Week 8 - High-altitude wind power

Winds at higher altitudes become steadier, more persistent, and of higher velocity. Historically, wind turbines are placed on Earth’s surface, but idea of capturing the power of winds high in the sky seems to be great chance. According to research presented on this page:
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v3/n2/full/nclimate1683.html
“Turbines placed on Earth’s surface could extract kinetic energy at a rate of at least 400 TW, whereas high-altitude wind power could extract more than 1,800 TW.”
Idea of high-altitude wind power is quite old.  Was introduced by John Etzler's technological utopianist in 1833 but nowadays we can observe huge interest it this area. Few days ago Google has acquired a US company Makani Power specialized in fully autonomous flights of robot kites bearing its power-generating propellers. You can read nice article about that on BBC web page.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22636565
Some other interesting thinks about this concept you can find in a little bit older article on this web page:
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/high_altitude_wind_energy_huge_potential_and_hurdles/2576/

• What do you think about concept of high-altitude wind power?
• What about Google investment. Is it yet another PR trick to be known as company putting its resources into some novel technologies like self-driving cars and wearable  devices with not always have a future?
• What do you think about traditional wind plants ?  They are always highly visible in any landscape. Some people like it, others are against saying that is not healthy for people and kills millions of birds.

Week 8 - The future of the Web

Do you know http://archive.org/web/web.php  ? If not you should try to check it. By this web page you are able to “travel in time” ;). Type www.onet.pl or other URL to see how these web pages were looked like in the past (e.g. 15 ears ago).

But today, all we are a part of changes that is currently happening at the Web.  As you probably know The World Wide Web Consortium (W3c) is currently engaged into creation of HTML 5 and CSS3 specifications. Most of these specifications (they are divided into many smaller modules ) have still under working draft status. Besides that limitation, we are able to use what they provide today (providing  we have the newest version of the web browser). If you are confused whether to use HTML5 right now you should read this article: http://tympanus.net/codrops/2011/11/24/top-10-reasons-to-use-html5-right-now/
So this post will be about new  features of HTML 5 and CSS3. Let’s think about another usage of HTML5 and situations they can help, facilitate live of others and enrich some kind of experience of using the web. You can share you idea, interesting links about innovations like new frameworks for building new interface of sites, tutorial, examples, articles etc.

Here I am writing some ideas that we can start to talk about them.  Innovative way of building interfaces and new approach to design are the aims that CSS3 helps to achieve them quite easy.
Let’s start talking about typography. The following article is about using web fonts as a primary design element. Using an uncommon or novelty typeface can add a lot of visual interest
http://tympanus.net/codrops/2012/05/01/effective-typography-driven-web-design/
The websites based on the parallax effect present very interesting approach for building eye-catching web sites:  http://designmodo.com/parallax-design/

Which direction the design of web sites goes to? Here we have two interesting articles that deal with that:

http://tympanus.net/codrops/2011/02/21/designing-for-feature-rich-websites/

http://designmodo.com/google-interface-flat/

Making a presentation using Web Browser and HTML5 -  instead of Power Point has becoming more and more popular. The following article presents several frameworks that we can use building our own presentation available on the web:

http://zoomzum.com/6-best-html5css3-presentation-frameworks/

I couldn’t finish here without mention about 3D and animations. The complex animation in pure CSS3 are still not very popular. But due to rapid development of the new products of Adobe (e.g. Adobe Edge Animate) for making animation it will change. I have an impression that these new possibilities carry a completely new approach for building a websites and presenting information on the web.

http://www.creativebloq.com/css3/animation-with-css3-712437

I realize that there are many another aspects that have not been moved here. Do you have any thoughts about that changes? If you read interesting article or know spectacular tool, sites or idea that you want to share with us -  please do it. Thank You.

Week 8 - Should our genetic information remain personal?

"Genetic information" is information about genes, gene products, or inherited characteristics that may derive from the individual or a family member.

Genetic information about individuals can reveal very important and sometimes private information about ancestry, activities, health, and health prospects.

Because there are so many potential uses of genetic information, and because social norms about how such information should or should not be used have yet to develop, it is very difficult to make judgement in this area. Some businesses, however, are already positioning themselves to help consumers maximize beneficial uses of genetic information while protecting privacy.

Passing on information to help prevent serious crime or indeed to establish a guilty party may on occasions be necessary.

