The following audio files were selected from a larger group of 78 for the last week. The link to each podcast is at the highlighted topic and reached by double-clicking or ctrl-clicking it. All 20 podcasts converted to 1.5x speed can also be downloaded as a single 115 MB zip file here for four months.
Engineers Teach Kids STEM 67 mins – “In this episode, Chris and Jeff discuss STEM education with two educators/engineers in the field who are working to help kids learn more about engineering and stay excited about the field.” Reference and a link is given in show notes to an interview with the president of Olin college [16 mins] on Boston public radio about a new hands-on engineering program. Reference and a link is also provided for the Blue Stamp Engineering Program for high school students that has thus far held sessions in Houston and New York City. At the links for podcasts right click “Download” and select “Save Link As”.
Web Site Creation 63 mins – Jeffrey Zeldman, one of the first web designers, and pioneer of web standard design structure and behavior discusses web standards history, responsive web design, content first, the state of standards in a multi-device world, and why communists sometimes make lousy band managers. His free e-book “Taking Your Talent to the Web” describes how others can do what he has done. At the link right click “Audio” on left margin by the down-pointing arrow and select “Save Link As” to download the podcast.
Whooping Cough Returns 71 mins – Profs Jo Handelsman, Vincent Racaniello, Elio Schaechter and Michael Schmidt review an outbreak of pertussis in Washington, and how culturing can reveal rare members of the soil biosphere. The whooping cough segment may have the widest appeal, but the entire program is important. At the link right-click “TWIM 38” and select “Save Link As”.
Wired Magazine Editor 91 mins – In this excellent program Chris Anderson, editor of “Wired” for the last eleven years describes how he became editor, his drone or UAV activities, the future of the magazine, the UAV industry, and difficulties all entrepreneurs face when creating, scaling up and changing hardware. He is co-Founder of DIY drones, a 20,000+ strong community of UAV enthusiasts and also runs the commercial arm, 3D robotics! He has written books about the growth of the internet including “The Long Tail”. To download the podcast go to the link, find the program title, “The Amp Hour #105 — Deambulatory Daedal Drones,” right click “TheAmpHour-105-DeambulatoryDaedalDrones.mp3” and select “Save Link As”.
Future Crimes 20 mins – “The world is becoming increasingly open, and that has implications both bright and dangerous. Marc Goodman paints a portrait of a grave future, in which technology’s rapid development could allow crime to take a turn for the worse. Marc Goodman works to prevent future crimes and acts of terrorism, even those security threats not yet invented.” Read the comments at the link for identification of the faults with the talk. At the link click “Download,” select audio or video, then for audio right-click the “Download to Desktop (MP3)” button and select “Save Link As”.
Higgs Boson Explained 12 mins – “Evidence for the existence of the Higgs boson has been eagerly awaited for many years. Now, physicists at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, have announced they’ve detected this elusive fundamental particle. It is found in the nucleus of atoms and exists for a fleeting moment. Ray Volkas describes what we know about the Higgs boson.” This podcast is more informative than a previous talk. At the link right-click “Download Audio” and select “Save Link As”.
Zinc Air Batteries 4 mins – “The big drawback for power generated from solar and wind turbines is the storage of power to cover times when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow. Tristan Simons is working on a new kind of battery to address this problem.” At the link right-click “Download Audio” and select “Save Link As”.
Quantum Computing 20 mins – “Quantum computing is the holy grail of computing. It is a technology that relies upon the physical properties of individual atoms. When developed, computers will be capable of very much more, performing more operations faster. They will need different software and processors. Daniel Lidar is experimenting with the first of these processors.” at the University of California. At the link right-click “Download Audio” and select “Save Link As”.
Third World Innovation 14 mins – “Two-thirds of the world may not have access to the latest smartphone, but local electronic shops are adept at fixing older tech using low-cost parts. Vinay Venkatraman explains his work in “technology crafts,” through which a mobile phone, a lunchbox and a flashlight can become a digital projector for a village school, or an alarm clock and a mouse can be melded into a medical device for local triage. Vinay Venkatraman aims to design technological devices for the “bottom of the pyramid” rather than simply for the affluent.” The video version at the link shows the devices he discusses. Details on how to build them were not provided. At the link click “Download,” select audio or video, then for audio right-click the “Download to Desktop (MP3)” button and select “Save Link As”.
Talking Electronics Magazine – In Australia “The Editor of Talking Electronics Interactive, Colin Mitchell, has been producing Talking Electronics magazine since 1985 and has designed over 300 kits to complement the articles he has written…” The creator of EEVblog interviewed Mitchell and produced five video files from the results in the following order: 1(38 min) Magazine History; 2(16 min) American Visit to Promote Magazine; 3(12 min) Kits; 4(7 min) Internet Impact, and 5(11 min) Old Hardware. The five videos can viewed and downloaded at the topic link. (Only the first two are included in the zip file link at the top of this page.) EEVblog home page contains thirteen links to sources judged to be equal to EEVblog. Other videos there are also interesting; in particular those devoted to The Mailbag concern a grab bag of any electronics items sent in for review.
Work Ethic 50 mins – “Are you a hard worker? Because there are some people out there who think you’re lazy. This is a global economy, step it up! But there are a lot of people out there who work plenty hard. So what are you supposed to do? Today, we’ve got a passion for hard work: Where it comes from, where it went and what you can do about it.” Download the podcast at the link by locating “07-27-12 Marketplace Money,” right-clicking “Media files marketplace_money_v2_20120727_64.mp3” and selecting “Save Link As”.
