Links!
Links for your reading pleasure.First off, after mentioning Piano Wizard a few weeks ago, I heard from Nicholas Piegdon, who is working on an open source program called Piano Hero. It's a very cool piece of work, and you can find out about it here.
Sirius sent me a link about a new design in CPU cooling by IBM. It's a very simple change that doubles cooling capabilities, and it's inexpensive as well. Read about it here.
Brian Witte sent me a link to a fascinating article about scientists adding a gene to the mouse genome to enable the mice to see in color. Here are a few details from Brian:
The surprise is that the mutant mice were able to perceive the world in color, despite it there having been 100 million years of evolution since the last mouse ancestor was able to see in color.
As an aside: Hawks refers to the mutation as a "knock-in", meaning that an entirely new gene was introduced to the genome. This term is a play on "knock-out", the more usual means of investigating gene function. In a "knock out mouse", a specific gene has been destroyed or inactivated (i.e. the gene was knocked out of the genome), and the mutant mouse is observed to see what effect (aka "phenotype") the absence of that gene has.
Read the full article here.
Geoffrey Engelstein sent me a link to an article in Wired about "hacking" the senses. Here's the prelude to the article:
See with your tongue. Navigate with your skin. Fly by the seat of your pants (literally). How researchers can tap the plasticity of the brain to hack our 5 senses — and build a few new ones.
The research discussed in the story is mind-blowing, and you can read about it here.
Leimkuehler, Jesse sent me a link to spectacular images of Jupiter's aurora. They put the Northern Lights to shame, and you can see them here.
Finally, Glen Haag sent me a link to a story about Amelia Earhart. A team of researchers is returning to a South Pacific atoll in hopes of proving that her plane crashed in the Gardner Islands. There's also been the discovery of a diary kept by an AP stringer who was onboard the Itasca as they tried in vain to communicate with Earhart during her last flight. Read all about it here.
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