Note: the following is pure speculation and may be an example of mass hysteria mongering.

8. HRP-4C the Robot Supermodel

This saucy sexpot fembot (just check out that ass!) has an unlimited capacity to eat tiny designer salads, pull perfect pouts and snort endless lines of cocaine. Due to its total lack of human feelings it is perfect for the utterly superficial job of supermodel and won’t spiral into an emotional breakdown everytime something nasty is written about it in the papers. Let’s be honest, we won’t miss the tiny-minded bunch of turkeys we’ve got as models at the moment. And anyway, robots are sexaaay… Unfortunately this robot is more deadly siren than heavenly angel as, true to form, concealed in her bosoms are large calibre machineguns (have I watched too Austin Powers too many times?). To be honest, I still find this damn sexy… And just so you know, when the fembots take over, all you out of work supermodels can come stay with me.

7. Mobiro the Robotic Violinist

Concert violinists and music teachers the world over, be afraid. Be very afraid. Toyota’s ‘Mobiro’ is a 5 ft. tall robot with an uncanny ability to play the violin. And here’s the bad news: ‘Mobiro’ is only the latest in Toyota’s ensemble of musical robots that already includes a trumpeter, trombonist and several others. It uses its 17 computer controlled joints and agile fingers to hold the instrument and delicately sound out sweet airs – but don’t be fooled by its humanoid charms. Once ‘Mobiro’ and its friends have replaced all the musicians in the world (and hold a monopoly on your ears) they will begin to transmit inaudible telekinetic pulses designed to reprogram and enslave us. Before long we’ll all be dancing to the beat of their drum – as long as we’re not immediately earmarked for euthanasia, that is.

6. Motoman SDA-10 the Robot Chef

Are you one of those chefs who always burns the toast and struggles to remember how long you boil an egg for? If so we have an announcement for you: YOU ARE BEING REPLACED BY A ROBOT. ‘Motoman’ can produce over three dozen savoury Japanese pancakes in four seconds (or something like that…), is never late for work and never makes mistakes – bad news for all those chefs who consider the microwave essential to haute cuisine. But even worse news is that once ‘Motoman’ is installed in every restaurant and diner in the land, he will start to adopt the attitude of the ’soup Nazi’. The weak will be selected and brutally made into perfect pieces of sushi, before being force-fed to the rest of us whilst we are held in an electrified pen, guarded by cruel robot sentries.

5. RI-MAN Elderly Care Robot

RI-MAN is the world’s first robot designed to lift and carry humans, and before long will put all those working with the elderly out of a job. Not only can RI-MAN lift up the elderly when they get bored of scrabble and place them down in front of the TV, but it can also serve them up their mushy food, as well as use its ability to see, hear and smell to sense when they’re about to go into cardiac arrest. Unfortunately, once we’re all lying helpless in our own mess, relying on teams of robot helpers to move us around, it won’t be that comfy chair in front of the TV they’ll be dropping us in – but a giant extermination pit, brimful of acid.

4. Home Assistant Robot

Tokyo University’s Home Assistant robot can carry out simple domestic chores such as wiping floors, washing, cleaning dishes and even moving furniture. It is equipped with 5 cameras and laser sensors, and 6 hands with three joints each. Cleaners and mothers everywhere will be out of a job when HAR gets its act together, and then instead of placing dirty laundry in the washing machine HAR will be placing you and your children in there.

3. AIBO the Robot Dog

Sony’s AIBO robot dog is able to walk, ’see’ its environment via camera, and recognize spoken commands. Added to this it’s damn cute – in a manly sort of metallic/gadget way – and will soon have the standard family dog out of its job. AIBO was marketed as a novelty alternative to a real dog that places its owner firmly at the cutting edge of artificial intelligence technology, and perfect for the kids to play with as it won’t bite or make any mess (what’s not to love?). What they don’t tell you is that it is programmed to transform from cute ‘family dog’ into vicious ‘attack dog’. Once the robots’ take over of the world is complete AIBOs will patrol the streets in brutal gangs, mauling anyone out after curfew hour.

2. MechaDroid C3 the Receptionist

The MechaDroid Type C3 robot receptionist uses face recognition technology to recognize the faces of visitors to a company’s reception desk. The MechaDroid never makes mistakes, knows perfect directions for everyone and eliminates all those awkward conversations with receptionists, but it does have one drawback – along with those little conversations goes the chance to flirt. Eventually all receptionists will be history and a MechaDroid will control entry and exit of every firm, store and home in the country. These unflinching droids will at first deny us access to all public buildings, and soon after be used to trap us in our own homes indefinitely, forcing us to face slow death through starvation.

1. Asimo the Waiter

If you are a hotel butler or a waiter you’d better watch your back – there’s a robot out there that’s after your job. ASIMO can greet and escort guests, and after getting its assigned humans sorted out, can deliver trays of drinks. This humanoid biped is ‘comfortable’ around humans (meaning it can choose its movements independently) allowing it to dodge spewing drunks or unwanted groping hands at parties. Yes, it’s true, having a robot sounds like no substitute for a cute young waiter or waitress, but let me remind you of the HRp-4C robot supermodel – a mechanised waitress who is also hot? Beauty. In the future Asimo will deliver tiny parcels of radioactive matter before forcing us to eat them, rendering our brains useless lumps of jelly.

Sources: 1, 2, 3

Images: gameimp, palgus, steve keys, Tracy O, kosmokomik, wikipedia, takomabibelot

Mr. Williamson’s work focuses on the boundaries of the firm, and the reasons for economic activity inside of firms: Why is there so much vertical integration in the marketplace? Why don’t we all just work for ourselves and sign contracts with each other instead of working together inside of a big company?

Would a third alternative be to outsource negotiations? Also, I’m not sure whether Williamson’s work covered this, but finding clients when you’re working for yourself is another time- and money-suck. The corporation helps in that instance, too.

Elinor Ostrom’s work had to do with group management of common resources. Her findings negate the dominance of socialism or privatization:

Ms. Ostrom’s work focuses on the commons, such as how pools of users manage natural resources as common property. The traditional view is that common ownership results in excessive exploitation of resources — the so-called tragedy of the commons that occurs when fishermen overfish a common pond, for example. The proposed solution is usually to make users bear the external costs of their utilization by privatizing the resource or imposing government regulations such as taxes or quotas.

Ms. Ostrom’s empirical research has shown that this explanation is “overly simplistic,” the prize committee says: There are many cases around the world in which common property is “surprisingly well-managed.” In these cases commons users “create and enforce rules that mitigate overexploitation” without having to resort to privatization and government regulation (which can both pose their own practical difficulties).

Ostrom found that some grasslands in Asia’s interior were governed better by groups than socialist or private concerns. One explanation for this could be that governments or companies don’t have an interest in the welfare of the individuals affected by the resource. Thus, they’ll cull it for their own advantage, rather than maximizing its utility–something a group might do to ensure the survival of its community or family.

I wonder whether Ostrom analyzed cases where groups compete over the same resource. I can’t see that competition leading to a particularly peaceful or efficient solution.

Wolfram Alpha, a new search engine based on Wolfram Research’s Mathematica formula, is due for release this month. If you watch the demo above, you’ll see that Wolfram Alpha is able to process questions in natural language–the way humans ask them. There’s no translating required, as there often is in Google searches. Wolfram Alpha generates results that include graphs, charts, and detailed explanations.

Physicist Stephen Wolfram explains what makes the Wolfram Alpha search engine different in a blog post:

Fifty years ago, when computers were young, people assumed that they’d…be able…to ask a computer any factual question, and have it compute the answer.

But I’m happy to say that with a mixture of many clever algorithms and heuristics, lots of linguistic discovery and linguistic curation, and what probably amount to some serious theoretical breakthroughs, we’re actually managing to make it work.

Lifehacker explains why Wolfram Alpha may beat Wikipedia, but not Google:

Don’t think of Wolfram Alpha as a Google Killer, though, because frankly Google doesn’t really have anything like it—except for maybe Google’s new public data search, which, while impressive, doesn’t look nearly as robust as Wolfram Alpha. (Then again, we’ll have to wait and see how well Wolfram Alpha works when it gets in the hands of the public.) Either way, Google will still corner the market on most normal search. (We’re not always looking for the kind of answers Wolfram Alpha provides when we hit up Google.) As for how this editor uses Google and Wikipedia, I’d actually imagine that Wolfram Alpha could be more of a Wikipedia competitor than a Google competitor.

