Heaven + Earth: review by Malcolm Walter Geologist and planetary scientist Malcolm Walter reviews Ian Plimer´s book, Heaven + Earth. New Zealand houses: draughty and deadly Houses in New Zealand don´t protect their occupants from the temperate climate of high rainfall and strong westerly winds. The houses´ designs are based on those from other parts of the world. And now adverse health effects have been measured. More people die in winter than summer, a higher proportion than in other countries. Even Siberia´s houses offer more protection from winter conditions. Heat shield protects houses from fire Gwion Cain describes his heat shield, designed to protect houses from bush fires. It´s a silica tent which envelopes a building. It can also be used to protect vehicles. Rita Levi-Montalcini, Nobel laureate, celebrates 100th birthday Lyn Beazley, Chief Scientist of Western Australia, pays tribute to Nobel laureate Rita Levi-Montalcini on her 100th birthday. Computers model human behaviour Svetha Venkatesh is using multiple inputs from cameras and sensors to build a bigger picture. An example is an image of a city built from front-facing cameras on buses and other vehicles. This data can be used to detect criminal activity, such as graffiti. Underlying this technology is machine learning, having a computer compare a model of normality with a variation. This has applications in some medical fields such as early intervention technologies for autistic children. Digital history British government digital records from just 10 years ago are now unreadable because of changing technologies. The same applies to web pages. Now techniques are being developed to capture web pages in an archive.

[ Sat, 06 Jun 2009 00:00:00 +1000 ]

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