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Sci Fi Channel Launches New Blog About Saving the World
The Sci Fi Channel has launched a new blog called How You Can Save the World. The blog focuses on issues of science, technology, education, climate change and the future. The blog has an impressive list of contributors that includes Virgin Group Sir Richard Branson, environmental futurist and game designer Jamais Cascio, former CIA director John Deutch, former NASA astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman, Sci Fi Channel President Dave Howe, renowned theoretical physicist Michio Kaku, Segway inventor Dean Kamen and many others.
Here's how the blog describes itself.
It doesn't take a company or a government to save the world (though, admittedly, it helps). People - individual people - are making a better future right now, and we've got a passel of the best. Brilliant minds from art to science, entertainment to architecture, government to technology and points in between are writing for SCI FI's new online blog, "How You Can Save the World". This blog site will bring you amazing ideas from the frontiers of innovation and help set forth first steps in helping solve some of the challenges we face today. Read it and join the conversation.
Here's a list of some of the interesting posts already on the blog.
Who stands to lose the most in the wake of nature's wrath?
We cannot let science and innovation fall by the wayside
The Next Technological Revolution Will Happen in Space
Opening Up New Horizons for Solar Energy, Not a Moment Too Soon
Future Possibilities for Space Exploration — Thoughts on Exploring Beyond Earth
Do We No Longer Believe in a Better Tomorrow?
This will be a blog to watch as new posts come in from top scientists, leaders and entrepreneurs. (via io9)
Posted on August 6, 2008
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IAEA Launches New Radiation Symbol
There's a new radiation symbol in town and it shows a person running away from dangerous radioactive waves. The red and black symbol also includes a skull and crossbones. The IAEA reported on their own launch of the symbol.
With radiating waves, a skull and crossbones and a running person, a new ionizing radiation warning symbol is being introduced to supplement the traditional international symbol for radiation, the three cornered trefoil.
The new symbol is being launched today by the IAEA and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) to help reduce needless deaths and serious injuries from accidental exposure to large radioactive sources. It will serve as a supplementary warning to the trefoil, which has no intuitive meaning and little recognition beyond those educated in its significance.
"I believe the international recognition of the specific expertise of both organizations will ensure that the new standard will be accepted and applied by governments and industry to improve the safety of nuclear applications, protection of people and the environment," said Ms. Eliana Amaral, Director, Division of Radiation, Transport and Waste Safety, IAEA.
The new symbol is aimed at alerting anyone, anywhere to the potential dangers of being close to a large source of ionizing radiation, the result of a five-year project conducted in 11 countries around the world. The symbol was tested with different population groups - mixed ages, varying educational backgrounds, male and female - to ensure that its message of "danger - stay away" was crystal clear and understood by all.
It is a scarier warning symbol than the old one.
Update 2-19-06: J-Walk has a funny explanation for the change: "My guess is that too many people were interpreting the old symbol to mean 'reel-to-reel tapes nearby.'"
Posted on February 17, 2007
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Museum Will be All About Water
Fox News has an article about a museum that hopes to open soon in New York called the New York Museum of Water.
"Water supports life in lakes, in mountains — mountains are large reservoirs or water," Asher Shomrone, founder and executive of the New York Museum of Water, said at a New York City event on March 22, World Water Day. "Our civilization is water. Life is water. We are water."
An opening date for the museum is less than, well, solid right now, as another $500,000 to $1 million will be needed to find a space in Manhattan, hire more than a skeleton staff and see to the basic needs of an institution, Shomrone says.
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So far, Shomrone has funded the preparations for the museum through private donations and money from friends and family. The museum itself is a program of the 1-BluePlanet Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing potable water to 250 million of the world's neediest people by 2015.
"We're right on watershed, as it were, about whether we're going to create a real viable future," said Johnanne Winchester, vice president of international alliances for the communications-coordination committee for the U.N.
Here is the mission of the New York Museum of Water:
We are on a mission to create entertainment centers that act as an ambassador for water, its protection, and our childrens future access to clean and ample water. Our purpose is to create the world's clearinghouse for all water related themes and to do it in an entertaining and accessible fashion that engages as wide an audience as possible and brings joy and wonder to peoples lives.
It sounds like it will be a very interesting and important museum. A website for the museum has been set up here.
