Items of interest

[Tom Johnson]

Many of us, I suspect, are familiar with the fine weekly listserv, The
Internet Scout Project report from the Univ. of Wisconsin. (
http://scout.wisc.edu/ ) If not, here a couple items that may be of
interest to the list.
-tom johnson

Atta texana: An Underground View of an Ant Colony [Quick Time, pdf]
http://www-viz.tamu.edu/faculty/lurleen/main/attatunnel/

You may have had one of those old-time ant colonies growing up as a
child, but did you ever think about becoming immersed in an actual
ant-colony? That could be the stuff of a bad 1950s horror film, but
it's actually part of the engrossing research going on at the Vizlab,
which is based at Texas A &M University. Essentially Carol LaFayette
and an interdisciplinary team of collaborators have created a 3D model
that effectively acts as an immersive system, allowing interested
parties a very unique view into the lives of atta texana, which happen
to be a species of leafcutting ants. First-time visitors should go
ahead and take a look at the "Slide show" section and then take a look
at both the tunnel animation and the immersive system video.
Additionally, the site includes an article on the project and a link
to LaFayette's homepage. [KMG]

Profiles in Science: The Paul Berg Papers
http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/CD/

Nobel Prize-recipient Paul Berg has made major contributions to the
fields of biochemistry and molecular biology for fifty years. This
Profiles in Science feature from the National Library of Health
contains biographical information on Berg, along with correspondence,
laboratory notebooks, portraits, legislative records, reports, and
articles related to his work and times. Visitors can start their visit
within the site by reading his extended biography, which is divided
chronologically into areas like "Protein Synthesis, Tumor Viruses, and
Recombinant DNA, 1959-1975". The documents themselves offer a variety
of insights into Berg's career, his interactions with other scholars,
and the milieu of this type of scientific research over the second
half of the twentieth century. [KMG]
Back to Contents  |  Back to Top


MIT OpenCourseWare: Development of Inventions and Creative Ideas [pdf]
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and-Computer-Science/6-931Spring-2008/CourseHome/index.htm

Many a great invention has come out of MIT, and it's nice to know that
their OpenCourseWare initiative provides materials from a class titled
"Development of Inventions and Creative Ideas" taught by Professor
Robert Rines and Dr. Dedric Carter. The course "examines the role of
the engineer as patent expert and as technical witness in court and
patent interference and related proceedings." That's far from all,
however, as the course also delves into "American systems of
incentives to creativity" and "various manners of transplanting
inventions into business operations." Interested parties can breeze
through the syllabus, look over a selection of readings, take a look
into the assignments, and a bit of information on the course pedagogy.
[KMG]


--
==========================================
J. T. Johnson
Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA
www.analyticjournalism.com
505.577.6482(c)                                    505.473.9646(h)
http://www.jtjohnson.com                 [hidden email]

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the
existing model obsolete."
-- Buckminster Fuller
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