Genetic study may also affect other members of the family. Therefore assurances need to be given to the person consenting to the tests that there will be no breach of confidentiality. This is especially important in small communities where confidentiality is a major issue.

Because no human being has a perfect set of genes, every person is at risk for genetic discrimination. In fact, there are well-documented public instances of genetic discrimination.

http://ideas.time.com/2012/02/20/can-you-be-fired-for-your-genes/

Young men and women who are carriers for a given disorder may be discouraged from courting each other, because their children could be born with a fatal genetic disorder.

Some individuals avoid genetic testing out of fear it will affect their ability to purchase insurance or find a job.

In addition access to genetic information about employee can give information about personality, overall performance, competence, health and vulnerability to work related diseases and life durability.

For more information please read this article: http://www.genome.gov/10002077

Please answer following questions:

Do you think that genetic information should be personal?

What is fair to discriminate?

}        Personality-to the level affecting employment

}        Competence at duties

}        Age

}        Health

◦         Smoking

◦         Medical history ?

◦         Family history ?

What other aspects of life in your opinion can be affected by making genetic information accessible?

Week 7 - Human memory

How many of us could not learn a short rhyme in Primary School? How many times we were reading the same sentence unable to remember simple words? How many of us were asking themselves the same question? "Why can't I learn it?"
The reason is that our brain contains synapses which proceeded from electrical impulses and chemical reactions. These, in turn, are formed by external stimuli. Our memory is created thanks to synapses which number grows accordingly while we are learning new things. All assimilated information is wandering in our brain, however, new things not immediately reach the center of the mind. They congregate under so-called "hipokarmia", which can be compared to computer files. All the information, which is located there, is also agglomerated in different folders which if not used for long time, is deleted from memory, and only those files which are exploited stay. The same situation occurs in our brain, only this information which is used and regularly recalled is saved. We forget the other part and, unfortunately, it happens without our control. One thing is for sure, it is easier for vizualisers to consolidate information who while seeing particular thing or person can straightaway recreate the situation which is connected with it.

The link shows how to train our brain:

http://www.helpguide.org/life/improving_memory.htm

Different kinds of human memory:

http://voices.yahoo.com/the-three-types-human-memory-34399.html

The film shows a man with extraordinary talents:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tg9tdfdxso4

Questions:
What's your technique for remembering?
How do you train your memory?
Is it possible to train memory as the man in the film?
Which kind of human memory is the best to remember information?
Which kind of human memory is the most similar to your brain?

Week 6

Dear Students,
This week I would like you to read/watch an article/piece of news  of your interest at http://www.time.com/time/ or http://www.bbc.com/news/.  Present it on the blog. You are also to express your opinion on the articles/pieces of news presented by other course participants.

Week 5 - Smart Homes

On this week I want to present article and video about smart homes for everyone:)

I think that this is very interesting topic  please read the article and watch the video:


http://home.howstuffworks.com/smart-home3.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i73n-LTXPIM


In my opinion it is next step for people to make their life easier :)

The idea of that solution is based on the network which is similar to the WiIFi network.
 Like someone said simple solution is the best solution :)


Questions:
1.What do you think about this smart homes ?

2.What are advantages or disadvantages of that home ?

3.Do you think that smart home will be more popular ?

4.Do you want to live in that kind of home??

Week 5 - Teaching without serious textbooks

Because of a lack of new articles for commenting I decided to publish mine a little earlier. I would like to discuss about teaching without textbooks with plenty of serious rules.  

 Please look at this video http://www.ted.com/talks/tyler_dewitt_hey_science_teachers_make_it_fun.html.

You can find in this video a few thesis:

-              textbooks are not the way to get young people interested in science

-              the language of textbooks is truly incomprehensible

-              too accurate texts are impossible to understand by students

What do you think about them?

What do you think about not strict teaching of a strict subjects? Is it a "brutishness for science"?

When did you read your last textbook (excluding textbooks of your supervisor ;-))? How do you replace reading textbooks in your studying?

What do you think about replacing textbooks by Internet?

Some of you are teachers – what do you think about teaching without textbooks? When I studied it was unthinkable, but it was in previous millennium. How is it today? I would like to discuss about greater lessons than one hour per week as our English, about greater courses like “computer networks”. Please, say about your experiences both as students and teachers.