New Florence. New Renaissance.

Color Trend Forecasting

“Long before orange made its debut as a hot hue, Leatrice Eiseman spotted it in several unlikely places: on fences and front doors in Italy and Germany, in Morocco's natural dyes, and on monks cloaked in saffron robes. At the time the color wasn't associated with spirituality or trendiness in America, thought Eiseman, but rather with discount stores like Big Lots.

As she began to notice it in multiple places and in different contexts around the world, Eiseman and her team at the Pantone Color Institute -- the forecasting and consulting division of Pantone Inc., which is part of the $261 million company X-Rite -- decided to put it at the top of their 2003 forecast.

Since then, orange has gone mainstream, blanketing such unlikely products as videocameras, KitchenAid blenders, and Ford's new F-150 SVT Raptor, now available in "molten orange."

Fortune

Optical fibers, charge-coupled devices, ribosomes and telomeres

The Economist on Nobel prizes for Physics and Chemistry.

12 Really Maverick Ideas

Wired has 12 brilliant – or really kooky, depending on your POV – ideas

• John Arquilla - Go on the Cyberoffensive
• Thorkil Sonne - Recruit Autistics
• Gregg Easterbrook - Embrace Human Cloning
• Ralph Keeney - Cheat Death
• Dambisa Moyo - Cut Off Aid to Africa
• Nils Christie - Empty the Prisons
• Stewart Brand - Save the Slums
• Stefan Szymanski and Stephen Ross - Bust Up Big League Sports
• Ludwig Minelli - Legalize Assisted Suicide
• Jamie Heywood - Forget Medical Privacy
• William Gurstelle - Take Smart Risks
• Robert Gates - Overhaul the Pentagon

Marrying metallurgy and math

“Vextec's software predicts with scary accuracy how and when products will fail--even before they're made. The simulations, which took only three months to run and required the crunching power of a mere laptop computer, estimated where and when the cracking in the titanium would start--within a quarter of an inch (on a 3-foot-long by 6-inch-wide blade) and within 1% of the number of physical testing cycles. With Vextec's help, "maybe by the fourth [project], the FAA won't make [EB] run any physical tests at all," says Dominick DaCosta, chief operating officer of ders Group Services, an engineering consultancy that advises the FAA on parts testing.”

Forbes

Astrophotography by night

Iranian photographer Babak Tafreshi has won the 2009 Lennart Nilsson scientific photography prize. According to the award panel, his images "reclaim a night sky that most modern people have lost"

NewScientist has a gallery including this of the Milky Way above the Sahara Desert.

Infrared: the next Bluetooth?

“Many uses exist for infrared cameras, around since the 1960s. They convert tiny differences in heat radiation into electronic signals that can then be portrayed as a still or moving image. Even so, infrared camera systems are still expensive playthings for pros, costing between $3,000 and $1.2 million.

Someday, however, they will be cheap enough for every car or home. That prospect thrills Earl Lewis, the chief executive of Flir Systems, the world's biggest stand-alone maker of infrared cameras. If you pointed a heat-sensing camera at him and asked about his mass-market opportunity, the sensor would light up like crazy.”

Forbes

 

Cheers to Innovation

Not.

New Apple commercial making fun of “PC Innovation Lab”

Coolest College Courses

A gallery of courses out in the field instead of lecture halls, focused on sci-tech such as:

• How microbes thrive in harsh environments (like caves as in picture)
• The evolutionary reasons behind jellyfish swarms and how they energize the ocean
• How to model an archaeological site in virtual reality
• How to prototype the future of transportation
• What will make up the future of rocket-propulsion systems
• How to design and model spacecraft and orbital and planetary outposts
• How to make a 2,300hp engine run cleaner

Popular Science

More celebration of nerds

We need to celebrate nerds more – as I have written before

My daughter, Rita had “Nerd Day” at school this week. She’s one on the left with some of her classmates.

2 of them had suspenders on (braces for those otuisde the US). Told her it was more of of a Wall Street thing these days..come of think of it, that's where so many nerds end up these days.

What if 9/11 happened today?

First, let me start by saying it would not happen today. No way today, 4 planes would be simultaneously hijacked. Clumsy as our airport security and surveillance may appear, it would not happen today. I am so optimistic, that I have flown on 9/11 most years since 2001.

It is also good to see how much emergency management has evolved in the last few years driven by other terrorism, hurricanes, pandemic planning. On this blog I have profiled:

Wearable computers for emergency rescue workers

Improved communications for emergency rescue workers

Social Media usage in fighting wildfires

Pandemic followed by a crippling cyber-terror attack

Hurricane Tracking technology

Hurricane Evacuation Model

Sahana software developed after the Asian Tsunami

Evacuation Software

Disaster Recovery Trailers

The best way to honor those who died is to make sure it never happens again – certainly not at that catastrophic level ever again.

Picture Credit