PC Resurrection 27 mins – Get the know-how to give your old PC a new life. There a multitude of Linux distros out there, but today Leo and Iyaz take a look at Damn Small Linux, and Puppy Linux to upgrade an old PC. They pick a Linux distro and download an ISO, then install the ISO to a bootable device; discuss how to create a bootable CD: Mac OS X Instructions | Windows 7. How to create a bootable USB key — two easy options and both are free. They recommend UNetbootin, which is cross platform, but had issues with the OS X version. Alternatively, there is the Windows-only Pendrive Linux. Really small RAM on the PC? Then Browser linux is even lighter than Puppy Linux. Listen at the link or download video-audio by right-clicking “Audio” and selecting “Save Link As”.
STEM and Disease 73 mins – Dr. Subra Suresh, Director, National Science Foundation presents a lecture on the “Study of Human Diseases at the Intersections of Physical Sciences, Engineering and Biology”. Suresh has long advocated for the integration of biology and engineering. At MIT he has been involved with the creation of multiple pioneering initiatives, such as placing engineering labs in the new MIT Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research; establishing the MIT Department of Biological Engineering; and forming an international alliance of engineers and biologists to study tuberculosis, avian flu, malaria and respiratory syncytial virus. How are the onset and progression of human diseases influenced by systematic changes in physical properties at the molecular and cell level, and vice versa? What new insights into the mechanistic origins of an infectious disease can be gained by combining the latest advances from seemingly unconnected disciplines such as mechanical engineering and genetics? This presentation will describe recent research results that incorporate state-of-the-art experimental and computational methods from physical sciences, life sciences, genetics and different branches of engineering in the study of Plasmodium falciparum malaria, hereditary blood disorders and cancer.” Download audio or video at the page bottom of the link by right-clicking the appropriate “Play” button and selecting “Save Link As”.
Biodiversity 54 mins – “The 2012 Muskoka Environmental Summit brings together prominent scientists and influential policy makers to discuss critical questions about biodiversity and the environment. IDEAS host Paul Kennedy moderates the plenary panel discussion.” One panelists noted that 500,000 species will become extinct in the net fifty years. Muskoka is an area in Ontario, Canada. Download the podcast at the link by locating the title, “Buying Into Biodiversity,” right-clicking “Download Buying Into Biodiversity” and selecting “Save Link As.”
Suboxone Drug 16 mins- “There’s a pill called Suboxone that treats addiction to heroin and pain pills like oxycontin. Doctors and addicts say it’s amazing. ‘It was the best thing that ever happened,’ one heroin addict told us. ‘I was like OH. MY. LORD. This is a miracle pill.’ The government spent tens of millions of dollars developing Suboxone. Doctors can prescribe it in their offices. But a lot of people who want it can’t get it from a doctor, so they have to buy it on the street. Today on the show: Why people have to turn to drug dealers to get a pill that fights addiction.” For more, see this 16 page PDF on the history of Suboxone. (The link to the paper at Planet Money is for an abstract with links, eventually, to the PDF. The PDF link is used here, but if it fails, work from the topic link.) Download the podcast by right-clicking “Download” at the right-top of the page and selecting “Save Link As”.
Offshore Account Creation 30 mins – “On today’s show, we dive deep into the world of offshore companies and bank accounts. We set up our own company in an offshore tax haven, and we find out where the easiest place to register a business anonymously is. For more: Read Adam Davidson’s column in this week’s New York Times.” Don’t miss the comments to the piece at the topic link where the podcast can be downloaded by right-clicking “Download” at the right-top of the page and selecting “Save Link As”.
HIV Kidney Transplants 11 mins – Discussion of the pioneering renal transplantation work of Dr Elmi Muller in South Africa where she has completed fourteen successful kidney transplants from HIV positive contributors to HIV positive recipients while coping with political issues. Sound quality is poor, but useable at normal listening speed. A PDF is also available with the same information. Download the audio file at the link by locating the title “Listen to The Lancet: 11 May,” right clicking “Media files 11may.mp3” and selecting “Save Link As”.
African Vaccination Program 21 mins – Interview with Bill Foege, ‘gentle giant of global health’ who has made great contributions to the vaccination concept and process in Africa. A PDF of the interview is also available and includes links to related work, such as his book about the fight to eradicate smallpox. Download the audio file at the link by locating the title “Listen to The Lancet: 29 June,”right clicking “Media files 29june.mp3” and selecting “Save Link As”.
The 95 feeds used to prepare this weekly blog are gathered using Feedreader3 and are available as an opm file at Google Docs. A PDF of feeds is also available there. Free Commander is used to compare old and new downloads to remove duplicates. MP3SpeedChanger is used to change playback speed of multiple files as a batch. A speed listening background article here. Sixty-four podcasts for 2010 and earlier at 1.5x are listed alphabetically in this PDF and can be downloaded in two sections as zip files: Part 1 and Part 2 each holding about 350 MB. For 2011 this alphabetical PDF list of 184 podcasts at 1.5x is available, and the actual files can be downloaded in five segments: Part 1 to 5 (Part 1 – 276 MB; P2 – 291 MB; P3 – 284; P4 – 153 MB, and P5 – 256 MB). Please leave a comment if you have problems with the links and downloads. A similar list and downloads for 362 podcasts for Jan-Jun 2012 is here. Those podcasts are grouped into eight zipped files for easier downloading. Multiple parts are used due to a 300MB limit on file size uploads.
Thanks for visiting.
Media Mining Digest 