'Liquid that thinks:' Swarm of ping-pong-ball-sized robots created

Dec. 14, 2012 ? University of Colorado Boulder Assistant Professor Nikolaus Correll likes to think in multiples. If one robot can accomplish a singular task, think how much more could be accomplished if you had hundreds of them.

Correll and his computer science research team, including research associate Dustin Reishus and professional research assistant Nick Farrow, have developed a basic robotic building block, which he hopes to reproduce in large quantities to develop increasingly complex systems.

Recently the team created a swarm of 20 robots, each the size of a Ping Pong ball, which they call "droplets." When the droplets swarm together, Correll said, they form a "liquid that thinks."

To accelerate the pace of innovation, he has created a lab where students can explore and develop new applications of robotics with basic, inexpensive tools.

Similar to the fictional "nanomorphs" depicted in the "Terminator" films, large swarms of intelligent robotic devices could be used for a range of tasks. Swarms of robots could be unleashed to contain an oil spill or to self-assemble into a piece of hardware after being launched separately into space, Correll said.

Correll plans to use the droplets to demonstrate self-assembly and swarm-intelligent behaviors such as pattern recognition, sensor-based motion and adaptive shape change. These behaviors could then be transferred to large swarms for water- or air-based tasks.

Correll hopes to create a design methodology for aggregating the droplets into more complex behaviors such as assembling parts of a large space telescope or an aircraft.

In the fall, Correll received the National Science Foundation's Faculty Early Career Development award known as "CAREER." In addition, he has received support from NSF's Early Concept Grants for Exploratory Research program, as well as NASA and the U.S. Air Force.

He also is continuing work on robotic garden technology he developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2009. Correll has been working with Joseph Tanner in CU-Boulder's aerospace engineering sciences department to further develop the technology, involving autonomous sensors and robots that can tend gardens, in conjunction with a model of a long-term space habitat being built by students.

Correll says there is virtually no limit to what might be created through distributed intelligence systems.

"Every living organism is made from a swarm of collaborating cells," he said. "Perhaps some day, our swarms will colonize space where they will assemble habitats and lush gardens for future space explorers."

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/bBQP7_qMkkk/121214143027.htm

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Syria state media: Blast near Damascus kills 16

BEIRUT (AP) ? Syria's state news agency says a bomb blast near the capital, Damascus, has killed 16 people. It says at least half of those killed are women and children.

The SANA news agency says a car packed with explosives blew up on Thursday near a school in a residential part of the southwestern suburb of Qatana.

The report quotes medics from a nearby hospital as saying 16 people were killed, including seven children and "a number" of women. It says nearly two dozen people were wounded.

Anti-regime activists say more than 40,000 people have been killed since the start of the uprising against President Bashar Assad's regime in March 2011.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/syria-state-media-blast-near-damascus-kills-16-093833789.html

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Cheese: Not as newfangled as we thought

Researchers have linked ancient milk residue (thousands of years-old) to early forms of cheese-making. The scientists say this research provides new insights into the human diet and food production technologies.?

By Staff,?Reuters / December 14, 2012

This is a file photo of a street vendor selling regional smoked cheese 'oscypek ' in Zakopane, Poland. Little Miss Muffet could have been separating her curds and whey from the sixth millennium B.C., according to a new study that finds the earliest solid evidence of cheese-making.

AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski, File

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Scientists have found the earliest evidence of prehistoric?cheese-making from a study of 7,500-year-old pottery fragments that are perforated just like modern cheese?strainers.

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Milk production and dairy processing allowed early farmers to produce food without slaughtering precious livestock, and making cheese?turned milk into a less perishable food that was more digestible for a population who at the time would have been intolerant to the lactose contained in milk.

Researchers from the?University of Bristol in Britain, with colleagues in the?United States?and?Poland, analyzed fatty acids embedded in prehistoric pottery from the Polish region of Kuyavia, and found they had been used to separate milk into fat-rich curds for?cheese and lactose-containing whey.

