Friday, March 2, 2007

Virtual-Reality Video Game Helps Link Depression To Specific Brain Area. Scientists are using a virtual-reality, three-dimensional video game that challenges spatial memory as a new tool for assessing the link between depression and the hippocampus, the brain's memory hub.... [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News] 8:06:31 PM      Google It!.

Push for open access to research. Five leading European research institutions have launched a petition that calls on the European Commission to establish a new policy that would require all government-funded research to be made available to the public shortly after publication, via t... [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News] 8:05:45 PM      Google It!.

Reflectivity Reaches a New Low. sporkme writes "A new nanocoating material developed by a team of researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has the lowest level of reflectivity ever seen ... or not seen in this case. The amount of light reflected by the composite of silica nanorods and aluminum nitride is almost the same amount reflected by air. From the article: 'Schubert and his coworkers have created a material with a refractive index of 1.05, which is extremely close to the refractive index of air and the lowest ever reported. Window glass, for comparison, has a refractive index of about 1.45. Using a technique called oblique angle deposition, the researchers deposited silica nanorods at an angle of precisely 45 degrees on top of a thin film of aluminum nitride, which is a semiconducting material used in advanced light-emitting diodes (LEDs). From the side, the films look much like the cross section of a piece of lawn turf with the blades slightly flattened.' Suggested applications include increased efficiency in solar cells, more energy-efficient lighting and advances in quantum mechanics." [Slashdot] 7:56:36 PM      Google It!.

USDA Backs Production of Rice With Human Genes . The Agriculture Department has given a preliminary green light for the first commercial production of a food crop engineered to contain human genes, reigniting fears that biomedically potent substances in high-tech plants could escape and turn up in other foods. By Rick Weiss. [washingtonpost.com - Technology - Industry News, Policy, and Reviews] 7:52:47 PM      Google It!.

INCEPR Newsletter. Today I talked about the INCEPR Newsletter that Cara Lane and I are working on. One important feature of the newsletter from our perspective is that it should be a community tool - for networking, sharing, discussing topics related to ePortfolios. I encourage you to consider contributing to the newsletter in some way - either on a theme where you have an interest or some expertise, or by sending us announcements, publications, etc. We look forward to hearing from you! Tracy Penny Light tplight@uwaterloo.ca Cara Lane cgiacomi@u.washington.edu [Inter/National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Research blogs] 7:49:31 PM      Google It!.