New Scientist reports on a robot powered by a slime mold:
They grew slime in a six-pointed star shape on top of a circuit and connected it remotely, via a computer, to the hexapod bot. Any light shone on sensors mounted on top of the robot were used to control light shone onto one of the six points of the circuit-mounted mould – each corresponding to a leg of the bot.
As the slime tried to get away from the light its movement was sensed by the circuit and used to control one of the robot's six legs. The robot then scrabbled away from bright lights as a mechanical embodiment of the mould. Eventually, this type of control could be incorporated into the bot itself rather than used remotely.
Zauner believes engineers will need to look towards this type of simple control mechanism, especially as components are scaled down. "On the nanoscale, we have to learn how to work with autonomous components," he says. "We have to let molecules do what they naturally do."
...via BoingBoing
From News@Nature:
Wikipedia is growing fast. The encyclopaedia has added 3.7 million articles in 200 languages since it was founded in 2001. The English version has more than 45,000 registered users, and added about 1,500 new articles every day of October 2005. Wikipedia has become the 37th most visited website, according to Alexa, a web ranking service.
But critics have raised concerns about the site's increasing influence, questioning whether multiple, unpaid editors can match paid professionals for accuracy. Writing in the online magazine TCS last year, former Britannica editor Robert McHenry declared one Wikipedia entry — on US founding father Alexander Hamilton — as "what might be expected of a high-school student". Opening up the editing process to all, regardless of expertise, means that reliability can never be ensured, he concluded.
Yet Nature's investigation suggests that Britannica's advantage may not be great, at least when it comes to science entries. In the study, entries were chosen from the websites of Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica on a broad range of scientific disciplines and sent to a relevant expert for peer review. Each reviewer examined the entry on a single subject from the two encyclopaedias; they were not told which article came from which encyclopaedia. A total of 42 usable reviews were returned out of 50 sent out, and were then examined by Nature's news team.
Only eight serious errors, such as misinterpretations of important concepts, were detected in the pairs of articles reviewed, four from each encyclopaedia. But reviewers also found many factual errors, omissions or misleading statements: 162 and 123 in Wikipedia and Britannica, respectively.
...via Smart Mobs
Papers that summarize other papers
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Learning can happen anywhere so they say...
At some time or other, Mic Rolph, a professional illustrator, received a The Millenium Award from The Royal Society and The British Association for the Advancement of Science. A limited number of these awards are designed to enable scientists to help advance the 'public understanding of science.' Cooperation with local institutions was mandatory, pubs were one of the examples listed, and thus the idea of science questions printed on beer mats, or the Pub Understanding of Science, was born.
Samples of beer mat science questions:
Each stereotype limits how we see scientists, what our views are of ‘how science is done,’ and how we critique and interact with the public process of progress and scientific research.
The Association for Science in the Public Interest
includes the following definition of 'public interest science' on their website: