Blogs

Introduction
Undergraduate research in computational science can facilitate and finance undergraduate educations.  With access to a University's resources, including an internet connection, undergraduates can analyse scientific data to find new connections.
This study closely follows a prior study, for reliability testing with old datasets and the potential to discover new understanding of the affect of caloric restriction with new datasets.  

This weekend, the BIL:PIL conference in San Diego will set healthcare free.  BIL:PIL is inspired by BIL, an unconference held annually in Long Beach, a grassroots mirror of the wildly popular TED conference series. 

BIL:PIL is about "people who are changing the landscape of healthcare through science, technology and public policy." 

For more information on BIL:PIL 2009, click this hyperlink.

In 'Athens' on the Net, Anand Giridharadas examines wikipolitics, web-facilitated mass collaboration in governance. Don Tapscott's book, Wikinomics, is a technologist's bible, extolling four virtues: openness, peering, sharing, and acting globally. When applied, through new technology, to political processes, these principles provide substantial opportunity for reshaping the role of an informed and active citizenry. Giridharadas acknowledges the promise of possibilities for user-generated government, but also raises concerns.

The following music video, by Tracy Hicks, elegantly reframes a masterpiece by American composer Phil Kline.

Watch the video before reading:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIDLIwlzkgY
 
The world is changing faster than we know. And that rate of change is increasing. Fantastic technologies of "the future" already exist today. I'm talking about:
 
nanotechnology:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1205610/Sting-kills-cance...
 
http://nanotechwire.com/news.asp?nid=8476
 
solar panels: 

Last Saturday, New York TImes reporter John Markoff covered a conference by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, held this February in Monterey Bay, California. 

The Federal IT Dashboard, launched this week, coordinates the Chief Information Officers of every government agency under  Vivek Kundra's new transparency standards. In his presser, he notes: "In making this data publicly available, we are providing unfettered access to investment performance to its true owners - the American people."  The Internet, above all, is a tool for connecting: people, ideas, organizations.  This site is a tool providing open access to information, that a new community may form to make use of this data.

Thanks to Gawker for the following gem: