Sidney Bechet played soprano saxophone in the early decades of jazz, before John Coltrane popularized the instrument. A new anthology, Mosaic Select: Sidney Bechet, offers listeners a chance to hear Bechet's music, transferred and restored from rare recordings from 1923 to 1947.

NPR : Early Times: Birth of the Jazz Soprano

Comparative Interactomics
By creating maps of the body’s complex molecular interactions, Trey Ideker is providing new ways to find drugs.

Nanomedicine
James Baker designs nanoparticles to guide drugs directly into cancer cells, which could lead to far safer treatments.

Epigenetics
Alexander Olek has developed tests to detect cancer early by measuring its subtle DNA changes.

Cognitive Radio
To avoid future wireless traffic jams, Heather “Haitao” Zheng is finding ways to exploit unused radio spectrum.

Nuclear Reprogramming
Hoping to resolve the embryonic-stem-cell debate, Markus Grompe envisions a more ethical way to derive the cells.

Diffusion Tensor Imaging
Kelvin Lim is using a new brain-imaging method to understand schizophrenia.

Universal Authentication
Leading the development of a privacy-protecting online ID system, Scott Cantor is hoping for a safer Internet.

Nanobiomechanics
Measuring the tiny forces acting on cells, Subra Suresh believes, could produce fresh understanding of diseases.

Pervasive Wireless

Stetchable Silicon

Special Reports: 10 Emerging Technologies

It started when I decided I needed a new high-end PC for a book I'm writing on Vista, the much-delayed next generation of the Windows operating system.

The Bespoke Computer - New York Times

Brothers Dave and Serge Bielanko of the band Marah talk about their music and its appeal to blue-collar listeners. The two formed the group in 1993 with a sound that's part country, part blues, part classic rock. They recently released their fifth studio album of original material, If You Didn't Laugh, You'd Cry.

NPR : Marah: Blue-Collar Heroes of Rock 'n' Roll

Why was England first? And why Europe?

We present a probabilistic model that builds on big-push models by Murphy, Shleifer and Vishny (1989), combined with hierarchical preferences. Exogenous demographic factors (in particular the English low-pressure variant of the European marriage pattern) and redistributive institutions – such as the Old Poor Law – combined to make an Industrial Revolution more likely. Industrialization was the result of having a critical mass of consumers that is “rich enough” to afford (potentially) mass-produced goods. Our model is calibrated to match the main characteristics of the English economy in 1780 and the observed transition until 1850. This allows us to address explicitly one of the key features of the British Industrial Revolution unearthed by economic historians over the last three decades – the slowness of productivity and output change. In our calibration, we find that the probability of Britain industrializing before France and Belgium is above 90 percent. Contrary to recent claims in the literature, 18th century China had only a minimal chance to industrialize at all.

Why England? Demand, Growth and Inequality during the Industrial Revolution

Fortune's Formula is a fascinating study of the connections between such seemingly unrelated topics as gambling, information theory, stock investing, and applied mathematics. The story involves the stunning brainpower of men such as MIT professor Claude Shannon, who single-handedly invented information theory, the science behind the Internet and all digital media; Ed Thorpe; and John Kelly of Bell Laboratories, who developed the "Kelly criterion," a now-legendary investment strategy for maximizing growth while controlling risk. Initially, Shannon and Thorpe took Kelly's theory to Las Vegas and applied it to roulette and blackjack. Later, they took it to Wall Street and cleaned up--Shannon made a personal fortune while Thorpe created the highly successful hedge firm Princeton-Newport Partners. They both discovered that Kelly's system was particularly effective when applied to arbitrage (minute price differences that result from market inefficiencies). As Poundstone ably demonstrates, the merits of Kelly's criterion are still hotly debated today.

Poundstone has a tendency to meander in his writing, but his asides are so revealing and interesting that they add, rather than detract, from the narrative. The book also includes a cast of fascinating and colorful characters as varied as Ivan Boesky, Warren Buffet, Rudolph Giuliani, and notorious mobsters such as Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky. In explaining the lasting impact of the work done by Shannon, Thorpe, and Kelly, Poundstone even explains Kelly's system for those wishing to follow his formula, offering readers both theoretical and practical lessons. Whether viewed as a how-to guide or straight scientific and financial history, Fortune's Formula proves an entertaining and illuminating analysis of "the most successful gambling system of all time."

Amazon.com: Fortune's Formula : The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street: Books: William Poundstone

Increasing use of 3G mobile phones can change the way people communicate and create new social trends and tribes, a behavioural study has suggested.

BBC NEWS | Technology | 3G mobiles 'change social habits'

The case of an Afghan man who could be prosecuted and even put to death for converting to Christianity has unleashed a blizzard of condemnation from the West this week and exposed a conflict in values between Afghanistan, a conservative Muslim country, and the foreign countries that have helped defend and rebuild it in the four years since the fall of the Taliban.

For Afghans, Allies, A Clash of Values

One significant productivity-enhancing feature that arrived with Tiger was Spotlight. On its own, it changed the way some (if not most) Mac users use their desktops. A simple command-space pops up the Spotlight window, where you can enter a query string, and in a matter of seconds, get a list of files matching your query.

Spotlight has many advantages over traditional file-searching tools. For one thing, it's not a tool. It is a complete indexing and search framework that is tightly integrated into the Operating System. In addition to filenames and paths, it also indexes by file metadata and content. So Spotlight returns query results based on what's inside the file.

Spotlight benefits can also be enjoyed on the commandline, and this article explains how you can take full advantage of it from inside the OS X Terminal window.

0xFE - 1111110b - 0376 - 254 - b9#9: Using Spotlight from the OS X Commandline

The New Standards are making waves by reinterpreting their favorite songs in a jazz mode. In a kind of Super Group lineup, John Munson of Semisonic fame plays bass and sings, Chan Poling of the Suburbs plays piano and also contributes vocals, and Steve Roehm is on vibraphone.

In reshaping classic, even iconic songs, the New Standards shies away from imitation or mimicry, instead taking a minimalist approach to interpreting the Replacements' "I Will Dare," the Clash's "London Calling" and David Bowie's "All The Young Dudes," among others.

The Minneapolis band's self-titled debut is out now on Tinderbox Music.

NPR : Jazzing Up the Rock: The New Standards