I would add that most competitors with consistently accurate information stand a chance of beating Wikipedia.

Keep an eye on WolfromAlpha.com, which launches sometime this month, to test it out yourself.

There’s nothing quite like a good plague scare to get people pontificating. Here’s a roundup of swine flu opinion from the past few days.

From a scientific standpoint, it’s apparently not a question of if, but when a flu pandemic will hit. David Bradley warns:

As I’ve discussed previously on Sciencebase, there are countless latent diseases in hosts as rodents, birds, and cattle lying ready and willing to make the species leap to humans and decimate our populations. Whereas for the last ten years or so bird flu has been the focus of much research it was always more likely that a potentially lethal strain of virus would emerge from another species and not necessarily in Asia.

President Obama used the swine flu outbreak to bring attention to the need for more and better scientific research, as it is a ‘key element of the nation’s security’. He told the New York Times:

“Science is more essential for our prosperity, our security, our health, our environment and our quality of life than it has ever been before,” Mr. Obama said. “If there was ever a day that reminded us of our shared stake in science and research, it is today.”

Gawker called BS on swine flu:

Quickly, don your paper masks! Stay indoors! The dirty Mexican pig influenza is here, to sicken you! Wocka wocka. Did you know that America had another swine flu panic, in 1976? Let’s reminisce, and laugh.

Politico pointed out that the Obama administration is heading into its first public health outbreak without a chief public health official or appointees in many key positions.

The Service Employees International Union has launched an online petition criticizing Republicans for delaying the confirmation of a Health and Human Services secretary in the face of a swine flu outbreak. The union accuses Senate Republicans of delaying the confirmation of nominee Kathleen Sebelius to “curry favor with extremist outside groups” and depriving the department of leadership as the nation confronts a potential flu pandemic.

I looked at a couple of theories about pandemics from top economic mindsover on Bizzia.

In a 2005 report for the World Bank, Milan Brahmbhatt looked at the socio-economic impacts of avian flu. Bird, swine, it’s all the same. While Brahmbhatt’s report addresses a lot of issues specific to avian flu, he also includes plenty the non-poultry industry analysis of a worldwide flu pandemic.

And what would we do without Google? Track the damage with the interactive swine flu map. The good news: so far Alaska’s still safe!

Image Credit: sarihuella, Flickr

Pharmaceutical companies Merck and Schering Plough are merging to create another pharmaceutical giant (a la Wyeth and Pfizer in late January). MarketWatch has the details:

Pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co., Inc on Monday said it will buy rival Schering-Plough for $41.1 billion in cash and shares to expand its presence in emerging markets and bolster its pipeline of potential new medicines. The combined company will be called Merck and led by Merck Chief Executive Richard Clark.

Schering-Plough generates about 70% of its revenue outside the U.S., including more than $2 billion from emerging markets. The combined company is expected to draw more than 50% of its revenue from outside of the U.S.

The strategy is one of survival: Merge and slim down, or fail. Big pharma may become too big to fail, especially if a large portion of its business remains outside of the United States.

1. Carp

(Featured above: A common carp, as-yet-uncloned)

An Asian carp was cloned successfully in 1963; ten years later, scientist Tong Dizhou also cloned a European crucian carp.

2. Dolly the Sheep

Dolly saw the light of day in 1996. She lived until the age of six. The first cloned mammal, Dolly is considered to be a great success. Later, several hundred other Dollies were cloned.

3. Cumulina the Mouse

Cloned in Hawa’ii in 2000, Cumulina was the first successful mouse clone. She lived until the ripe old age of two years and seven months, a victory for her researchers.

4. Noto and Kaga (Cows)

These cows were cloned in 1998 and duplicated several thousand times. Made in Japan, the cows pave the way for other clones engineered to produce better meat and milk.

