Algorithms Take Control of Wall Street | Magazine Today Wall Street is ruled by thousands of little algorithms, and they've created a new market—volatile, unpredictable, and impossible for humans to comprehend.Photo: Mauricio Alejo Last spring, Dow Jones launched a new service called Lexicon, which sends real-time financial news to professional investors. This in itself is not surprising. The company behind The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires made its name by publishing the kind of news that moves the stock market. But many of the professional investors subscribing to Lexicon aren’t human—they’re algorithms, the lines of code that govern an increasing amount of global trading activity—and they don’t read news the way humans do. They don’t need their information delivered in the form of a story or even in sentences. Lexicon packages the news in a way that its robo-clients can understand. An app that jams with you. A good session player is hard to find, but ujam is always ready to rock. —Jon Stokes
Bionics Bionics (also known as bionical creativity engineering) is the application of biological methods and systems found in nature to the study and design of engineering systems and modern technology.[citation needed] The transfer of technology between lifeforms and manufactures is, according to proponents of bionic technology, desirable because evolutionary pressure typically forces living organisms, including fauna and flora, to become highly optimized and efficient. A classical example is the development of dirt- and water-repellent paint (coating) from the observation that the surface of the lotus flower plant is practically unsticky for anything (the lotus effect). Ekso Bionics is currently developing and manufacturing intelligently powered exoskeleton bionic devices that can be strapped on as wearable robots to enhance the strength, mobility, and endurance of soldiers and paraplegics. The term "biomimetic" is preferred when reference is made to chemical reactions. History[edit]
Solar Cells Can Now Be Printed on Anything, Even Paper and Fabric Photo by Patrick Gillooly via MIT News Researchers at MIT have figured out how to print photovoltaic cells on every-day materials like paper or fabric -- and the process is practically the same is printing this article out on your desk printer. MIT reports that a team of researchers has published a new paper in the journal Advanced Materials detailing how solar cells can be printed as easily and as cheaply as "printing a photo on your inkjet" thanks to new special inks. "The sheet of paper looks like any other document that might have just come spitting out of an office printer, with an array of colored rectangles printed over much of its surface. But then a researcher picks it up, clips a couple of wires to one end, and shines a light on the paper. Instantly an LCD clock display at the other end of the wires starts to display the time," reports MIT news. The paper solar cells can even be folded, and still be useful:
Ranking 37th — Measuring the Performance of the U.S. Health Care System | Health Policy and Reform Evidence that other countries perform better than the United States in ensuring the health of their populations is a sure prod to the reformist impulse. The World Health Report 2000, Health Systems: Improving Performance, ranked the U.S. health care system 37th in the world1 — a result that has been discussed frequently during the current debate on U.S. health care reform. The conceptual framework underlying the rankings2 proposed that health systems should be assessed by comparing the extent to which investments in public health and medical care were contributing to critical social objectives: improving health, reducing health disparities, protecting households from impoverishment due to medical expenses, and providing responsive services that respect the dignity of patients. Despite the limitations of the available data, those who compiled the report undertook the task of applying this framework to a quantitative assessment of the performance of 191 national health care systems.
Geology.com - Earth Science News, Maps, Dictionary, Articles, Jobs New camera lets you focus photos after you shoot Lytro unveils a camera that lets the photographer focus after the fact Camera uses multiple lenses to capture more light than a normal camera Investors have already bought in, to the tune of $50 million No release date, price for the Lytro camera have been announced (CNN) -- An auto-focus camera? Not new. Not exciting. A camera that lets you focus after you've already taken the photo? And lets you focus anywhere within the image you want? Oh yeah -- it can also transfer a regular photo to 3-D. Lytro, a company launched Tuesday by 31-year-old entrepreneur Ren Ng, promises that camera will be released soon. "I am thrilled to finally draw back the curtain and introduce our new light field camera company, one that will forever change how everyone takes and experiences pictures," Ng wrote on the startup's blog. Apparently, some sharks are buying the buzz. Camera focuses photos after shooting Lytro calls the result "living pictures." Experiment with this focus software on Lytro's site.
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