BUILDING BY NUMBERS: In Orléans, France, robots are to build a 6 metre tall tower made of 1,500 prefabricated polystyrene foam modules. A fleet of quadrocopters, controlled by a central command, will do the actual work. The whole thing's an art installation, but the idea of automated robot assembly of a structure is an interesting one. Dezeen.
See a fleet of quadrocopters flying in formation — Video here.
GREEN LIGHT FOR POOP: Ads spend a lot of time encouraging us to get rid of bacteria, but now Philips want us to keep them around instead. Their poop-powered light idea uses bioluminescent bacteria to provide a room with a gentle ambient green glow. The bacteria would feed on the sludge produced by a methane digester that processes household waste. The concept is part of a larger idea called the Microbial Home that would recycle waste products into useful sources of energy. There
should be no such thing as waste. Philips and The Microbial Home.
SUPERGIANT INBOX: If you think processing the couple of megabytes in your email In Box is an achievement consider what you'd do with more than one Exabyte of raw data per day.
That's how much data the Square Kilometre Array will generate. The SKA will begin construction in 2016 in either South Africa or Australia and New Zealand. IBM has successfully prototyped new software for automating that data management and reveal insights about the Universe.
At least some of the work it will do is currently handled manually. That's the trouble with the Universe — it just contains so much information! SKA Telescope via emailed press release.
IS THAT DATA IN YOUR BASEMENT?: More and more researchers are trying to figure out ways to keep server farms cool and maybe even make use of their surplus heat. Now US researchers have suggested siting small server farms called data furnaces in the basements of apartment blocks and office buildings to help warm them up. Obviously the data and the equipment would need to be secured against intrusions, but the researchers seem to think the idea could work.
And if the server's used for criminal purposes would the homeowners be held liable, benefiting from the proceeds of crime? New York Times.
CROWDED WHALES: Computer tech can sometimes only do half a job and we humans need to clean up at the end. That's the case with one crowdsourced project at the moment: Whale FM. Marine researchers recorded songs of whales in various locations and are now looking for patterns in the song.
At the Zooniverse website visitors compare whalesongs and decide whether or not they match using both the sound and a spectrogram of the sound as aids. Software has already grouped the calls by probable similarity, but a human decision is still needed. It's a nice way to while away some time on a rainy day.
Whale FM.
