Seagate new to solid-state drive market

Solid-state drives are generally faster than hard-disk drives, particularly at retrieving data, and have won limited acceptance in the laptop market. Seagate, however, is targeting the more lucrative and potentially larger server market and will compete with likes of Intel, Micron Technology, Samsung, and STEC.

Seagate’s first salvo in the market is the new Pulsar drive, which is designed for blade computers and general server applications and offers up to 200 gigabytes of capacity based on the industry-standard Serial ATA interface.

Though pricier than hard-disk drives, the key dollar metric for solid-state drives in the server market is IOPS, or input/output operations per second. The more IOPS a large bank, for example, gets from a server equipped with solid-state drives, the more cost-effective the technology can be compared with hard-disk drives.

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BOINC Project Takes On Swine Flu

May 12, 2009
By Paul Shread
IBM (NYSE: IBM) and the University of Texas Medical Branch are using IBM’s World Community Grid to test drug candidates for drug-resistant influenza strains and new strains, such as H1N1.Researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) will use Big Blue’s “virtual supercomputer” to identify the chemical compounds that appear most likely to stop the spread of the influenza viruses and then begin testing them under laboratory conditions. The computational screening would take thousands of years of computer time, but will be compressed into just months using the World Community Grid. About 10 percent of the drug candidates are expected to show antiviral activity and move on to further testing. The University of Texas researchers are also using the World Community Grid for research projects involving dengue fever and West Nile diseases. “Because of the experience we gained with our dengue drug project running on World Community Grid, we expect to identify new influenza drug candidates to test in less than a month,” stated Stan Watowich, lead researcher and associate professor of biochemistry at UTMB. “World Community Grid gives us the computational power to undertake projects that are typically quite daunting. We can move from computer calculations into laboratory testing more quickly and with a sharper focus. “The joint project, “Influenza Antiviral Drug Search,” will use the computer power of more than a million devices from more than 400,000 individuals who donate their unused computer time for humanitarian and medical research.

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Young innovators are changing everything from theoretical mathematics to cancer therapy.

Many of the great mathematicians of our era probably scored a perfect 800 on the math section of their SATs. Terence Tao squeaked by with a 760—when he was 8 years old.

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Want a great job? Stick with math.

It’s often been said that math is an opportunity gateway. After all, some of the best jobs out there require degrees that have the higher maths. Having said that, an interesting trend that’s been emerging is that more and more there’s a growing need in jobs that require statistics. With the growing need for research comes the growing need for analyzing data; usually for improvement.  A background in stats is a grad’s best friend!

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Seth Godin on creating a movement

Seth Godin talks on TED.com about how to create a movement and change the world.

“Who exactly are you upsetting?  Because  if your not upsetting anyone, then you are not changing the status quo.”  - Seth Godin

Click on the link below to watch the video.

http://bit.ly/aGYcx

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Floating wind turbine tested in Norway

The world’s first full-scale floating wind turbine, the so-called Hywind, has been installed, 10km southwest of Karmoy, Norway.

The floating structure consists of a steel jacket filled with ballast. This floating element will extend 100 meters beneath the surface and will be fastened to the seabed by three anchor piles. The 2.3-MW turbine, which will be mounted on a 65 metre tower on the platform, is manufactured by Siemens. Technip built the floating elements and will be in charge of the offshore installation. Nexans will install the cable to shore and Haugaland Kraft will be responsible for the landfall.The wind turbine is designed to be placed at ocean depths of between 120 and 700 meters. A test period for the pilot installation is due to begin in the autumn of 2009 and will last for two years.

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SETI@home Celebrates 10 Years of Searching

SETI@home, the world’s largest and longest-running volunteer computing project, celebrates its tenth anniversary this month with 140,000 participants and 235,000 computers powering the search for intelligent signals from space.

No extraterrestrials have been found yet. But the project has continued to inspire and excite the public, and has spurred the development of dozens of similar volunteer computing projects.Launched May 17, 1999, SETI@home uses home computers to sift through radio data acquired from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. It is searching for a needle in an enormous haystack: A unique signal displaying the telltale signs of an intelligent source, hidden in the unrelenting electromagnetic noise coming from space. The project quickly attracted a worldwide following: Three months after its debut, 1 million people had signed up in 223 countries, running the screensaver software on home and work computers and in grade school classrooms, universities and even government offices.more… 

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Ideas about the future

Are you prepared to design the future?

Although many of us feel we can prepare for our future by thinking,
acting, and learning using present methods and values, nothing is farther
from the truth – especially in today’s rapidly changing world. A newborn
child enters a world not of his or her own making. Each succeeding
generation inherits the values, accomplishments, hopes, successes, and
failings of previous generations. And they inherit the results of the decisions
made by those generations.

For the hundreds of thousands of years of human existence when
technologies were simple or non-existent, this may have had little impact
on human life and the earth that sustains it. Each generation of hunters
and gatherers, then plowmen and pioneers, passed on tools to the next
generation to help them survive. Change from one generation to the next
was slow and hardly noticeable. In those days there was little
understanding of science and how things worked, and explanations were
not scientific.

