January 19, 2012
Au jus [oh joos] is French for ‘with [its own] juice.’ In American cuisine, the term is mostly used to refer to a light sauce for beef recipes, which may be served with the food or placed on the side for dipping. In French cuisine, jus is a natural way to enhance the flavor of dishes, mainly chicken, veal and lamb. ‘Jus’ means the natural juices given off by the food. To prepare a natural jus, the cook may simply skim off the fat from the juices left after cooking and bring the remaining meat stock and water to a boil.
Often prepared in the United States is a seasoned sauce with several additional flavorings. American recipes au jus often use soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, salt, pepper, white or brown sugar, garlic, onion, or other ingredients to make something more like a gravy. So-called jus is sometimes prepared separately, rather than being produced naturally by the food being cooked. An example could be a beef jus made by reducing beef stock to a concentrated form, to accompany a meat dish.
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January 19, 2012
Aquaponics [ak-wuh-pon-iks] is a sustainable food production system that combines a traditional aquaculture (raising aquatic animals such as fish, crayfish or prawns in tanks) with hydroponics (cultivating plants in water) in a symbiotic environment. In the aquaculture, effluents accumulate in the water, increasing toxicity for the fish. This water is led to a hydroponic system where the by-products from the aquaculture are filtered out by the plants as vital nutrients, after which the cleansed water is recirculated back to the animals.
Aquaponic systems vary in size from small indoor or outdoor units to large commercial units, using the same technology. The systems usually contain fresh water, but salt water systems are plausible depending on the type of aquatic animal and which plants. Continue reading →
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January 17, 2012
FreedomBox is a community project to develop, design and promote personal servers running free software for distributed social networking, email and audio/video communications. The project was announced by Columbia Law professor Eben Moglen at an ISOC (Internet Society) meeting in 2010.
The project currently describes a FreedomBox as, ‘a personal server running a free software operating system, with free applications designed to create and preserve personal privacy.’ The project aims to develop a software stack that can run on plug computers (small computers the size of a wall wart) that can easily be located in individual residences or offices. By promoting a decentralized deployment of hardware, the project hopes that FreedomBoxes will ‘provide privacy in normal life, and safe communications for people seeking to preserve their freedom in oppressive regimes.’
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January 17, 2012
The word ‘bolide‘ [boh-lahyd] comes from the Greek ‘bolis,’ which can mean ‘missile’ or ‘to flash.’ The International Astronomical Union (IAU) has no official definition of ‘bolide,’ and generally considers the term synonymous with ‘fireball,’ a brighter-than-usual meteor. The IAU defines a fireball as ‘a meteor brighter than any of the planets’ (magnitude −4 or greater). Astronomers tend to use ‘bolide’ to identify an exceptionally bright fireball (magnitude −14 or brighter), particularly one that explodes (sometimes called a detonating fireball).
It may also be used to mean a fireball which creates audible sounds. If the magnitude of a bolide reaches −17 or brighter it is known as a ‘superbolide.’ Geologists use the term ‘bolide’ more often than astronomers do: in geology it indicates a very large impactor. For example, the U.S. Geological Survey uses the term to mean a generic large crater-forming projectile ‘to imply that we do not know the precise nature of the impacting body … whether it is a rocky or metallic asteroid, or an icy comet, for example.’
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January 17, 2012
A green wave is an intentionally induced phenomenon in which a series of traffic lights (usually three or more) are coordinated to allow continuous traffic flow over several intersections in one main direction. Any vehicle travelling along with the green wave (at an approximate speed decided upon by the traffic engineers) will see a progressive cascade of green lights, and not have to stop at intersections. This allows higher traffic loads, and reduces noise and energy use (because less acceleration and braking is needed).
In practical use, only a group of cars (known as a ‘platoon,’ the size of which is defined by the signal times) can use the green wave before the time band is interrupted to give way to other traffic flows. The coordination of the signals is sometimes done dynamically, according to sensor data of currently existing traffic flows – otherwise it is done statically, by the use of timers. Continue reading →
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January 17, 2012
Traffic waves, also called stop waves or traffic shocks, are travelling disturbances in the distribution of cars on a highway. Traffic waves usually travel backwards in relation to the motion of the cars themselves, or ‘upstream.’ The waves can also travel downstream, however, more commonly become ‘pinned’ to a single spot on the road, as a soliton (solitary wave). Traffic waves are a type of traffic jam. A deeper understanding of traffic waves is a goal of the physical study of traffic flow, in which traffic itself can often be seen using techniques similar to those used in fluid dynamics.
