David Dickson, founder of the new site SciDev.Net (also logged today), writes in the December 6 _Nature_ about the use of the web to engage the public in issues of science and technology. Brief and to the point. Worth reading. (Free registration required.) Excerpts:

We all stand to benefit from the exploration of ways to use the power of the Internet to disseminate reliable scientific and technical information. ... There is a particular opportunity here to use the Internet to meet the social and economic needs of developing countries. ... [SciDev.Net will] seek to exploit new opportunities opened up by the web. ... A key challenge to initiatives such as SciDev.Net is how to democratize the gathering and dissemination of information about science in a way that retains the legitimating devices of conventional editorial processes.

Weaving a Social Web

Dutch researchers authored this article, which appears in the December 6 issue of the journal _Nature_.

... soluble semiconductive polymers in microelectronic devices ...

Here we describe an active-matrix display with 64 x 64 pixels, each driven by a thin-film transistor with a solution-processed polymer semiconductor. In a significant step towards low-cost flexible displays, this polymer-dispersed liquid-crystal arrangement gives a reflective, low-power display with paper-like contrast, which can handle 256 grey levels while being refreshed at video speed.

Plastic transistors in active-matrix displays

From a Stanford symposium on the Web, a brief report on that rare, (lucky?) Valley dweller with an upbeat outlook. Choice excerpts:

"We need to work to ensure that the original values of the Web endure." ... Paul Saffo (here he is again!) says: "There's never been a better time to think about where the Web is going, and everybody has a lot of time to think about it. ... Most ideas in Silicon Valley take 20 years to become an overnight success."

Nathaniel Borenstein (remember him, c'punks?) says, "from the burned fields left behind by the Web's wildfire, will the pre-Web Internet reemerge? ... Once, the Net was a genuine commons. ... we have to acknowledge that the commons has been destroyed. That doesn't mean that we can't rebuild it."

The net, a commons? Borenstein's been reading some Lessig lately, maybe?

Internet optimism lives!

The News Focus section of this week's issue of the journal Science has several brief, timely articles related to proteomics. (Note that a subscription is required for these items.) Here are the article titles:

High-Speed Biologists Search for Gold in Proteins
Proteomics 2.0: The View Ahead
A Proteomics Upstart Tries to Outrun the Competition
Searching for Recipes for Protein Chips
Gene and Protein Patents Get Ready to Go Head to Head
Rockefeller's Star Lured to San Diego Company
A Physicist-Turned-Biologist

Proteomics featured in Dec 7 issue of Science

* constantly updated news and feature articles
* topic-based 'dossiers' with news, 'policy briefs' and links to other sites
* regional gateways on Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East
* opinion articles by leading experts and commentators

SciDev.Net: news, views and information about science, technology and development

"One aspect of our culture that is no longer open to question is that the most significant developments in the sciences today (i.e. those that affect the lives of everybody on the planet) are about, informed by, or implemented through advances in software and computation."

Table of contents for this issue:

Marc D. Hauser: How Does The Brain Generate Computation?
Jaron Lanier: The Central Metaphor Of Everything?
Alan Guth: A Golden Age Of Cosmology
David Gelernter: Streams
Jordan Pollack: Software, Property & Human Civilization

Edge 95: 'Rebooting Civilization'

Included below are a few excerpts from the November 20 newslog entry at Blogdex. Thus far, Blogdex's content has been highly predictible, but these improvements could change things.

crawling upgrade: the crawler is currently being optimized, so that within a few weeks we hope to have up to the hour statistics on weblogs. we've realized that daily is not good enough, and that prediction will have to be a much bigger part of our crawl scheduling.

social network: for the past month we've been developing and testing a new sort of view of the weblog community based on the social network. i can't say exactly what kind of interface we plan to put on it (since we haven't thought of it yet), but i can say that it's very interesting data. something that has come up often: the weblog community has 5.818 degrees of separation, based on current information. more to come.. soon..

blogdex is slowly improving

Dean Kamen finally announces his new product today. Looks pretty cool, and it will be even more so once it has a Stirling engine. Paul Saffo complains: "I don't want to sound like a Ginger-slammer, but it's about $2,000 too expensive and 40 pounds too heavy." (Initially it will cost $3,000 and weigh 65 pounds.)

Some of the first field trials are going to be held in Atlanta.

Earlier this year, Kamen brought the Ibot and his Stirling engines where I work for a talk and demonstration; ... very cool stuff. When this new scooter gets the Stirling engine, look out!

An Inventor Unveils His Mysterious Personal Transportation Device

Salon's Andrew Leonard interviews author, semiotician, and Feed Magazine co-founder Steven Johnson about his latest book, _Emergence_, which I logged a few months ago when it hit stores.

The lead-in: Feed magazine founder Steven Johnson explains how self-organizing systems are made to order for ants, cities, software and terrorists. The article is a quick read -- just a brief Q&A. Johnson says that the Web needs editors, and that US SecDef Rumsfeld seems to be giving seminars on chaos theory.

The emergent new order: Steven Johnson interviewed in Salon

Peter Shor of AT&T is the speaker for the Fall Series in Applied Mathematics of the Simon Lecture Series. The talks will take place on the MIT campus on December 3, 4, 6, and 7. Topics include quantum algorithms, quantum error correcting codes, entanglement and quantum information, and quantum channels & their capacities.

This should be an excellent series of lectures.

Peter Shor (AT&T) on Quantum Everything | Simons Lecture Series