"The presence of milk residues in sieves ... constitutes the earliest direct evidence for?cheese-making," said M?lanie Salque from?Bristol, one of the authors of the research, which was published in?the journal Nature.

Peter Bogucki, another researcher involved in the work, said: "Making cheese?allowed them to reduce the lactose content of milk, and we know that, at that time, most of the humans were not tolerant to lactose."

Milk residues have been found at ancient sites up to 8,000 years old in?Turkey?and?Libya, but there was no evidence that the milk had been processed into cheese.

Until now, the earliest evidence of?cheese-making came from depictions of milk processing in murals several thousand years younger than the pottery fragments.

The researchers believe other vessels found in the same region were used for other specific purposes. Jars lined with beeswax were probably for storing water, and pottery containing the remnants of carcass fats was probably used for cooking meat.

"It is truly remarkable, the depth of insights into ancient human diet and?food processing technologies?these ancient fats preserved in archaeological ceramics are now providing us with," said?Richard Evershed, who heads the?Bristol?team.

(Reporting by Chris Wickham; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/aq_9_MRUalU/Cheese-Not-as-newfangled-as-we-thought

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City's Hottest Startups To Compete At The TechCrunch Barcelona ...

Tomorrow we?ll throw a TechCrunch Mini Meetup in Barcelona, one of the most internationally-minded cities in Europe. Below you?ll find out schedule, agenda and here you can grab a free ticket to the party] as the main free event is now full. It?s because of its diversity that the city has managed to attract a burgeoning number of startup entrepreneurs wooed by the ability of the city to attract talent, in part because of the climate and lifestyle. When you can live just about anywhere and create an Internet company, you may as well do it in a fun place to live. It?s a trend we?ve seen even San Francisco succumb to, as startups move back form the rather bland campuses of the Valley to the vibrancy of the SF?s city living. And Europe?s flexible corporate laws now allow startups to be based almost anywhere.

The #TCBarcelona Meetup is now sold out (tickets were free and were widely previewed such as here) and we will be assessing 15 pre-selected startups that submitted] their credentials first in a session involving investors, and finally in an open pitching competition for the finalists. We?ll also have panels discussing how Barcelona can capitalise on its position. If London, Stockholm and Berlin are hot right now, how does Barcelona ? which really is ?hot? ? join the party?

And it?s already got the building blocks. Initiatives like District 22@, the Barcelona Tech Bridges to Silicon Valley networking events, and Barcelona.IO, have been creating a booming networking scene. That?s why we are putting together a TechCrunch Mini Meetup there. Here?s our schedule for the day:

LOCATION:
Barcelona Activa, Carrer Llacuna, 162, Barcelona [Google Map]
Please bring your ticket and photo id. The main event is completely sold out. We?re not able to let anyone in without a valid ticket (which were free).

About 7 or 8 of these 15 pre-selected companies will pitch for a place to pitch in public tomorrow:

Bizzonia
?Bizzonia is a professional discovery tool that tells you in the HERE and NOW what professionals and business opportunities (events, job-offers) you have around you. With only 4 months in existence, it was already named by FORBES as 1 of the free apps that all entrepreneurs should use.?

CogniCor
?CogniCor revolutionizes the way large enterprises handle customer complaints by providing automatic and instant resolution using patent pending Artificial Intelligence technology. Our software is a cloud-based resolution as a service that integrates directly with the client?s website. Our clients are large enterprises in service sector industries (telecom, airline, insurance, utilities) with high volume and low value complaints. Enterprises save up to 80% operational cost compared to current methods and reduced customer churn. By providing faster and more accurate resolutions we create a win-win for our clients and end users. Scalable to international markets, we aim to be the global provider for complaint resolution. CogniCor is a Wayra accelorated startup, winning first place in Wayra Barcelona Startup Competition in 2012. We are scheduled to deploy our software with Telefonica, Spain?s largest telecommunication provider, and RACC Insurance this month.?