Posted on May 30, 2006
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Many Kids Think Scientists are Not Normal
The BBC reports that a new study in London has found that many kids aged 11-15 don't consider scientists as "normal people."
The Science Learning Centre in London asked 11,000 pupils for their views on science and scientists.
Around 70% of the 11-15 year olds questioned said they did not picture scientists as "normal young and attractive men and women".
The study also found that some kids picture scientists as depressed people in white coats with big classes. There was some good news in that the kids thought the work was very important and that scientists are creative.
They found around 80% of pupils thought scientists did "very important work" and 70% thought they worked "creatively and imaginatively". Only 40% said they agreed that scientists did "boring and repetitive work".
Over three quarters of the respondents thought scientists were "really brainy people".
The research is being undertaken as part of Einstein Year.
Among those who said they would not like to be scientists, reasons included: "Because you would constantly be depressed and tired and not have time for family", and "because they all wear big glasses and white coats and I am female".
If the study is even slightly accurate then more needs to be done to teach kids about science and careers in science so that they picture scientists as more than just dull people in lab coats.
Posted on January 24, 2006
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Young Luke Uses Science to Solve Problems
Luke Shakespeare is only 11 but he has already won awards for math, science, photography and poetry. The Syndey Morning Herald says Luke's latest project was an investigation into how rock climbers can reduce muscle strains using goniometry.
Luke burst onto the science scene aged 8 and his CV is now two-pages long. For his latest experiment, he used goniometry (the science of measuring joints) to investigate how rock climbers can avoid muscle strains.
"I was rock climbing and my arms started to hurt," he said. "I was only climbing for three minutes. So I was like, 'How can you fix this?' Then we walked through St Vincent de Paul and I saw a book on goniometry." Luke studied rock climbers' positions, found correlations between repetitive movements, then designed a measuring device to work out how to reduce repetitive strains. If climbers were then educated about these strains and could use different movements, he concluded, they should be able to reduce tendon, ligament and muscle problems. The project won a national Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers' award.
The Herald also says Luke wants to be a basketball player and if that fails he will look into rocket science. With the kind of mind it sounds like Luke has it seems unlikely he will be able to avoid science.
Posted on October 4, 2005
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Bush Wants Creationism Taught in Science Class
The Media Cynic reports that President Bush wants intelligent design taught in science classes alongside evolution. Intelligent design is just a Christian right marketing spin on creationism. It would be an extremely bad idea to teach this in schools because not only does it force a religious belief on students but it also takes valuable time away from teaching science. The Washington Post also reports on Bush's announcement about intelligent design.
Much of the scientific establishment says that intelligent design is not a tested scientific theory but a cleverly marketed effort to introduce religious -- especially Christian -- thinking to students. Opponents say that church groups and other interest groups are pursuing political channels instead of first building support through traditional scientific review.
The White House said yesterday that Bush's comments were in keeping with positions dating to his Texas governorship, but aides say they could not recall him addressing the issue before as president. His remarks heartened conservatives who have been asking school boards and legislatures to teach students that there are gaps in evolutionary theory and explain that life's complexity is evidence of a guiding hand.
Posted on August 8, 2005
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World Too Bizarre For Humans to Comprehend?
Is the world too bizarre for humans to understand? The BBC reports that Professor Richard Dawkins opened up a the TEDGlobal conference by explaining that our world may be "too queer" to understand and the each generation creates its own reality to deal with the new information. He also said that quantum physics is beyond most human understanding.
Professor Dawkins' opening talk, in a session called Meme Power, explored the ways in which humans invent their own realities to make sense of the infinitely complex worlds they are in; worlds made more complex by ideas such as quantum physics which is beyond most human understanding.
"Are there things about the Universe that will be forever beyond our grasp, in principle, ungraspable in any mind, however superior?" he asked.
Events of 7/7 and 9/11 remind us that we do not live in three different worlds. We live in one world
Ashraf Ghani, former Afghan finance minister
"Successive generations have come to terms with the increasing queerness of the Universe."
Each species, in fact, has a different "reality". They work with different "software" to make them feel comfortable, he suggested.
Because different species live in different models of the world, there was a discomfiting variety of real worlds, he suggested.
Posted on July 14, 2005
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