest OLPC spat — fueled by a 60 Minutes report this weekend — I am increasingly disenchanted by the basic assumption that the biggest problem faced by kids in the Third World is poor access to the Internet. It’s fashionable — and admittedly hopeful — to think that knowledge is the key to changing the world. History shows that clean water and food are probably a little more critical, at least in setting a baseline where learning can take place.

Even in the richest countries, including the U.S., educators will tell you that nutrition programs are more critical than technology access in educating the poorest kids.

Stan Beer at ITWire notes today that OLPC laptops will be given to kids in economies where it’s likely they will be stolen or sold on the black market for food and other essentials. It’s not evil — it’s just desperate.

It seems to me that instead of griping about Intel, Negroponte could put market pressure on the giant — and his own initiative — to use the free market to not only provide kids with laptops, but also secure learning centers at their schools where they can share the machines without fear of theft, by others or their own families.

Dell PCs with Ubuntu Are A Little Less Expensive

Contrary to many earlier reports, it turns out that Dell's prices for its Ubuntu PCs are cheaper than similar Windows Vista PCs for all three Models. Ars Technica reports: 'So it turns out that not including Windows saves the consumer $50 from the regular list price. This amount is not too far off from what a large OEM like Dell would pay for a volume discount for Windows Vista Home Basic (the regular OEM price is about $95). Many value PC sellers try to make up for the cost of a Windows license by bundling demo and trial versions of software such as AOL (affectionately known as "crapware"), for which they receive money from software companies looking to increase their distribution levels. Dell is no exception to this practice, although on their web site it allows customers to select the option of not including various applications.' For direct comparisons, Nat Tuck of Umass-Lowell has put together a simple page showing prices for Ubuntu and Windows-based PCs."