Dinube
?Dinube is a real-time payment network in the cloud enabling payment from any Internet-connected device. As the first merchant-based payment platform, Dinube solves the problem of high transaction costs and securely processes remote M/E-commerce payments as well as proximity payments at the physical point-of-sale. The Dinube platform has been designed to work on any Internet-connected device and is also ready for NFC (Near-field Communication) Contactless payments via mobile phone. Users of Dinube can easily and safely sync loyalty points, offers, cupones with their purchases. Dinube is the first cloud platform with propietary privacy algorithms that incorporate a customizable privacy control dashboard. Dinube is a Spin-out of the MIT MediaLab and has its head office in Barcelona. The Dinube team is made of MIT Computer Scientists and Sloan MBAs, with deep domain expertise in security, strategy and software development. Our advisory board and shareholders are experts in UX, GUI and have worked at companies like Telefonica R&D, SmartDesign and PayPal. Dinube is currently in advanced discussions with major merchant groups and has an agreement with a leading European payments integrator to prepare rollout.?

Feebbo
?What we do is online market research that help companies understand their markets and customers. Also Feebbo is a great tool to get new clients for your business. In less than 15 months we have 50.000 users and more than 1.500 surveys created. Our users earn money thru our VISA card and we have delivered more than 25.000.

Hotel Ninjas
?Hotel Ninjas is a cloud-based SaaS platform that helps hotels solve big pains they have with current technology. Our base product consists of a Property Management System (?PMS?), affordable, cloud-based and easy to use. Hotel Ninjas offers a great alternative to the old systems currently in use in many hotels.
Being a platform, we will offer premium modules such as Revenue Management, Channel Management and more. Currently the long tail of hotels have problems working with good technology at a good price.?

MamboCar
?MamboCar is a P2P car rental startup, but we?re focused in bringing tourist drivers to the car owners. We are from Spain and we?ve launched with 300 cars from private owners in several cities in Spain, and we are offering them to UK visitors, tourists and travellers. Most P2P car rental companies try to clone the Zipcar model with cars from people, focused in rental by hours to people in the city. We?re different, we want to disrupt the model of Europcar or Budget, with cheaper prices, more flexibility and a different experience, much more personal. We will expand to France and UK soon, with cars in this countries.
We?re the alternative car rental, company for travellers.?

Icebergs
?Icebergs ? Smart visual organisation. Research is an action that everyone does on a daily basis: Writing an article, planning your holidays, decorating your apartment or just looking for some inspiration. Tools to save and collect all types of content have been a growing need since users tried to select and curate those parts interesting to them: Images, articles, videos, files, etc. But when you think about it, the real problem comes, not when saving, but when going back to that content. How you use, organize, share and understand that content is what matters. That experience is what makes the real difference. Its time to start to enjoy your research, projects and inspiration like you never did before. Icebergs is Co-Founded by Albert Pereta and Cesar Isern. After working between New York and Barcelona consulting and helping startups we decided it was time to ?burn the ships down? and start our own. The first Beta of Icebergs is going to launch on late January with an 8 members team. We have our HQ in Barcelona and London, as well as an advisor in New York and another one in San Francisco.?

Knok
?Knok is a new generation home swap community. Knok takes a great idea, traveling on home exchange, one step further: a technology platform that suggests your ideal exchange partners based on your profile. Knok combines a very easy-to-use site with a smart search algorithm; reinforces the trust in the community through friends? and members? reviews; offers an insurance that covers members homes while swapping up to $200.000; integrates Facebook to discover your social connections; and provides a seamless exchange experience, protecting and verifying the identity of members. Home swap is going to be the third common alternative for travel accommodation, after hotels and rentals. Home swappers save on accommodation (for example, 2.500 ? can be saved during a 2-week home exchange vacation in Paris), stay in a real home (a bigger and more comfortable space than a hotel room), and enjoy the local knowledge of their exchange partners. Knok is available in 5 languages and is the fastest growing home swap community in the web, with 14.000 members in 147 countries. ?

Teleport
?Teleport is the new way to share content with your friends and your devices. With Teleport you can send and receive files faster and easier than ever. Here are a few of our key features.
- Send files to your friends and your devices.
- No uploading to the cloud, just direct connections.
- Audio and video streaming.
- Choose where you want to download the content.
- Crossplatform (Pc, Mobile, Tablet).
Raul and Joan are the founders of Teleport, two veterans on software development and file streaming ninjas. Teleport is a very young company based in Barcelona looking for the first round investment.?

