Cell Phones, Microwaves And The Human Health Threat If there’s one topic likely to generate spit-flecked ire, it is the controversy over the potential health threat posed by cell phone signals. That debate is likely to flare following the publication today of some new ideas on this topic from Bill Bruno, a theoretical biologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The big question is whether signals from cell phones or cell phone towers can damage biological tissue. On the one hand, there is a substantial body of evidence in which cell phone signals have supposedly influenced human health and behaviour. On the other hand, there is a substantial body of epidemiological evidence that finds no connection between adverse health effects and cell phone exposure. What’s more, physicists point out that the radiation emitted by cell phones cannot damage biological tissue because microwave photons do not have enough energy to break chemical bonds. That’s been a powerful argument. This boils down to two factors.
A Computer Scientist in a Business School Fix reviews' grammar, improve sales - A Computer Scientist in a Business School I have been doing researchon the economicimpactofproductreviewsfor awhile. One thing that we have noticed is that the quality of the reviews can have an impact on product sales, independently of the polarity of the review. High-quality reviews improve product sales A well-written review tends to inspire confidence about the product, even if the review is negative. Typically, such reviews are perceived as objective and thorough. If we have a high-quality negative review this may serve as a guarantee that the negative aspects of the product are not that bad after all. In our recent (award-winning) WWW2011 paper "Towards a Theory Model for Product Search" (with Beibei Li and Anindya Ghose), we noticed that demand for a hotel increases if the reviews on TripAdvisor and Travelocity are well-written, without spelling errors; this holds no matter if the review is positive or negative. And what can we do knowing this? But here comes the twist... The crowdsourcing solution Ethical?
Linked data creates a new lens for examining the U.S. Civil War April 2011 marks the 150th anniversary of the first hostilities of U.S. Civil War, and museums, municipalities, historic sites, and schools are making their preparations for the events and exhibits to commemorate it. While, no doubt, times are tough for funding cultural heritage projects, there’s a lot of excitement around the sesquicentennial, making it a great opportunity for those exploring how technology can make history more interactive. It’s also a great opportunity to pursue linked data efforts across these museums and historic sites, in turn making this historical information more discoverable and interoperable. What opportunities does the sesquicentennial provide for museums, historical sites, data geeks, and developers? Scott Nesbitt: We’re in a time of remarkable collaboration across institutional barriers. How does linked data benefit the study of Civil War history? What are some of the new things we can learn thanks to this sort of approach? Related:
What Defines a Meme? What lies at the heart of every living thing is not a fire, not warm breath, not a ‘spark of life.’ It is information, words, instructions,” Richard Dawkins declared in 1986. Already one of the world’s foremost evolutionary biologists, he had caught the spirit of a new age. We have become surrounded by information technology; our furniture includes iPods and plasma displays, and our skills include texting and Googling. The rise of information theory aided and abetted a new view of life. Jacques Monod, the Parisian biologist who shared a Nobel Prize in 1965 for working out the role of messenger RNA in the transfer of genetic information, proposed an analogy: just as the biosphere stands above the world of nonliving matter, so an “abstract kingdom” rises above the biosphere. “Ideas have retained some of the properties of organisms,” he wrote. Ideas have “spreading power,” he noted—“infectivity, as it were”—and some more than others. Ideas cause ideas and help evolve new ideas. Ideas.
The Problems With ‘Platforms’ Posted: March 28th, 2011 | Author: Rob Goodspeed | Filed under: Social Networking, Technology | Tags: platforms, social construction theory, sociotechnical systems | 3 Comments » It seems that every day the word ‘platform’ becomes more ingrained in the way we think about online tools to do good and address public problems. The ubiquity of the term may be due to its fundamental ambiguity, which it shares with other terms like ‘sustainability’ and ‘participation.’ In an incisive article on the subject last year, Tarleton Gillespie analyzed how the word “platform” was used by major players like Flickr, YouTube, and Google. However, as we consider how to apply innovating online technologies for community engagement or governance activities, talk of ‘platforms’ can be troubling from another point of view as well. Discussions of sociotechnical systems argue humans are just as important as the technical artifacts.
The Politics of 'Platforms' Cornell University - Department of CommunicationMay 1, 2010 New Media & Society, Vol. 12, No. 3, 2010 Abstract: Online content providers such as YouTube are carefully positioning themselves to users, clients, advertisers, and policymakers, making strategic claims as to what they do and do not do, and how their place in the information landscape should be understood. Number of Pages in PDF File: 19 Keywords: platform, YouTube, Google, policy, discourse, distribution, video, copyright, Net neutrality, free speech, First Amendment Accepted Paper Series Suggested Citation Gillespie, Tarleton L., The Politics of 'Platforms' (May 1, 2010).
Why speed matters For the past several years I have been thinking about the role of speed in customer experience and business strategy. We live in an ever-accelerating world and the competitive terms of business are built upon achieving speed for many reasons. Here are just a few, from the obvious to the more speculative. Speed is our default setting Human beings live and operate in a constant state of now; we process extraordinary volumes of information in real time. The technology and processes around us are nowhere close to catching up — yet wherever they do, we see incredible value creation. Speed is money saved Walmart’s competitive advantage came from accelerating inventory information to near real-time throughout its supply chain. Speed is gratification delivered When I worked in e-commerce in the mid ’90s, we quantified the obvious: faster page load times equaled more revenue. Speed is loyalty earned Money is a metaphor for our use of time. Speed equals certainty, delay equals doubt Speed is a pain
Plugging water leaks with data Cities in the developed world lose between 10-30% of their drinking water through leaks. Water companies call this “non-revenue water” because they treat the water but cannot charge for it since it doesn’t reach the user. What water companies need is an efficient system that can collect and parse monitoring data so leaks can be found and repaired. Israeli startup TaKaDu aims to fill that niche with its water infrastructure monitoring service. In the following interview, TaKaDu’s VP of Marketing Guy Horowitz talks about how monitoring systems use data to plug these costly leaks. How much revenue is lost to leaks? Guy Horowitz: There are direct losses and indirect losses. Indirect losses are often higher than direct losses. Additional loss of revenue is associated with sub-optimized maintenance, like fixing the wrong infrastructure or replacing perfectly good pipes because of age and material, though they are not faulty at all. What types of data are available in a water network? Related:
View the iPad as a magazine opportunity, not a container As more magazines take advantage of the iPad’s popularity, one thing thus far has been clear: most publishers are simply reproducing their print products on the digital screen. In a recent interview, Matthew Carlson, principal of experience strategy and design at Hot Studio Inc., said established magazines are thus far missing the boat by producing iPad editions weighed down by bloated files, slow downloads and locked content: Magazines have traditionally thought of themselves as kind of a locked book, of a complete, discreet object. Ideally, something that is going to be really interactive or live out on the web needs to be more like an open book — like if you took the cover of the magazine and turned it outside in so that people could discover and access the stories more effectively. A screenshot from the Flipboard iPad app. Who’s doing it right? The magazines that are doing the best job right now wouldn’t be considered traditional magazines at all. Related: