With the profusion of information available on the Web, search engines have become a key mediator by directing people to the information they're interested in. But that has also turned the search engines into gatekeepers; both by ranking the results and by offering suggested search terms, the sites can subtly (and, in some cases, not so subtly) influence the sorts of information that a significant fraction of the public will encounter.
A new survey of Google search terms looks into how this is playing out when it comes to information on nanotechnology. The researchers found that both suggested queries and search results may be pushing that field down a path that is similar to the one that was traveled by genetically modified foods, where an initial focus on technology and applications has been replaced by worries about health and ethical issues.
Nanotechnology is a sprawling field that is based on a simple observation: the properties of many familiar materials are completely different when they are structured at the nanometer scale. So, for example, differences between bulk gold and gold nanoparticles include color, melting point, and electronic properties. Our ability to control the bulk production of nanostructured materials is a relatively recent development, and it holds both promises and risks.
2. Four things you wouldn't expect to be affected by piracy
Movies, TV shows, software, games, porn, and music are the usual topics of conversation when it comes to any discussion about online piracy. After all, those types of media make up the lion's share of content found via P2P. Still, the online world has opened the doors to sharing all manner of ideas and intellectual property besides these obvious examples, and there are a few unexpected types of content that get ripped off pretty often, thanks to the Internet.
Movies, TV shows, software, games, porn, and music are the usual topics of conversation when it comes to any discussion about online piracy. After all, those types of media make up the lion's share of content found via P2P. Still, the online world has opened the doors to sharing all manner of ideas and intellectual property besides these obvious examples, and there are a few unexpected types of content that get ripped off pretty often, thanks to the Internet.
3. Quantum teleportation achieved over ten miles of free space
Quantum teleportation has achieved a new milestone or, should we say, a new ten-milestone: scientists have recently had success teleporting information between photons over a free space distance of nearly ten miles, an unprecedented length. The researchers who have accomplished this feat note that this brings us closer to communicating information without needing a traditional signal, and that the ten miles they have reached could span the distance between the surface of the earth and space.
As we've explained before, "quantum teleportation" is quite different from how many people imagine teleportation to work. Rather than picking one thing up and placing it somewhere else, quantum teleportation involves entangling two things, like photons or ions, so their states are dependent on one another and each can be affected by the measurement of the other's state.
When one of the items is sent a distance away, entanglement ensures that changing the state of one causes the other to change as well, allowing the teleportation of quantum information, if not matter. However, the distance particles can be from each other has been limited so far to a number of meters.
Teleportation over distances of a few hundred meters has previously only been accomplished with the photons traveling in fiber channels to help preserve their state. In this particular experiment, researchers maximally entangled two photons using both spatial and polarization modes and sent the one with higher energy through a ten-mile-long free space channel. They found that the distant photon was still able to respond to changes in state of the photon they held onto even at this unprecedented distance.
However, the long-distance teleportation of a photon is only a small step towards developing applications for the procedure. While photons are good at transmitting information, they are not as good as ions at allowing manipulation, an advancement we'd need for encryption. Researchers were also able to maintain the fidelity of the long-distance teleportation at 89 percent— decent enough for information, but still dangerous for the whole-body human teleportation that we're all looking forward to.
4. Seagate's upcoming 3TB drives will need new motherboards
2.1 TB of storage ought to be enough for anybody. At least, that's what IBM and Microsoft must have been thinking when they set the maximum supported size drive of the venerable Logical Block Addressing (LBA) standard that's now embedded in motherboards, RAID drivers and firmware, and operating systems across all segments of the PC industry. So when Seagate confirmed longstanding rumors that the drivemaker is prepping a 3TB drive for the end of the year, it also had to give a number of caveats along with the news.
"Nobody expected back in 1980 when they set the standard that we’d ever address over 2.1TB," Seagate's Barbara Craig told Thinq. That was the year that IBM introduced the world's first gigabyte drive at a retail price of $40,000 (about $68,300 in 2009 dollars) and a weight of 550lb; it was also the year that Seagate introduced the first 5.25-inch hard drive for the IBM PC-XT, the 5MB ST-506. Given those data points, it's easy to see how 2.1TB was essentially just an arbitrarily large number of bytes, sort of like "a gazillion."
So if you're in the market for a new system as we head into the summer, you'll want to keep an eye out for hardware that can support the larger drives. And you'll also want to keep an eye out for the next version of our long-delayed System Guide, which we're currently working on.
5. Google fails to revolutionize the cellphone market
Google has announced that it will soon bring an end to itsonline sales of its Nexus One handset. The company will still show off Android phones on its site, but purchases will be done the old-fashioned way: through mobile service providers.
6. Ubuntu Learns New Tricks, Forgets Some Old Ones With Lucid Lynx Upgrade
Lucid Lynx, Canonical's latest desktop release of Ubuntu, sports a new look and feel designed to attract new users, both in business and at home. No doubt the launch of a music store component for the Ubuntu One cloud service available through the Ubuntu OS will give consumers a reason to consider one of the most popular Linux desktops. Canonical, the commercial outlet of the community-developed Ubuntu Linux distro, clearly wants to make migrating to Ubuntu easy for new users to experience right out of the box.
7. Making a Place for Yourself in the Blogosphere, Part 2
Once all the technical steps have been accomplished and your blog is up and operating, it is time to start adding content on a regular basis and integrating it with social media. "If I had a budget for a blog, I would spend it all driving traffic to it," said Vlad Zachary, CEO of Career BlackBoard. "Content is king, but quality is queen," he added. Look for ways to provoke discussions -- emotion encourages people to interact with blogs and re-post entries.
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