As we start the run up to our first year PLE module, I’ve been thinking about what worked well last year, what didn’t, and what needs fixing this time round.What worked well is easy. Friendfolios (and the students who contributed and are still contributing to them) were the star performer. Consequently, we will be rolling out Friendfeed as glue for the disparate PLE elements at the start of the year rather than at the start of the second semester.

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Something’s gotta give

Robots tend to do things a little differently. Though folding rectangular towels was a breeze for the Willow Garage’s PR2 programmable robot, UC Berkeley researchers had a bit more trouble coaxing it to match socks. A video (below) of their unconventional technique won a $10,000 prize from Willow Garage

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Helpful Robot Can Play With Your Socks | Discoblog

An auditor’s report into the financial dealings of the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has cleared him of any wrongdoing. Rajendra Pachauri had faced numerous allegations about his relationship with the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), a non-profit based in New Delhi of which he is the director general. Now the Guardian newspaper has published a review of Pachauri and TERI’s financial records, conducted by the auditors KPMG

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Pachauri cleared of financial wrongdoing

In a few years’ time, recharging your handheld PC may be as easy as just slipping it into your back pocket. That is, as long as you don’t mind having a virus cocktail woven into your pair of slacks. Yes, the humble virus–that tiny protein-coated bag of genetic material that we more commonly associate with global pandemics–could replace graphite and lithium iron phosphate as the material of choice with which to build the next generation of customizable, high-powered, lithium-ion batteries

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Virus-Powered Rechargeable Clothing Could be Coming to a Store Near You | Science Not Fiction

Is our species, Homo sapiens sapiens, the first cyborg species? Gizmodo/New Scientist has a fascinating article up about how humans evolved as a result of technology. Timothy Taylor, an anthropologist and archaeologist at the University of Bradford in the United Kingdom, submits a theory I am very inclined to believe: that humans evolved from tool-using proto-human primates.

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Did Humans Make Tools, or Did Tools Make Humans? | Science Not Fiction

In August 2006, Pluto received its official demotion to dwarf planet status, taking our solar system down to eight planets. In August 2010, exoplanet hunters say they’ve found a haul of new worlds around a single star; that alien solar system may have seven known planets, meaning the system could be more like our home system than any ever discovered

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Homey-Looking Alien Star System May Host 7 Planets | 80beats

The Los Angeles Times reported that an executive with Northwestern Mutual Investment Services twice put his semen in a woman’s water bottle at work. The first time it happened, the woman drank the semen laced water and felt ill

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Man Puts Semen in Female Co-workers Water Bottle – Is This Sexual Harassment?

  Traditional Oil Painting Demonstration with Joe Gyurcsak August 30st 2010 6:00 PM    Students will be presented with an in depth workshop in regards to direct alla prima painting techniques. Depending on subject and time frame student will experience the visual development of a painting from the initial marks to blocking in large masses to the final touches. Joe Gyurcsak will express the importance of preparation in regards to palette of color, brushes, lighting, composition and plan of how to proceed.

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FREE Painting Demo @ the BAC

Analysts at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore Labs have run the numbers on the US energy use in 2009, and come up with similar results to those obtained when examining the country’s carbon emissions: energy use is dropping at a pace that is faster than would be expected based on the slowing economy alone. Even better, the growth in renewable energy, coupled with increased use of natural gas, is displacing significant amounts of coal.

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US energy use is dropping and shifting to renewables

Designed for Plaid! This little cutie began as an outdated holiday themed cookie stand and a cotton print thrift store skirt. Before I began the revamp, I washed the skirt and scrubbed the cookie stand clean

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Make This: Re-vamped Cupcake Stand

There are so many things in the world that need fixing, don’t you think? More people need health insurance – but not from my money! Refugees need space and facilities in order to live halfway decently – but not in my backyard! Religious groups have the right to open their centers wherever they want – but not in my neighborhood! It’s a common public phenomenon – NIMBY, Not In My Backyard.

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Not In My Backyard

naturally dyed fabrics after rinsing. hawthorne on the left, apple on right apple branches In early June I pruned wild crab apple branches and wild hawthorne branches that grow along the side of my road. hawthorne branches I stripped the apple leaves before chopping the branches up small and covering them with water.

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dyeing with hawberry and apple bark

While it’s clear that we have a lot going for ourselves right out of the womb, it’s equally clear that one of our most admirable qualities is that we rapidly “get it” – we learn languages, skills for manipulating objects, hip hop dance moves, recipes for coconut mojitos, and how to charm people into liking us (ideally, in that order). Rather than experiential learning like this, early AI work focused on sophisticated reasoning problems.

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The New AI: Turn Robots Into Infant Scientists | Science Not Fiction

MUMBAI: When American Senator Charles Schumer described Indian software firms as `chop shops’, few imagined that the taxman back home could add salt to the slur. Indeed, Indian income-tax authorities are beginning to claim tax on the money that software firms make by sending their boys to work with companies in the US, Europe and other markets—a business that is known as onshore software development, or simply ‘body shopping’. For the I-T department, this is an activity that involves export of manpower and not export of software.

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Onsite revenues of IT companies under tax scanner

The ScienceInsider blog published a letter from Harvard’s Dean of Faculty of Arts and Sciences which states that Marc Hauser was indeed found guilty of scientific misconduct under their investigation process. it is with great sadness that I confirm that Professor Marc Hauser was found solely responsible, after a thorough investigation by a faculty investigating committee, for eight instances of scientific misconduct None of this pushing it off on the hapless trainee anymore

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Harvard found Marc Hauser guilty of misconduct, his lab claims he manipulated data

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Dickson Despommier, and Rich Condit On episode #96 of the podcast This Week in Virology, Vincent, Dickson, and Rich continue Virology 101 with a discussion of how viruses with DNA genomes replicate their genetic information. Download TWiV #96 (65 MB .mp3, 90 minutes) Subscribe to TWiV (free) in iTunes , at the Zune Marketplace, by the RSS feed, or by email, or listen on your mobile device with Stitcher Radio

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TWiV 96: Making viral DNA

Yesterday I talked about how to increase blog traffic — specifically how we increased All Freelance Writing’s traffic by 80% in less than a year. One of the things that had a big impact for us was reformatting our category archive pages

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How to Make Your WordPress Blog Category Archives Show Only the Post Titles

Thanks to the success of Train Signal’s VMware vSphere video training course , Train Signal will have a booth at VMworld 2010 for the first time. Train Signal will be giving away my excluive VMworld Best of vSpere 4.1 training course at the booth along with a thousand vNerd t-shirts. So make sure you stop by booth #107 to meet the Train Signal team and get your freebies! I will be speaking at two sessions at VMworld (details below), Kasia Lorenc will be conducting video interviews of prominent virtualization experts and Steven Warren will be blogging live from sessions all week.

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David Davis’ VMworld 2010 Video Preview

As many of you will have seen, we’re curating a series of Google Maps showing key scientific locations in cities around the world (so far: London, Münster, San Francisco). We’re very keen to add further locations, and are hoping a few of you will relish the idea of putting such a map together for your own city (or region). If so, here’s a recipe for creating your map.

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How to create a map of science in your city

Let’s turn back the clock to the fall of 2009. I was the sole blogger here at All Freelance Writing. Traffic was already fairly significant.

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How We Increased Blog Traffic by 80% in Less Than a Year (and How You Can Too!)