5. Mira the Goat

Also cloned in 1998, Mira and her sisters came from a US lab as predecessors for livestock engineered to contain pharmaceutical products beneficial for humans.

6. A Family of Pigs: Millie, Alexis, Christa, Dotcom, and Carrel

Labs intend to modify pigs so that they can grow cells and organs that humans can use. Millie and her sisters (if you can call them that) were cloned in 2000 by a US-based company.

7. Ombretta the Mouflon

The successful cloning of this endangered animal (2000) exemplifies how cloning can rescue a species from the brink of extinction.

8. Tetra the Rhesus Monkey

The lab monkey world received its first clone in 2000. US-based Tetra is the first in a series of cloned monkeys that scientists could use as test subjects to learn more about diseases like diabetes.

9. Noah the Gaur

A gaur is an Asian wild ox whose numbers are dwindling. Cloned in 2001, Noah only lived for two days before dying of dysentery.

10. Rabbit

Cloned in 2001, a white rabbit like the one featured above–and its 30 clones–wasn’t given a cute name.

11. Copy Cat (CC)

This cat, cloned in 2001, was the starting gun for a pet-cloning process that may eventually become an industry.

12. Ralph the Rat

Cloned in 2002, Ralph eventually came out of the womb 15 separate times (his clones, that is). Though rats like Ralph may eventually be used in labs, cross your fingers that his ilk won’t find their way into New York sewers.

13. Idaho Gem

Mules are sterile–unless you clone them, as proven by Idaho Gem, the pride of a 2003 American research team.

14. Prometea the Horse

An Italian team produced Prometea in 2003. They hoped to produce more Italian stallions, but their attempts failed. Prometea birthed her own in 2008. Racehorses could come in the future.

15. Ditteaux the African Wildcat

Although African wildcats aren’t endangered, US scientists cloned one in 2003 as a sort of template for cloning other, more vulnerable animals.

16. Dewey the Deer

This white tail, cloned at Texas A&M University in 2003, is one of those clones lacking a solid premise. His ilk are some of the most abundant game in North America; still, scientists say clones could be used to research deer genes and produce better deer stock for hunters. As importantly, they managed to clone a deer before anyone else could do it.

17. Libby and Lilly, Ferrets

These ferrets, cloned in 2004, almost beg another “why the heck did you do that?” It turns out that ferrets are very useful for studying human respiratory diseases, and some types are endangered.

18. Buffalo

This cloned Murrah buffalo from India could eventually become a high-volume milk source.

19. Snuppy the Dog

South Korean scientists accomplished the notoriously challenging task of cloning a dog in 2005. Snuppy’s predecessors could be used to study human diseases.

20. Wolves: Snuwolf and Snuwolffy

Seoul National University (SNU) hit the canine cloning jackpot again with these two gray wolves as precursors for eventual conservation projects in 2005.

The New York Times today released a piece about gadgets for kids. The key question is this:

At what age should children get their first cellphone, laptop or virtual persona?

The article goes on to cite how A) technology and B) what psychologist Jean Piaget’s labels the four stages of cognitive development in children, can mesh nicely. For example:

Ages 0-2/Piaget’s first stage, called “sensorimotor.” Technology products must act like a busy-box, with lights or sounds that respond to a child’s actions. Toys like the Laugh and Learn 2-in-1 Learning Kitchen ($71, www.Fisher-Price.com), which has doors and switches for a baby to explore and a crawl-through doorway, fit well with this stage.

During the next three cognitive stages, children are weened onto cameras, cellphones, Wii games, and, ultimately, the Internet. It’s modern parenting, techie style. Except that techie has become the norm, and people who don’t inure their spawn to the world of gadgets will be old-fashioned.

I really, really don’t look forward to the day when a six-year-old explains to me how to format a NeuroSky Biosensor so that it picks up mood-based news feeds…

In a pilot program Kaiser will offer Microsoft’s Health Vault personal health-record service to their 150k+ employees. If successful, Microsoft could reach the 8.7 million Kaiser members.

