Research Blogging - Computer Science / Engineering - English

Peter Suber’s Open Access book is now available under an #OpenAccess license

2013-06-18T06:16:34Z

If you never got around to buying Peter Suber‘s book “for busy people” about Open Access (OA) publishing [1], you might be pleased to learn that it’s now available under an Open Access license....

Clair, K. (2013) Kevin Michael Clair reviews Open Access, by Peter Suber. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 39(1), 94. DOI: 10.1016/j.acalib.2012.11.017

To Grow, Plants Do the Mathematics

2013-06-17T08:21:15Z

You see them in sunflowers and artichokes. The familiar, concentric spiral-shaped Fibonacci sequence is part of a lot of flowering plants. These patterns precisely follow the Fibonacci sequence (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8), in which each digit (once you move along) is the sum of the previous two. But until now, nobody really knew how plants knew to make these mathematically precise patterns....

Pennybacker, M., & Newell, A. (2013) Phyllotaxis, Pushed Pattern-Forming Fronts, and Optimal Packing. Physical Review Letters, 110(24). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.110.248104

Putting the Social back... and forth

2013-06-13T15:59:00Z

In the year 2006 'google' was officially declared a verb in Oxford Dictionary and Merriam Webster. But startups have not given up on building search engines. That same year Facebook opened its doors tousers over the age of 13, preparing for exponential growth spurt. The list of startups working on yet another social network and lining up to present their sites at Silicon Valley New Tech Meetup kept growing too. And so were the crowds attending the meetups - as everybody wanted to see the next Google or Facebook. Or get a free pizza.In 2009, it looked like both search and social bubbles were bursting. At least judging by the pitches and taglines. Favorite startup words now were mobile, twitter and monetization. 2009 was, indeed, the year of mobile, twitter... and ponzi schemes. It was the year when Waze Mobile launched internationally and Tumblr released their iPhone app. But the Social Digital era has only just begun. Web was still ripe for more social experience and new startups were fighting for the audience, and fighting against the audience fatigue. The question was whether they could build a business off that audience or whether that audience will be worth an acquisition by the likes of Google or Yahoo. From dancing in the 90s to clicking in the 2010sShifting focus of social networks, as judged by the SVNEWTech pitches The common uses of social networking are promotion (personal or business-related), learning and entertainment. Text was the starting point for broadcasting and marketing ourselves via the Internet. Technologies were evolving and, as shown in the graph below, so were audio- and visual features of social networks, until they merged into video and movie-sharing capabilities. GPS-enabled smartphones gave rise to location-based services and networks focused on local - places, rideshares and travel information. Networks could serve as a self-updating address book and their purpose was shifting from keeping in touch with old friends to finding new ones, increasingly focusing on finding business partners and opportunities. Startups were transitioning from virtual worlds to virtual goods, becoming less interested in just chatting and more interested in handling money - from social landing, to fundraising and "helping retailers to serve us better". What's next? Despite the challenging funding climate, Silicon Valley startups will keep trying new things, mixing and matching new needs and technologies. After all, the combinations provide endless choices, and the possibilities are endless. REFERENCESCantor M, & Whitehead H (2013). The interplay between social networks and culture: theoretically and among whales and dolphins. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 368 (1618) PMID: 23569288Panek, Elliot T., Yioryos Nardis, and Sara Konrath. "Defining social networking sites and measuring their use: How narcissists differ in their use of Facebook and Twitter." Computers in Human Behavior 29.5 (2013): 2004-2012.Doreian, Patrick, and Frans Stokman, eds. Evolution of social networks. Vol. 1. Routledge, 2013....

Cantor M, & Whitehead H. (2013) The interplay between social networks and culture: theoretically and among whales and dolphins. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 368(1618), 20120340. PMID: 23569288

Recent Advances in Battery Technology Review

2013-06-12T10:32:00Z

During the last several months a number of new battery technologies has been proposed by different research institutions. Scientists are focusing their attention on finding ways to make batteries store more energy and recharge faster, while at the same time reducing environmental risks posed by the chemicals that are used in batteries....

MOON, J., MUNAKATA, H., KAJIHARA, K., & KANAMURA, K. (2013) Hydrothermal Synthesis of Manganese Dioxide Nanoparticles as Cathode Material for Rechargeable Batteries. Electrochemistry, 81(1), 2-6. DOI: 10.5796/electrochemistry.81.2

Zhou, G., Wang, D., Li, F., Hou, P., Yin, L., Liu, C., Lu, G., Gentle, I., & Cheng, H. (2012) A flexible nanostructured sulphur–carbon nanotube cathode with high rate performance for Li-S batteries. Energy , 5(10), 8901. DOI: 10.1039/c2ee22294a