This is no longer the case in today’s high-tech world where a change that
affects millions may happen in a matter of seconds. A child born today
inherits a world vastly different from that of its parent’s generation, let
alone that from centuries ago. Previous generations left a legacy of,
exploitation, occupation, and irrelevant values that present great
challenges, but also opportunities to the people of today.
The application of scientific principles, for better or worse, accounts for
every single advance that has improved people’s lives. Important
documents and proclamations have been issued granting rights and
privileges to members of societies, but at the heart of human progress – or
destruction – is the rock-solid foundation of science.

For generations past it was impossible to direct the future much beyond
the present moment, and forecasts of the future were based on nonscientific
methods. Prophets and sages presented visions of the future
based on dreams, hallucinations, religious fervor, divination of animal
parts, crystal balls, etc. Some may even have been accurate, but this was
more because of luck than because of any direct channel to the
supernatural.

Now satellites circle the globe beaming down information in fractions of a
second about everything that impacts our lives. This information is very
valuable for projecting weather patterns, high and low points, geological
hot and cold spots, where people live, and the warming of the planet. This
has given us, for the first time, the ability to monitor the health of the
planet, which many scientists see as in serious, if not critical, condition.
In a single day, trillions of bits of scientific data zip through cyberspace at
light-speed, making a high-tech civilization possible. While physical
science and technology silently direct much of the action, millions of
people around the globe still practice pseudo-science, using fortunetellers,
seers, and philosophers for their daily direction. Many world leaders
regularly consult psychics, mediums, and astrologers for guidance in
decisions that determine the fate of millions.

Present human activity and its consequences does not have to be
shaped by the needs and values of our ancestors. In fact, it must not be.
For instance, armed conflict between nations is still seen by many as the
only way to settle differences. It is especially promoted by those who profit
handsomely from the sale of armaments. This is now totally unacceptable
and dangerous because of war’s extreme human and environmental
costs.

A militant viewpoint is obsolete once we view the world as a whole
interrelated system with all its people as one family. Managing
accelerating changes in technology and managing ourselves require
new outlooks and approaches. This is now both necessary and possible
because of technological change.

These lessons are designed to challenge the reader to direct the future;
not just one’s own, but that of society in general; and not just for one’s
own generation, but for those to follow. Not only is science making it
possible, it is now vital.

Excerpt from “A Future By Design“.

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Re-Thinking Corporatocracy

By David Brin

Kent Pitman has posted a couple of interesting items on OpenSalon. One of them is “Fiduciary Duty vs. The Three Laws of Robotics” which contends that the modern corporation is exactly the wrong model for an intelligent, artificial organism, one whose feral amoral dedication only to stockholder value conflicts diametrically with all of the values that scholars and philosophers found attractive about Isaac Asimov’s famed “laws of robotics.”

Pitman raised interesting points. Still, I have to demure a little. Having served as the last author to channel Isaac — indeed the one to consolidate and tie together all of his loose ends (see Foundation’s Triumph), I became painfully aware of the flaws underlying the Three Laws — especially the fact that super-intelligent lawyers would be able to interpret them any way they liked. Indeed, there is an additional complaint against the corporate fiduciary law, and that is the way it so easily is hijacked by parasites, like a simple organism taken over by viruses.

We have seen this happen in the corporate world, when the top leadership clade in not just one company, but whole swathes of the corporatocracy, were taken over by a single cartel/ingroup of a couple of thousand cronies, who bent every rule or procedure to assist each other in cycles of parasitism that had nothing to do with maximizing stockholder value. Both deceitful and self deceiving at every level. this small cluster of golf buddies did everything that a cartel does — creating an artificial perception of “scarcity in managerial talent” that then allowed them to jack up prices for CEOs, directors and all other members of the cartel. Thus, what we are discussing is not an inherent flaw of capitalism, but a failure of our immune system to deal with a calamity that we already know about. A crime that is already on the books.

Any system that lends itself to parasitical predation so easily is flawed, not just in moral terms (Pitman’s point) but also in terms if simple Darwinistic common sense — the basis upon which capitalism was supposed to be more realistic and objective than socialism! Indeed, the failure of libertarianism to realize ANY of this is the overwhelming top reason why that movement has relegated itself to complete irrelevance, at a time when it might have had useful things to offer.

Another interesting Pitman perspective is “Rethinking Mega-Corporations” — I don’t agree on all levels. But it is part of the re-appraisal of corporate capitalism that’s badly needed… if we are to save and re-invigorate capitalism as an economic cornucopia.

http://open.salon.com/blog/david_brin

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Improved mental performance after meditation?

People who meditate say that the practice calms them and improves their performance on everyday tasks. There may be foundations of these benefits in the brain and immune system, a new study finds.Psychologist Richard J. Davidson of the University of Wisconsin - Madison and his colleagues studied 41 employees of a biotechnology company, 25 of whom completed an 8-week meditation program. The scientists measured brain wave activity in all participants before, immediately following, and 4 months after the meditation program. Volunteers also received an influenza vaccination at the end of the program and gave blood samples 1 month and 2 months later, enabling the researchers to assess the volunteers’ immune responses to the vaccine.Only the meditators exhibited increases in brain wave activity across the front of the left hemisphere, Davidson’s group reports in the July/August Psychosomatic Medicine. Earlier studies had suggested that this neural response accompanies both reductions in negative emotions and surges in positive emotions. The employees who took the course reported subsequent drops in negative feelings but no change in pleasant feelings.More…

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