Take Control of Your Records

Microsoft and Google are expected to speed the adoption of personal electronic health records, a key factor in overall improvement of health care as well as a substantial cost cutter. Both the Microsoft and Google systems put control of personal health records in consumers’ hands. This is a fundamental change from the programs currently in place, which may be accessed by patients but are generally controlled by the health care providers and/or the insurance companies. I love the idea of being able to see everything the doctor has scribbled about me.

Another huge benefit: the new records belong to the consumer and are therefore 100% transferable – crucial in our ever more mobile society. If you want to check it out yourself, you can set up a free Microsoft Health Vault account here.

Your Health: The Total Picture

The new personal health records will allow input from all types of monitoring devices. All types of information from blood pressure machines and insulin monitors, to pedometers and treadmills can be entered into the records. Even detailed diet and exercise stats can work together with blood tests and doctors’ notes to create a more complete picture of health.

All this is expected to empower consumers to be more active in their own health management. Not only is this good for our health, it potentially represents tremendous cost savings because chronic diseases ailments like diabetes and heart disease make up a huge proportion of the US health care bill. The more proactive we are in terms of prevention and maintenance, the less we’re likely to spend on treatment.

Ick Factor?
Does it bother you at a gut level that Microsoft or Google, that any company has a hand in your most private information? Will hold so much power? It’s not like all the data’s not out there already.

“Something seems wrong with the laws of physics. Spacecraft are not behaving in the way that they should

In 1990 mission controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, which operates America’s unmanned interplanetary space probes, noticed something odd happen to a Jupiter-bound craft, called Galileo. As it was flung around the Earth in what is known as a slingshot manoeuvre (designed to speed it on its way to the outer solar system), Galileo picked up more velocity than expected. Not much. Four millimetres a second, to be precise. But well within the range that can reliably be detected.

Once might be happenstance. But this strange extra acceleration was seen subsequently with two other craft. That, as Goldfinger would have put it, looks like enemy action.*”

You may not be in the physics business, but there are four important lessons for any businessperson in this story.

1. There are no immutable laws. A quick Amazon search on “immutable laws” returns 34 matches. There are hundreds more business books that don’t use the term but do imply that they contain the prescription for business success. They are nothing more than theories that have worked, sometimes more than once. Rob May has lambasted the “research” in Good to Great on multiple occasions, and while I disagree with him on the value of the book, he has a point. Collins’ team never looked for companies with all the traits but weren’t great And there probably were some; which leads me to the second important lesson:
2. In any new initiative, predict the expected benefit and figure out how you will measure it before implementing changes. As a consultant I always wanted to quantify the benefits of any new system or process. I was am constantly amazed at the quantity of money companies will spend for generic, undefined “improvement” or “competitiveness”. The more complex the project, the more important this process becomes. Which leads to:
3. Actually measure your results! If one or more of your assumptions or actions is wrong, you can spot the problem sooner, and potentially avert a looming disaster. And finally:
4. Best practices = “Rest” practices. What is ‘best’ anyway? Best practices are really nothing more than a collection of stuff the “rest” of some group are doing. They may or may not work for you. That’s why you need to heed lesson two. If those physicists had assumed that the ‘best practice’ of using Einstein’s equations were always right, they might eventually have run into real problems. You need to understand the context of what makes something ‘best’, and when it might not be. Generally, your organizational culture will limit what is ‘best’ for you.

Of course, that part about “there are no immutable laws” applies to the advice in this post (unfortunately). I’ve learned these lessons the hard way, but your mileage in applying them will vary.

Did I miss any important lessons from the article? Do you disagree with my immutable laws? Let me know in the comment box!

* Mr Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action.”

Ethanol, a fuel that's backed by state and federal governments and viewed as a boon to corn farmers in the Midwest and South, may make it harder to breathe in Louisville this summer.

While governors in more than 25 states, including Kentucky and Indiana, tout it as a way to make gasoline burn cleaner, there's new evidence ethanol can worsen some types of pollution linked to damaging health effects — namely ozone and fine particles.

And that could make it harder for cities like Louisville, where it already is being used, to meet air standards.

This is my problem with environmentalism. I want to protect the environment, as do most people, but many of us just get tired of people jumping to conclusions about the causes, effects, and solutions for environmental problems.