Marfeel
?Marfeel automatically converts any web into the best reading experience for different moments of the day in devices such as the iPad or smartphones. The Marfeel experience encourages a natural, continous and very fluid reading, with no distractions, where content is king. The reader is engaged by discovering interesting content. That makes our metrics soar: 5x avg. reading time, 4x social sharing, 3x revenue increase. All that in no time and no pain. We?ve even prepared a demo for your site: go to ??enjoy.marfeel.com?" from an iPad to check it out. We are a really balanced team of 6 people with experience in Adobe, Microsoft, BBC, Financial Times, etc. We also have the business side covered with a recently joined member who has previously created and successfully exited 2 companies and is also a business angel. We have our product up & running for iPad. We are currently developing versions for other platforms and also acquiring clients. The top spanish economics newspaper is already a client (expansion.com) and we will launch before yearend with around 7 more.?

Nutrino
?We have bad habits! We live in an era of abundance, where careless food consumption is the number one cause of many chronic diseases. Nutrino is a food recommendation engine that learns the user?s preferences, and provides a personalized meal plan for optimized wellbeing. While everyone else is focused on tracking, we are focused on recommending, we are not another tracking tool! Nutrino utilizes amounts of personal data from the user?s profile, habits, eating preferences and social environment to create a personalized plan, enabling users to devise their daily diet, lifestyle and enabling to shop its grocery list online. We created the first scalable service that provides real personalization for users seeking nutrition advice and support. Using our patent pending optimization, crowd-sourcing technologies, and intelligent scraping from across the web to get appealing content, we are giving our users the ultimate health experience. Our Business model? We?ll bridge between users, nutrition supplements and online grocery retailers; providing cost effective sponsorship to F&B brands and restaurants; using the data collected for consumer product companies or health insights. Nutrino is a Israeli/Spanish diverse and talented team of 7 full time employees dedicated to this product working from our headquarters in Israel & commercial in Europe. Nutrino is seed funded and we plan to launch our MVP early 2013.?

Worldcoo
?Worldcoo it?s a crowdfunding website with a new business model.
Our main differences are:
- We link companies to the projects, so companies get also linked with the crowd.
- We don?t take any amount of the crowd donations. We receive a fee from companies.
- We are globally born, centered only in cooperation.
- We are fully integrated in social media, and due to this we can evaluate the CSR impact of our sponsoring companies using our own metrics.
- We only work with top NGOs. Currently we have agreements with Oxfam and Red Cross.
Now we just launched a beta version, so we are collecting the first data. Also we are in contacts with some companies, and we look forward closing a deal very soon. Worldcoo was founded in August 2012. Now we already raised some seed capital, and we may need a first round by mid 2013. Worldcoo is managed by a team of 3 founders, a student in internship and a wide Advisory Board. Also we are building a team of ambassadors, now in more than 15 countries.?

SMADEX
?SMADEX is a Mobile Demand Side Platform. We help advertisers and agencies place Display Ads in smartphones (either Apps or Mobile Webs), with incredible targeting capabilities to deliver the best possible advertising performance and full transparency in the media buying process. We are connected with international mobile ad exchanges, and are able to buy advertising space via Real Time Bidding.
We are experiencing strong sales growth, and are currently serving mobile advertising campaigns with companies like Groupalia, Privalia, H&M, Lancome, Lacoste, etc., in countries like Spain, Italy and Chile.
With our proprietary technology, we are achieving incredible advertising performance results in terms of download and lead generation for our advertisers. We expect to grow internationally both throughout Europe and Latin America during 2013.?

