Category: Technology
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Could the next generation of electronics be made with graphene?
While it may look like little more than molecular chicken wire, graphene really is wonderful stuff. A sheet of carbon atoms naturally forms into a geometrically perfect set of hexagons and, since it was first chemically synthesised in 2004, researchers across the world have been investigating its potential for uses in a wide variety of…
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Telecommunications and the NBN Infrastructure Revolution
According to the 2011 Deloitte Access Economics for Google report, The Connected Continent, the contribution of the Internet to the Australian economy is about $50 billion, or 3.6% of the national GDP, and this number has been increasing substantially and rapidly over the years [1]. This number also does not take into account huge savings…
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SoilMapp: one small step for apps one giant leap for soil science
Australia’s national soil databases can now be accessed in real time online through a new iPad app called SoilMapp. The new app provides open access to the best and most up-to-date information for soil at any location in the country within a matter of seconds. Information such as soil depth, acidity, salinity, soil carbon, soil…
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Internet Society: Global Internet User Survey Reveals Attitudes, Usage, and Behavior
A worldwide survey of more than 10,000 Internet users in 20 countries conducted by the Internet Society revealed attitudes towards the Internet and user behavior online. The Global Internet User Survey is one of the broadest surveys of Internet user attitudes on key issues facing the Internet. This year’s survey covered areas such as how…
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New Internet Exchange Point Launched 16 November in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo
[Washington, D.C. and Geneva, Switzerland] — A new Internet Exchange Point (IXP) was launched on 16 November in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The Kinshasa IXP (KINIX) was funded through the Internet Society’s Community Grants Programme and managed by the DRC ISP Association (ISPA-DRC), as part of its DRC-IX project, which aims to…
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Weekly Science Picks
Ah, the weekend! Time to kick back, relax, and look back over everything that’s happened over the past few days. And I’m rather happy to say that some quite interesting things have happened, including the Leonid meteor shower which peaked on Friday night (though if you step outside after dark and watch the sky, you…
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The Science Surrounding James Bond
Bond. Double Bond. That was a quip a lab partner of mine cracked during a sophomore chemistry class and I have not forgotten since. And it is a perfect lead in for this week’s post as I take you through the past and into a closer look with – The Science Surrounding James Bond. This…
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OKFN Australia Group re-launching again
The Open Knowledge Foundation is dedicated to promoting the creation, sharing and application of Open Knowledge in the Digital Age. Yesterday, a working group at OKFN Australia gathered data geeks from around the country. The opening the Australian chapter of the Open Knowledge Foundation happened via a Google hang-out. The group includes internet public servants, data scientists, data…
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The “POLI” mark: New technologies for university teaching
This article is part of Media and Learning month’s newsletter, dedicated series on lecture capture. It is provided by the Lifelong Learning project REC:all, which aims to explore new ways in which lecture capture can become more pedagogically valuable and engaging, and which is investigating a variety of learning design, technical and legal issues related to lecture capture. Marta Cabedo Fabrés from…
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First Color Image of the Martian Landscape from Curiosity
This view of the landscape to the north of NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on the afternoon of the first day after landing. (The team calls this day Sol 1, which is the first Martian day of operations; Sol 1 began on Aug. 6, 2012.) In the distance,…
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Explore the World with Google Earth Engine
Last week marked the 40th anniversary of the Landsat satellite program (http://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/) —now the longest-running continuous acquisition of satellite images of the Earth’s surface. The entire Landsat7 imagery archives are publicly accessible through Google Earth Engine (http://goo.gl/fjTZL), with a new and improved featured gallery, which includes zoomable time-lapse videos and a beautiful new interface: http://earthengine.google.org/#intro!…
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A Tankful of Sugar
Remember those toy trucks, the 18-wheelers (tractor-trailers) that gas companies manufactured? If you grew up in the 80’s, and were a boy or had a brother, or just loved trucks, your dad probably bought one for Christmas. My brother and I would build towns out of Lincoln Logs and Legos and we would wait for…
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Sonification of the Higgs Boson – the Sound of Particle
The July 4 achievement and the discovery of Higgs Boson particle, created new possiblities for the researchers who have “sonified” the data from the Atlas experiment, by turning these scientific findings into music using data sonification. Working from results supplied by the Atlas experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), researchers have created melodies that make the results…
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Call for Participation: EuroNOG – an international meeting
Want to broaden your knowledge in ICT topics and meet other people working in this field? Take part in the second EuroNOG meeting on September 10th-11th in Budapest, Hungary. EuroNOG – an international meeting of experts responsible for the design, maintenance and development of ICT networks. The first edition was held on the 30th September…