Morph3ous’s Weblog

The University of Miami Medical School has long been performing cutting-edge research in the Miami area. Now it aims to bring much more research this way.
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The Miami Herald reports on Zach Gruskin. He is a 15 year old who is interning at the NOAA Hurricane Research Division on Virginia Key.

From the Miami Herald report:

One day last week, Zach led the daily tropical weather briefing at the research center, more than holding his own before nearly a dozen of the nation’s top hurricane researchers.

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New Scientist Premium- A fuel tank full of water:

Forget cars fuelled by alcohol and vegetable oil. Before long, you might be able to run your car with nothing more than water in its fuel tank. It would be the ultimate zero-emissions vehicle.

While water, plain old H2O, is not at first sight an obvious power source, it has a key virtue: it is an abundant source of hydrogen, the element widely touted as the green fuel of the future. If that hydrogen could be liberated on demand, it would overcome many of the obstacles that till now have prevented the dream of a hydrogen-powered car becoming reality. Producing hydrogen by conventional industrial means is expensive, inefficient and often polluting. Then there are the problems of storing and transporting hydrogen. The pressure tanks required to hold usable quantities of the fuel are heavy and cumbersome, which restricts the car’s performance and range.

I could not read any more of the article online as I do not subscribe. There is a synopsis of the article at Platinum Today. It turns out that the reaction between water and boron would release hydrogen and have a by-product of boron oxide. The boron oxide could then later be converted back.

The Tesla Roadster was recently unveiled. It is an electric sports coupe. I want one! (Well… if I had a much larger income) It goes 0-60 in around 4 seconds according to the company.

Autoblog produced a video of Tesla Motor’s Roadster:

Business 2.0: Chiquita cleans up its act - August 1, 2006

At first, Dave McLaughlin didn’t tell his bosses at Chiquita that he was talking to environmentalists, much less taking their suggestions. After all, the banana company’s executives so mistrusted the “greens” that meetings with them often turned into shouting matches.

“They would sit at opposite ends of the table,” McLaughlin says.

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The GPLv3 license is in the works. One of the provisions is to restrict software from using DRM. This, argues Linus Torvalds, is not the job of a license. He is against these new provisions. The article below goes on to defend the license.

I have been deeply against DRM for some time. Linus Torvald’s objection to the license really makes me think. He is the one who got the linux operating system going. I respect his point of view, and am not sure on which side of the fence I stand about the license itself. I am still against DRM.
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Many graphics drivers in linux are currently reverse-engineered. A lot of them only support 2d. Intel has open-sourced their graphics drivers for the 965 Express chipset family. Bravo, Intel. This will allow for computers with those graphics cards to take full advantage of the hardware.

Slashdot | Intel Open Sources Graphics Drivers:

“Intel’s Keith Packard announced earlier today that Intel was open sourcing graphics drivers for their new 965 Express Chipset family graphics controllers.

Treehugger: Lessons to Learn From BP’s Latest Misstep

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, the US will spend an additional $24 million per day on oil imports as a result of the increased prices that were prompted by the BP shutdown. The science-based nonprofit organization also determined that if all the cars and trucks on US roads gained one extra mile per gallon, the 400,000 barrels produced daily at Prudhoe Bay would be irrelevant.

The wisdom of the crowd is definitely a powerful force.

TheStar.com - Wikipedia handles Colbert:

…Colbert stated, if enough people alter the page on Wikipedia, it’s fact.

It should have been the biggest threat to the institution of Wikipedia to date. It was a condemnation of the site’s credibility. And it didn’t come from the Times, or from some retired political refugee from the Kennedy era.

It came from someone cool. Colbert, after all, has some serious credibility among the crowd who use and contribute to Wikipedia.

Within a day, Colbert’s report had hit some of the Net’s geek nerve centres, Slashdot.org and Fark.com. Wikipedia’s protection log was recording ongoing attempts at vandalism.

There was just one problem with the prank: Colbert was ultimately proven wrong.

Although the servers were tested, soon after Colbert began ranting about wikiality on his show, the encyclopedia had locked down the page on elephants and Colbert’s biography.

CNET News.com has written an article about protecting yourself from search engines. The piece is a fluff piece; however, does have some useful tips. I recommend that you read it.

This comes after AOL released the search records of users to the public.

FAQ: Protecting yourself from search engines | CNET News.com:

AOLs publication of the search histories of more than 650,000 of its users should reinforce an important point: What you type in online may not be as private as you think.

Search engines place a multibillion-dollar infrastructure at the hands of any random user who stops by their Web site. The price you pay, however, is that the company may hold on to your search queries–which can provide a glimpse into your life–forever.

To offer some suggestions about preserving your privacy while using search engines, CNET News.com has prepared the following list of frequently asked questions.