Lhings
?Lhings is the social network of you Things in the Cloud. Lhings is a cloud platform designed to provide access to your things where ever they are and let you manage, share and interact with them anywhere, when you like. Through Lhings you will not only be able to hear what your things say, but also speak to them and give them orders, so that you can effectively act remotely on the physical world. The data generated by your things and devices could be send to any service of your choice (e.g. Cosm, Twitter, Open Sense, among other) and even remotely reprogram them to send the data to more than one service at the same time or change the way your things behave. Imagine a washing machine where you can add new washing programs best suited for your delicate garments. Imagine you could add new sound effects to your loudspeaker and make it reproduce internet music. Lhings can make these possible.?

AGENDA FOR THE DAY

Time: Doors open for ticket holders at 5:00pm for a 5:30 pm sharp start! (All tickets to this free event have now gone ? there are none left)

Session 1: Panel ? Barcelona?s Entrepreneurs
We have a number of great people joining us. We are delighted to announce the following two people on the panel:

Mauricio Prieto @mauprieto

Mexican in Barcelona via San Francisco. In Internet ventures since 1995. eDreams cofounder & Odigeo CMO. Angel investor. Open water swimmer. ODIGEO is the largest online travel group in Europe, with HQ in Barcelona.

Albert Armengol @albertarmengol

Internet entrepreneur / Business Angel in many Barcelona companies / Doctoralia cofounder & CEO

Session 2: Panel ? Investor panel

Patrick de Zeeuw (@patrickdezeeuw)

Founder of Startupbootcamp

Marcel Rafart

Founder and partner at Nauta Capital

Session 3: Pitch Competition (the best BCN startups will compete)
We will have 7 screened companies pitching for the audience.

7:30 pm Wrap up.

8:30 pm TechCrunch Barcelona Meetup After Party (until late).

We have sold out already for daytime event!! After less than 1 day we have sold out for the TechCrunch Barcelona meetup tickets. If you are a company that wants to pitch, you still have a chance to get in by submitting your company to present at the event. Otherwise, please feel free to get tickets for the after party which are listed below.

AFTER PARTY

It will be at the coolest new bar in Barcelona, Oca?a, in Pla?a Reial. We will be providing the first few beers thanks to our sponsors. This is where we will kick off from 8pm, and where the networking will take place. Ticket holders will be able to grab a free beer. Others are welcome to turn up, just won?t get a free beer. DJs wil be kicking off at 10:30pm to fully celebrate the Barcelona Startup scene. All people who have a ticket for the official meetup proceedings will be able to reuse that ticket for the after party. If you have a ticket already from the daytime meetup, you do not need another ticket for the after party.

A huge thanks to these companies for hosting us:

BarcelonaActiva

GetApp

CloudWork

MyTaxi

Moritz

EasyPromos

JobFluent.com

Mobile Jazz

Robot Media

Source: http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/12/citys-hottest-startups-to-compete-at-the-techcrunch-barcelona-meetup/

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The Hallelujah phenomenon

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Leonard Cohen?s song Hallelujah got a lift when it was recorded by Jeff Buckley for his Grace album (1994).

Photograph by: John Kenney , The Gazette

MONTREAL ? In the second of his two Bell Centre concerts last month, roughly midway through the second half of the show, Leonard Cohen sang Hallelujah.

Hardly surprising in itself ? it?s all but unthinkable that he could leave it out. But its placement in the set, as neither an early grabber nor a rousing climax, felt significant. The sellout crowd, as if caught off-guard, never quite mustered the cathartic chorus singalong that might have been expected. It was almost as if Cohen, in his respectful way, was downplaying the song?s astounding contemporary ubiquity, perhaps beginning to put the brakes on a runaway train.

But can Cohen in fact do anything to contain the song that is not only the most popular in his deep catalogue, but rapidly becoming one of the most covered and sung songs of all time? It?s a clich? to say that a song, once released, belongs to the people at large more than to its creator, but here is a rare case where that has been proven. The Hallelujah genie is well and truly out of the bottle.

It was only a matter of time until a whole book was written on the subject, and thankfully it?s been done by someone equal to the task. As his CV encompassing books about the Beastie Boys and Gregg Allman, and editorship of the hip-hop Vibe and alterna-rock Spin magazines would indicate, Alan Light is a man of catholic interests.

