Rock clocks help identify and date ore deposits

Reddish-brown crystals of a radioactive mineral called monazite can act as microscopic clocks that allow geologists to date earthquake faults, ore deposits and other rock formations altered by the action of high-temperature fluids....

FUTURE HUMANITY INSTITUTE

The Future of Humanity Institute aims to become humanity's best effort at understanding and evaluating its own long-term prospects. The Institute looks at how anticipated technological developments could affect the human condition. There are currently three broad research areas: human enhancement, global catastrophic risks, and methodological issues that arise in the study of big picture issues.

Constellation Program

Lockheed to Build Orion Crew Vehicle
Orion, America's spacecraft for a new generation of explorers

The new crew spacecraft will have more volume than the Apollo capsules, reducing development time, boosting stability, and permitting safe travel for up to six crewmembers.

Hubble's eye

Capture the extraordinary. Explore the universe through Hubble's eye, and witness the most dangerous, spectacular and mysterious depths of the cosmos.

The world's only truly INTERNATIONAL architecture magazine

The Architectural Review is the world's only truly international architecture magazine. Every month, it presents a wide-ranging vision of international design to architects and architectural students worldwide. It is a source of inspiration to thousands, providing subscribers with detailed and finely-illustrated reviews of architectural projects - from small to large, residential to commercial, all over the globe.

Solar-Powered Autonomous Underwater Vehicle

The solar-powered autonomous underwater vehicle (SAUV) is equipped with sensors for long-term observation of chemical and biological properties of lakes, rivers and coastal oceans. Important applications include environmental monitoring and security and defense systems.

Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge 2006

Science and the National Science Foundation are pleased to announce the winners of the fourth annual Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge. The links on this page will take you to articles describing the accomplishments of the creative and gifted scientists, artists, and others who put the winning entries together, as well as an online slide presentation that showcases the competition's winners and honorable mentions. All material is freely available for all site visitors.

Some of science’s most powerful statements are not made in words. From the diagrams of DaVinci to Hooke’s microscopic bestiary, the beaks of Darwin’s finches, Rosalind Franklin’s x-rays or the latest photographic marvels retrieved from the remotest galactic outback, visualization of research has a long and literally illustrious history. To illustrate is, etymologically and actually, to enlighten.

You can do science without graphics. But it’s very difficult to communicate it in the absence of pictures. Indeed, some insights can only be made widely comprehensible as images. How many people would have heard of fractal geometry or the double helix or solar flares or synaptic morphology or the cosmic microwave background if they had been described solely in words?

Introduction to VRML 2.0

VRML stands for virtual reality modeling language


VRML is:
A text file format
A simple language for describing 3-D shapes and interactive environments
A web standard

Colourful beginning for humanity

Evidence is emerging from Africa that colours were being used in a symbolic way perhaps 200,000 years ago, a UK scientist working in the region claims.

Public 'needs to drive science'

Views are wanted on emerging areas of science and technology
A new project funded by the UK government aims to give the public a chance to drive science policy.

'Oldest' New World writing found

Ancient civilisations in Mexico developed a writing system as early as 900 BC, new evidence suggests.

The Hidden Pattern

The Hidden Pattern
A Patternist Philosophy of Mind
Ben Goertzel
ben@goertzel.org

The Hidden Pattern presents a novel philosophy of mind, intended to form a coherent conceptual framework within which it is possible to understand the diverse aspects of mind and intelligence in a unified way. The central concept of the philosophy presented is the concept of “pattern”: minds and the world they live in and co-create are viewed as patterned systems of patterns, evolving over time, and various aspects of subjective experience and individual and social intelligence are analyzed in detail in this light.

Web Journals

Advertisers circle realm of blogging
Web journals could become the next marketing frontier

Computers write news at Thomson

First it was the typewriter, then the teleprinter.
Now a US news service has found a way to replace human beings in the newsroom and is instead using computers to write some of its stories.

Thomson Financial, the business information group, has been using computers to generate some stories since March and is so pleased with the results that it plans to expand the practice.