 | 8ight is a guy from Copenhagen, Denmark.
For the discerning net surfer: Proxomitron plus filters, best surf is achieved after a click on the The Rainforest Site (1 click = 1mē) |
 - Le Magazine, January 2006 - Report: How Carnosine Protects Against Age...
 Jan 31, 2006 1:23pm  (1 review) lef, glycation, carnosine, cross-linking http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2006/jan2...
Carnosine; Anti-Glycation & Longevity Agent?
In this article by LEF a wide range of the features of the dipeptide is reviewed, it's chief claim to fame is it's anti-glycation mechanism (glycation is a 'browning' reaction (actually exactly the same one that happens when you bake a cake in the oven) between proteins and sugars that causes proteins to cross-link with each other and become more or less useless at fulfilling their various original functions) alongside with the fact that it also appears to be a brilliant anti-oxidant. M. Semyonova et al, stated in one of the earlier reports on Carnosine: "... the question '"How could such a small molecule have such profound effects?'" remains unanswered" (source). Well, it seems we're starting the answering process, and everything so far is looking rather good.
- Rock On, Rock ON! : The Bill Dan Rock Balancing Gallery
- Jan 29, 2006 6:41am
 (37 reviews) arts, gallery, zen, rock-balancing, rocks http://www.rock-on-rock-on.com/gallery-r...
Rock Balancing; A Zen Promoting Activity
Rock balancing is totally a very scientific zen dicipline so the reader will want to view the Balancing Point video to fully appreciate the sweetness involved in the process of balancing these stones.. You see, in the videos presented on Bill's site it appears that rock balancing is normal forward procedure - but after seeing Balancing Point one will realize that subtle space-time manipulation is needed to balance these objects of, apparently inert, matter. Awesome site & activity. ;)
- http://istresults.cordis.lu/index.cfm/section/news/tpl/article/BrowsingType...
- Jan 26, 2006 1:32am (1 review) ai, research, agents, agentlink http://istresults.cordis.lu/index.cfm/se...
Agent Based Computing
This article contains a brief review of a, recently released, roadmap (worth reading; very nice overview of the whole history and context of the agent phenomena) from Agentlink.org (a European agency that specializes in the commercial application of agent-based computing at large). An "agent" in computational terms refers to a piece of software that is able to make autonomous decisions based on its input - in the context of the report this would refer to partly decentralized AI cost-benefit optimization of various semi-industrial conglomerates (..). However, when this technology matures further there are much more interesting things on the horizon - for an example one could imagine (like Charles Stross does in his novel "Accelerando") a swarm of personal agents that could track down research from strings of information feed to them by e.g. a computer user - this would effectually leave the main CPU (the brain) to do more creative/challenging tasks.. and bring the idea of willfully hyperthreaded consciousness conspicuously close! Interesting stuff, I'm personally happy to learn that the commercial sphere already has working implementations of this technology; it will, hopefully, greatly accelerate the progress of the field.
- IEMA - Sweden Plans on Being the First Country in the World to be Free...
- Jan 25, 2006 1:31pm (7 reviews) oil, renewable-energy, sweden, fossil-fuel, 2020 http://www.iema.net/news/envnews?aid=112...
Sweden Sets 2020 As Expiry Date For Fossil Fuel
Sweden's Minister for Sustainable Development Mona Sahlin recently stated: "Sweden will stop using oil by 2020 and eventually the energy supply of the country will be based on renewable energy only. The goal is to gradually rid the country of gasoline-run cars and oil-heated homes" (source). However, the real news here is that "The Swedish Parliament gave unanimous approval to 15 national [environmental] targets including a phasing out of all use of hazardous chemicals by 2020". The article is very informative in that it actually gives details as to political progress in the field..etc. And yes, we do need this development!
- French Press Brewing Instructions from Sweet Marias
- Jan 20, 2006 12:32pm (2 reviews) coffee, coffee-brewing, brewing, french-press http://www.sweetmarias.com/brewinstr.fre...
A Fetish Like Guide To French Press Coffee
So yeah, this guide is neat, point based, and, more importantly, very simple to understand and make use of. Good stuff for the occasional, or frequent, coffee taker.. also, it be healthy, to some extend anyways ;)
- In the minds eye: How the brain makes a whole out of parts
- Jan 19, 2006 12:51pm (6 reviews) neuroscience, neurons, emergence, shape-fragments, visual-cortex http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2...
Visual Pattern Recognition Emergence
So, first of all, thanks to Nutmeg for passing the goods! On to content: this page contains a abstract of a report recently published by Ed Connor from Johns Hopkins University on how neurons in visual cortex somehow, through a process of what I would term neural emergence, within milliseconds, manages to go from perceiving only fragments of a given visual input through a state of shape recognition and finally into providing the brain with more or less full "internal representation" of the object, or scene, in question. Very interesting stuff.. a recommendable pop science book on the general subject would be "Mind Wide Open" by Steven Johnson.
- ArtRage 2
- Jan 18, 2006 3:05am (3 reviews) software, drawing, painting, art, artrage http://www.artrage.com/artrage.html
Draw /& Paint With Your Computer
ArtRage is a very smoothly engineered piece of software; it has a very wide range of funtionality & can be mastered within minutes (that is not to say that one may master drawing within minutes, just the program interface, sorry...) despite its novel use of the GUI. Best of all it weighs in at only 1.6MB for their latest win32 distribution (OS X version also available) - very minimalistic for a piece of software that emulates oil paint, chalks, crayons, felt pens, palette knife & pencil drawing + a very cool feature that I haven't seen before in software; virtual tracing paper! Acquired the link from Scott Hanselman's Links Page, which may be worth a look if your into programming on the windows platform.
- http://www.songtapper.com/s/tappingmain.bin
- Jan 18, 2006 2:28am (77 reviews) music, tap, rhythm, song-search, tapping http://www.songtapper.com/s/tappingmain....
Find Songs By Tapping Your Space Bar
Yes, this thing is just really cool: tap a rhythm of any song and it'll (in theory) list it moments after (again.. that is in theory, cause their server seems rather clogged, probably because someone digg'ed it recently)! As to the succesrate; it got my feeble tapping of an old euro techno thing by 2 Unlimited (don't ask) right but miserably failed the Alabama Song by The Doors.. so much for taste.
- http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060116-5986.html
- Jan 16, 2006 12:41pm (1 review) computer-hardware, seagate, perpendicular-storage, harddisks http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/200...
Perpendicular Storage For (Notebook) Harddisks
Arstechnica brings us this rather delicate little piece of nfo that reports on something as rare as a technology that is actually poised to affect what's in the stores more or less straight away: Perpendicular storage should have replaced the old methods of harddisk manifacturing by the end of 2006 - and the tech is already for sale in the form of a new 160GB 2.5 inch notebook harddrive from Seagate. Looks like both mobile harddisks & cpus (Yonah..etc.) are about to leap forward this year!
- Face value | St Lawrence of Google | Economist.com
- Jan 12, 2006 3:29pm (2 reviews) google, larry-page, page-rank, turing-test, deus-ex-machina http://www.economist.com/business/displa...
Glimpse Into Google
Well, this article is actually a bit of a drag (since it's essentially slim on details concerning its own topic..), but.. I still like the suggestion made by the author; of Google having some semi-secret agenda of building a distributed deus ex machina that will, at least, pass the Turing test ;). For more serious pondering on what the big G is up to it might be worth reading Google-Mart by Robert X. Cringely.
|