Media and Entertainment
Game over. Computer scientists at the University of Alberta have solved checkers, the popular board game with a history that dates back to 3,000 B.C. After 18-and-a-half years and sifting through 500 billion billion (a five followed by 20 zeroes) checkers positions, Dr. Jonathan Schaeffer and colleagues have built a checkers-playing computer program that cannot be beaten. Completed in late April this year, the program, Chinook, may be played to a draw but will never be defeated.
Advertisers’ messages are infiltrating small-market television newscasts at about the same percentage that owners of digital video recorders are skipping the commercials, say researchers at the University of Oregon.
Dear Science Readers,
As noted in the previous Science Shelf update, we were looking forward to two books related to politics and global warming. We have now received copies of both Storm World and A Contract With the Earth and have written a review of one.
Another new review on the Science Shelf recommends 
The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science.
Also, one of my favorite books from last year has now appeared in paperback. Its subject is about as light as you can get, but there's plenty of substance as well as good story telling. Take a fresh look at my review of 
The Cloudspotters Guide.
Click "Read More" to read more. (What else?)
PG-13 films have lots of "happy violence," say UCLA researchers. Borrowing from the late communications theorist George Gerbner, happy violence is that which is "cool, swift and painless." PG-13 films don't consider the consequences of violent acts, such as injury, death and the shattered lives of the people involved.
Recently, Time Magazine and Ebony Magazine (the largest Black general interest periodical) published a list of the "Most Influential People in the World/America". The number of Black scientists on both lists were unsurprisingly low. Time listed 2 black scientists, Ebony listed 1. (Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson was on both lists). But both lists beg the question: How can we showcase the scientific contributions made by minorities to the general public?
A large number of parents are ignoring warnings from the American Academy of Pediatrics and are allowing their very young children to watch television, DVDs or videos so that by 3 months of age 40 percent of infants are regular viewers. That number jumps to 90 percent of 2-year-olds.
As the sports world prepares for this weekend's National Football League draft and the excitement of promising young players entering the league, a new study from the University of Michigan Health System highlights the issues faced at the other end of the career spectrum, after players retire.
WHY IS IT THAT HUMANS OFTEN SEEK ADDICTIONS OR A ROUTINE IN WHICH THEIR LIFE MUST FOLLOW? (OR THINK THEY MUST FOLLOW)....
Far from being self-absorbed and uninvolved, American college students today are civically and politically engaged, and more likely to be so than those of the same age who are not enrolled in college, according to a new national study from Tufts University’s Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service.
The first in a planned series of animations for Harvard University's Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, "The Inner Life of the Cell" takes undergrads beyond textbooks and vividly illustrates the mechanisms that allow a white blood cell to sense its surroundings and respond to an external stimulus. This animation explores the different cellular environments in which these communications take place. It's also really beautiful.
A Carnegie Mellon University computer scientist says transferring large data files, such as movies and music, over the Internet could be sped up significantly if peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing services were configured to share not only identical files, but also similar files.
As the ancient Greeks were placing the last few stones on the magnificent theater at Epidaurus in the fourth century B.C., they couldn’t have known that they had unwittingly created a sophisticated acoustic filter. But when audiences in the back row were able to hear music and voices with amazing clarity (well before any theater had the luxury of a sound system), the Greeks must have known that they had done something very right because they made many attempts to duplicate Epidaurus’ design, but never with the same success.
The Sony Playstation 3 (PS3), Xbox and Nintendo Wii have captivated a generation of computer gamers with bold graphics and rapid-fire animation. But these high-tech toys can do a lot more than just play games. At North Carolina State University, Dr. Frank Mueller imagined using the power of the new PS3 to create a high-powered computing environment for a fraction of the cost of the supercomputers on the market.
Open Source Opportunity: If you have computer and technical know-how, please join in this science frontier project aimed at designing and inventing the ultimate convenience device for home, office, or spacecraft...
Wow...what a long while has passed since my last visit! Here I am stopping by here to write a brief note about two new favorites of mine, a sci-tech news website and a blogging multi-tool.