The Holy or The Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley & The Unlikely Ascent of ?Hallelujah? (Atria, 254 pages, $28.99) combines broad music scholarship and insightful textual analysis with the narrative drive of a good detective novel.

Light was interviewed by email from his home in New York about the historic rise and spread of a song that languished unregarded for 10 years or more after its initial 1984 release, beginning to gather steam only when Jeff Buckley chanced upon a little-heard cover by former Velvet Underground member John Cale.

What?s your own history with Hallelujah? When did you first hear it?

I wish I had a better answer to when I first heard it, because I honestly can?t recall. I must have been aware of it in some form around when it came out, because I did pay at least peripheral attention to Leonard Cohen, if only because he was a McGill classmate of my father?s and so a running source of interest within my family. I saw him play at the Beacon Theatre in New York in 1988 or ?89. But like so many others, it didn?t really register with me until it started to become apparent as a phenomenon. As I tell in the book, it was when Hallelujah was sung at Yom Kippur services a couple of years ago that I first thought, ?Wow, this song really has reached another kind of standing in the world, hasn?t it??

Why do you think the song?s popularity had such a slow gestation? Is it a simple case of a song being ahead of its time? I was working in campus radio in Edmonton back when the Various Positions album was released, and partly with the incentive of Canadian content regulations, I played songs from it fairly often. But to be honest I barely noticed Hallelujah.

It?s hard to know ?why? it took such a long and circuitous path to popularity. Obviously, Jeff Buckley?s version (on the Grace album, 1994) really did re-contextualize the song, and in many ways made it easier for younger listeners to relate to it. But Grace wasn?t actually a hit, either. So it was the combined associations of Buckley?s death in 1997 and the new resonance that gave to the song, and the right evangelists at the right time, that started the snowball rolling.

Though he has never officially recorded it, Bob Dylan was ahead of the pack in recognizing Hallelujah. Dylan isn?t known for doing a lot of contemporary covers; what?s your theory on his affinity for the song?

What Cohen says is that Dylan liked the ?uplifting? feeling of the song, especially of the original last verse. But it is extraordinary, isn?t it, that Dylan picked up on this song so much earlier than the rest of the world. I suppose as someone who has explored biblical imagery so frequently, he would take notice of the writing ? and, I imagine, like so many other singers, he found something in this remarkable melody that he could connect with.

I?ve always felt John Cale has been under-credited as an evangelist for Hallelujah. How would you describe the role of his version in the song?s history?

Cale?s role was absolutely pivotal in the progression of Hallelujah. He did the edit of the song that shaped it into the form we have grown most familiar with ? the structure that Jeff Buckley utilized and that, in turn, has become the usual text of Hallelujah most people now know. Cale distanced himself from some of the song?s more grandly spiritual notions and made it something more tangible, the song of a younger man than what Cohen created, of someone grappling with the pain and disappointment of life and struggling to still find hope and faith, rather than the song of a survivor looking back on a life that he is trying to make sense of. I love Cohen?s last verse ? the ?Lord of Song? verse ? but it makes sense that it?s not something Cale would have felt as comfortable with.

Given the ever-growing list of covers, not to mention the countless amateur renditions on YouTube, it has become something of a parlour game to list favourites. Do you ever find yourself doing that? If so, what would be your personal Top Five?

My favourites change constantly. I think the way that Cohen sang the song on the last tour (and, I assume, on this one ? I haven?t seen a show yet, since he?s not in NYC until later in the month) is pretty definitive, and incorporates so much of what?s been found in the best interpretations while also retaining that wonderful final verse. k.d. lang does a pretty great version.

Cale?s, as you say, was revelatory. But then I?ll find something like the version sent to me just as I was finishing the book, by three teenage girls in?no kidding?North Pole, Alaska, who recorded it for a Christian website and did a really beautiful rendition of the song. I also love the ukulele virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro?s instrumental version, if only because it?s so easy to spend all your time talking about the lyrics and forget that any truly great song first resonates with listeners for its melody.