It has been said that by knowing how traffic waves are created, drivers can sometimes reduce their effects by increasing vehicle headways and reducing the use of brakes, ultimately alleviating traffic congestion for everyone in the area.
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January 16, 2012
Wakamaru is a Japanese domestic robot made by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, primarily intended to provide companionship to elderly and disabled people. The robot is yellow, 1m tall, and weighs 30 kilograms. It has two arms and its flat, circular base has a diameter of 45 cm. The first hundred went on sale in 2005, for USD $14,000. Wakamaru runs a Linux operating system on multiple microprocessors.
It can connect to the Internet, and has limited speech (in both male and female voices) and speech recognition abilities. Functions include reminding the user to take medicine on time, and calling for help if it suspects something is wrong. Wakamaru was the childhood name of Minamoto no Yoshitsune, a 12th century Japanese general.
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January 16, 2012
Paro is a therapeutic robot baby harp seal, intended to be very cute and to have a calming effect on and elicit emotional responses in patients of hospitals and nursing homes, similar to Animal-Assisted Therapy. It was designed by Takanori Shibata of the Intelligent System Research Institute of Japan’s AIST beginning in 1993. It was first exhibited to the public in late 2001 and handmade versions have been sold commercially since 2004.
Paro is based on harp seals Shibata saw in Canada, where he also recorded their cries that Paro uses. The robot has tactile sensors and responds to petting by moving its tail and opening and closing its eyes. It also responds to sounds and can learn a name. It can show emotions such as surprise, happiness and anger. It produces sounds similar to a real baby seal and (unlike a real baby seal) is active during the day and goes to sleep at night.
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January 16, 2012
Dustbot is a robot that collects garbage from homes. It can be summoned by phone call or SMS, and uses GPS to automatically make its way to the customer, collect the rubbish, and take it to a dustbin. In addition, the Dustbots carry environmental sensors to monitor the pollution levels over, for example, a pedestrian area.
Prototypes have been tested in Italy and Sweden and Ireland. The Dustbot project is funded by the European Commission. The Dustbot system, consisting of the DustCart and the DustClean robots, is designed to work in tight urban areas where large trucks find it difficult to operate, such as old European cities.
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January 16, 2012
In cryptography, a brute-force attack, or exhaustive key search, is a strategy that can, in theory, be used against any encrypted data. Such an attack might be utilized when it is not possible to take advantage of other weaknesses in an encryption system that would make the task easier. It involves systematically checking all possible keys until the correct key is found. In the worst case, this would involve traversing the entire search space.
The key length used in the encryption determines the practical feasibility of performing a brute-force attack, with longer keys exponentially more difficult to crack than shorter ones. Brute-force attacks can be made less effective by obfuscating the data to be encoded, something that makes it harder for an attacker to recognize when he/she has cracked the code. One of the measures of the strength of an encryption system is how long it would theoretically take an attacker to mount a successful brute-force attack against it.
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January 16, 2012
Presenteeism [prez-uhn-tee-iz-uhm] is the act of attending work while sick. A topic that is at times considered its opposite, absenteeism, has historically received extensive attention in the management sciences, but presenteeism has only recently found a place in research literature. Management researchers in Europe, such as Simpson (1998), were some of the first to explore this topic, but those in epidemiology and other health related fields have also examined the effects of this behavior.
While the construct is often cited as coming to work while sick, Johns (2010) further noted that the definitions do not assign any motives to presenteeism. An employee, therefore, may come to work because he or she simply needs the money and cannot afford to take time off due to illness. Additionally, one could go to work due to a love and devotion to the job. In this case, presenteeism could be considered an act of organizational citizenship and inspire admiration from colleague. Therefore, simply viewing presenteeism as a negative act that leads to productivity loss and decreased health may be restricting potential analysis of the construct.
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January 16, 2012
Repetition compulsion is a psychological phenomenon in which a person repeats a traumatic event or its circumstances over and over again. This includes reenacting the event or putting oneself in situations where the event is likely to happen again. This ‘re-living’ can also take the form of dreams in which memories and feelings of what happened are repeated, and even hallucination.
The term can also be used to cover the repetition of behaviour or life patterns more broadly: a ‘key component in Freud’s understanding of mental life, ‘repetition compulsion’…describes the pattern whereby people endlessly repeat patterns of behavior which were difficult or distressing in earlier life.’
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