Kravchyk, K., Protesescu, L., Bodnarchuk, M., Krumeich, F., Yarema, M., Walter, M., Guntlin, C., & Kovalenko, M. (2013) Monodisperse and Inorganically Capped Sn and Sn/SnO2 Nanocrystals for High-Performance Li-Ion Battery Anodes Nanocrystals for High-Performance Li-Ion Battery Anodes . Journal of the American Chemical Society, 135(11), 4199-4202. DOI: 10.1021/ja312604r

Augustyn, V., Come, J., Lowe, M., Kim, J., Taberna, P., Tolbert, S., Abruña, H., Simon, P., & Dunn, B. (2013) High-rate electrochemical energy storage through Li intercalation pseudocapacitance. Nature Materials. DOI: 10.1038/nmat3601

New Photovoltaic Cell Doubles as Solar Energy Storage System

2013-06-11T09:25:00Z

A UW-Madison electrical engineer has proposed a design for dye-sensitized solar cells that can at the same time generate power and work as a solar energy storage system....

Zhang, X., Huang, X., Li, C., & Jiang, H. (2013) Dye-Sensitized Solar Cell with Energy Storage Function through PVDF/ZnO Nanocomposite Counter Electrode. Advanced Materials. DOI: 10.1002/adma.201301088

Are you in pain?

2013-06-10T17:29:32Z

Pain is one of the most difficult things to quantify. The doctor can ask you: How would you classify the pain from 0 to 10, being 10 the most painful and 0 not painful? and you might answer with a number, but the scale is subjective. So far, there was no method to actually quantify pain. fMRI (functional MRI) might change that.A recent study found a way to predict the pain intensity with fMRI. Basically, several volunteers (I'm not sure how much did this study paid, but I don't see myself volunteering for a pain study...) were scanned while thermal-induced pain was being applied. Using machine-learning techniques, the scientist found patterns of activity in the brain which increased when pain was applied. In this study, people who are going through break-ups were also invited to participated with the aim of finding common activated regions in physical and "social" pain. Finally, the effect of drugs for pain relieve was also studied.OK, so now you can quantify my pain, then what? Well, just imagine that your pain prescription is not working so well, because your pain was under or over-estimated... or maybe the source of your pain is not being correctly identified...There are infinite studies interesting to do, specially ones without any medical interest:- What hurts more: giving birth or being kicked in the balls?- Who is suffering more after the break-up: me or my partner? I already can imagine: "Look in this fMRI study how much you made me suffer!"The full study can be read here:Wager TD, Atlas LY, Lindquist MA, Roy M, Woo CW, & Kross E (2013). An fMRI-based neurologic signature of physical pain. The New England journal of medicine, 368 (15), 1388-97 PMID: 23574118...

Wager TD, Atlas LY, Lindquist MA, Roy M, Woo CW, & Kross E. (2013) An fMRI-based neurologic signature of physical pain. The New England journal of medicine, 368(15), 1388-97. PMID: 23574118

Toward an algorithmic theory of biology

2013-06-09T21:30:42Z

When you typically think of computer scientists working on questions in biology, you probably picture a bioinformatician. Although bionformatics makes heavy use of algorithms and machine learning, and its practitioners are often mildly familiar with computational complexity (enough to know that almost everything they study is NP-complete), it doesn’t really apply computational thinking to understand […]...

Pais, D., & Leonard, N. (2013) Adaptive network dynamics and evolution of leadership in collective migration. Physica D: Nonlinear Phenomena. DOI: 10.1016/j.physd.2013.04.014

How does a painting look like on X-ray?

2013-06-08T15:21:44Z

...

Schreiner, M., Frühmann, B., Jembrih-Simbürger, D., & Linke, R. (2012) X-rays in art and archaeology: An overview. Powder Diffraction, 19(01), 3-11. DOI: 10.1154/1.1649963

Video: Helicopter Flies by Thought Control

2013-06-07T04:42:53Z

This video shows a demonstration flight of a new helicopter. But the helicopter isn’t new; the way it’s controlled is. The entire flight was managed by the thoughts of a man wearing a cap with electrodes. The researchers think that if a helicopter can be piloted by detachable electrodes, then these electrodes could be used to make non-invasive limbs for the disabled....

Lafleur K, Cassady K, Doud A, Shades K, Rogin E, & He B. (2013) Quadcopter control in three-dimensional space using a noninvasive motor imagery-based brain-computer interface. Journal of neural engineering, 10(4), 46003. PMID: 23735712

Dental Imaging - What is happening there?

2013-06-07T00:35:00Z

The first time I was started thinking about dental imaging from a different point of view was when I heard in a talk the speaker saying: "These are statistics about medical imaging, without dental imaging.". I wondered "Why are dental imaging statistics not included?"...

Vandenberghe B, Jacobs R, & Bosmans H. (2010) Modern dental imaging: a review of the current technology and clinical applications in dental practice. European radiology, 20(11), 2637-55. PMID: 20544352