Science and Technology Roundup

After the fallen snow of recent times (I kept on saying we would get the proper winter in February...) one ends up reading a bit more of the news. This has actually led to me being impressed by a few things I've found recently.

Google's search algorithm has been used for a much better purpose - to find molecular links that would work better for medicine. This seems such an amazing use of an until now controversial bit of maths, and if you think more along these lines, you should be able to do a lot more investigation in a chemical model. In fact, think a bit further, and you can probably use it for physics too.

3D printers. I never thought much of them. If someone had invented a printer that could produce any object, then surely it would change the whole world around. Well, they do exist, and they have been recently used to do something miraculous. Instead of having to go through a lot of microsurgical reconstruction, not being able to talk or swallow for a good few days, a new jaw was printed for this 83 year old, and she was using it just like normal within a day. Think about this a moment. Something printed, from your computer, and replacing a part of your body you use for many daily tasks...very impressive!

Sometimes technology can also go wrong. We all know what bad things can happen when you end up losing control of vehicles and other potentially dangerous objects. This time it was a lot less damaging. Those captions that appear at the bottom of the screen when someone is being interviewed. When these system get things wrong, they can also cause a few chuckles, like here, where a young girl was labelled as a recovering alcoholic...

And to leave you with an interesting link. Ever feel like your eyes are tired and hurting, and the screen too bright in the evenings? Well, that's because the ambient light changes in tone through the day and especially at night, when it's all artificial. Try this program on your computer to change your display to be more natural to the surrounding light. Great idea !

Here's hoping for many more good scientific advancements...