Sylvie Simmons, in her new Cohen biography I?m Your Man, calls Hallelujah ?an all-purpose ecumenical/secular anthem for the new millennium.? I?m especially intrigued by that ?all-purpose? idea. In your view can an interpreter err in either the ecumenical or secular direction? Is there such a thing as a wrong reading of the song?

It?s hard to talk about a ?wrong? way to sing Hallelujah. I think that part of the incomparable story here is the way in which the lyrics and the interpretation have been given permission to shift as necessary. The malleability of the words, and the ability to turn up or turn down the different elements of the song ? the spiritual side or the heartbreak or the sexuality, the celebration or the sorrow ? has been central to its universal embrace. It seems like the only way you can really mess it up is to try something extreme, like Bono?s awful trip-hop version or Susan Boyle?s nonsensical edit of the lyrics. If you just deliver the song itself, it still basically always works. And it?s amazing to me that it has retained its sense of solemnity without having been brutally parodied in some way that really popped its bubble ... maybe not a Weird Al Yankovic version, but some kind of spoof that would mean it had to go on the shelf for a while. But that just hasn?t happened yet.

Can you think of any near-equivalents to the Hallelujah phenomenon in popular culture? I can?t.

Not really. The unprecedented trajectory of the song is why I wanted to write the book. Is there a cult movie that wasn?t released but then discovered decades later and became a hit? At least it?s not the full Vincent Van Gogh situation ? Leonard Cohen was alive to watch the song reach the larger world. There are some other songs that have become modern global standards ? Bridge Over Troubled Water, Imagine, maybe A Change is Gonna Come ? but unlike Hallelujah, those were all recognized when they were first released, and didn?t take 15 or 20 years to get recognized.

Cohen himself has hinted that perhaps the song has been over-covered. Can there be too much Hallelujah?

I think there are some uses that need to be retired for a while. I don?t think there?s much to be gained from more uses of the song as the music for the Big Emotional Climax of TV dramas. But it?s kind of astonishing that something about the song still feels like a discovery, still seems cool, and powerful, and meaningful, to so many people, and that people can still find new meanings and new structures for it that work.

In some ways, the biggest revelation for me came in talking to regular people who have embraced this song as something really significant in their lives ? people who used it at weddings, funerals, religious services, very central and important moments. It?s very easy to be cynical about music today, and to decide that it?s been so commodified and cheapened that it?s just not as important as it used to be, that people don?t care about music the way they used to. But talking to people about Hallelujah, it?s evident that a truly great song can still be incredibly meaningful, and can still connect in a way that no other art can do.

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Source: http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/music/Hallelujah+phenomenon/7684504/story.html

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Dead guts spill history of extinct microbes: Fecal samples from archeological sites reveal evolution of human gut microbes

Dec. 12, 2012 ? Extinct microbes in fecal samples from archaeological sites across the world resemble those found in present-day rural African communities more than they resemble the microbes found in the gut of cosmopolitan US adults, according to research published December 12 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Cecil Lewis and colleagues from the University of Oklahoma.

The researchers analyzed 1400-8000-year-old fecal samples preserved at three archaeological sites: natural mummies from Caserones in northern Chile, and samples from Hinds Cave in the southern US and Rio Zape in northern Mexico. They also used samples from Otzi the Iceman and a soldier frozen on a glacier for nearly a century. They compared the now-extinct microbes in these samples to microbes present in current-day soil and compost, as well as the microbes present in mouths, gut and skin of people in rural African communities and cosmopolitan US adults.

The authors discovered that the extinct human microbes from natural mummies closely resembled compost samples, while one sample from Mexico was found to match that from a rural African child. Overall, the extinct microbial communities were more similar to those from present rural populations than those from cosmopolitan ones. The study concludes, "These results suggest that the modern cosmopolitan lifestyle resulted in a dramatic change to the human gut microbiome."

As Lewis explains, "It is becoming accepted that modern aseptic and antibiotic practices, are often beneficial but come with a price, such as compromising the natural development of our immune system through changing the relationship we had with microbes ancestrally. What is unclear is what that ancestral state looked like. This paper demonstrates that we can use ancient human biological samples to learn about these ancestral relationships, despite the challenges of subsequent events like degradation and contamination."

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Public Library of Science.

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Journal Reference:

1. Raul Y. Tito, Dan Knights, Jessica Metcalf, Alexandra J. Obregon-Tito, Lauren Cleeland, Fares Najar, Bruce Roe, Karl Reinhard, Kristin Sobolik, Samuel Belknap, Morris Foster, Paul Spicer, Rob Knight, Cecil M. Lewis. Insights from Characterizing Extinct Human Gut Microbiomes. PLoS ONE, 2012; 7 (12): e51146 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0051146

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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/_1nGoYpDQdQ/121212205609.htm

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New way to look at dawn of life: Focus shifts from 'hardware' to 'software'

Dec. 12, 2012 ? One of the great mysteries of life is how it began. What physical process transformed a nonliving mix of chemicals into something as complex as a living cell?

For more than a century, scientists have struggled to reconstruct the key first steps on the road to life. Until recently, their focus has been trained on how the simple building blocks of life might have been synthesized on the early Earth, or perhaps in space. But because it happened so long ago, all chemical traces have long been obliterated, leaving plenty of scope for speculation and disagreement.

Now, a novel approach to the question of life's origin, proposed by two Arizona State University scientists, attempts to dramatically redefine the problem. The researchers -- Paul Davies, an ASU Regents' Professor and director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science, and Sara Walker, a NASA post-doctoral fellow at the Beyond Center -- published their theory in the Dec. 12 issue of the Royal Society journal Interface.

In a nutshell, the authors shift attention from the "hardware" -- the chemical basis of life -- to the "software" -- its information content. To use a computer analogy, chemistry explains the material substance of the machine, but it won't function without a program and data. Davies and Walker suggest that the crucial distinction between non-life and life is the way that living organisms manage the information flowing through the system.

"When we describe biological processes we typically use informational narratives -- cells send out signals, developmental programs are run, coded instructions are read, genomic data are transmitted between generations and so forth," Walker said. "So identifying life's origin in the way information is processed and managed can open up new avenues for research."

"We propose that the transition from non-life to life is unique and definable," added Davies. "We suggest that life may be characterized by its distinctive and active use of information, thus providing a roadmap to identify rigorous criteria for the emergence of life. This is in sharp contrast to a century of thought in which the transition to life has been cast as a problem of chemistry, with the goal of identifying a plausible reaction pathway from chemical mixtures to a living entity."

Focusing on informational development helps move away from some of the inherent disadvantages of trying to pin down the beginnings of chemical life.

"Chemical based approaches," Walker said, "have stalled at a very early stage of chemical complexity -- very far from anything we would consider 'alive.' More seriously they suffer from conceptual shortcomings in that they fail to distinguish between chemistry and biology."

"To a physicist or chemist life seems like 'magic matter,'" Davies explained. "It behaves in extraordinary ways that are unmatched in any other complex physical or chemical system. Such lifelike properties include autonomy, adaptability and goal-oriented behavior -- the ability to harness chemical reactions to enact a pre-programmed agenda, rather than being a slave to those reactions."

"We believe the transition in the informational architecture of chemical networks is akin to a phase transition in physics, and we place special emphasis on the top-down information flow in which the system as a whole gains causal purchase over its components," Davies added. "This approach will reveal how the logical organization of biological replicators differs crucially from trivial replication associated with crystals (non-life). By addressing the causal role of information directly, many of the baffling qualities of life are explained."

The authors expect that, by re-shaping the conceptual landscape in this fundamental way, not just the origin of life, but other major transitions will be explained, for example, the leap from single cells to multi-cellularity.

In addition to being a post-doctoral Fellow at the Beyond Center, Walker is affiliated with the NASA Astrobiology Institute in Mountain View, Calif., and the Blue Marble Space Institute, Seattle.

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Journal Reference:

1. Sara Imari Walker, Paul C. W. Davies. The Algorithmic Origins of Life. Interface, (in press) December 12, 2012 [link]

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/lrgjlyNOvwM/121212205918.htm

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