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Alt-week 9.8.12: Moon farming, self powered health monitors and bringing a 50,000 year-old girl to life
Alt-week peels back the covers on some of the more curious sci-tech stories from the last seven days. Some weeks things get a little science heavy, sometimes it's a little on their weird side, and there's usually a bit of space travel involved, but these week's trend seems to be "mind-blowing." Want to grow carrots on the Moon? We got you covered. How about bringing a 50,000 year-old ancient human back to life? Sure, no biggie. Oh but what about a solar eruption that reaches some half a million miles in height. We've got the video. No, really we have. Mind blown? This is alt-week.
Alt-week 8.4.12: buckyballs, bosons and bodily fluids
Alt-week peels back the covers on some of the more curious sci-tech stories from the last seven days. Remember when we told you last week that we live in a strange world? Well, we had no idea what we were talking about. Seriously, things are about to get a whole lot weirder. High school is certainly a head-scratcher, no matter how old you are, but the mathematics of social hierarchies can't hold a candle to the mysteries of the buckyball. And, if the strange behavior of the familiar carbon molecule isn't enough for you, we've got an entirely new molecule to contend with, while the once-elusive Higgs Boson is getting us closer to unlocking the secrets of the universe. It's all pretty heady stuff, which is why we're also gonna take a quick detour to the world of human waste. This is alt-week.
Mac usage surges amongst University of Virginia freshmen since 2004
According to the University of Virginia's Information Technology and Communication (ITC), which services the IT needs for most of the campus, 43 percent of first-year students at its residence halls during 2009 were using a Mac. The figure represents a continuation of a five-year trend that's seeing increased Mac penetration on the campus amongst first year students. Prior to 2004, Mac usage amongst freshmen hovered between three and four percent (with the exception of 1997). 2004, however, served as a watershed year: share increased by four percentage points. A host of theories can help explain this jump. I'd probably point to the release of iTunes on Windows in 2003. While the iPod and the "halo effect" surrounding it had existed for three years, up until 2003 only Mac users were able to fully experience the benefits of hardware and software integration. Or, perhaps it was partly due to the fact that OS X-only Macs began making their way into the market during 2003. Other significant events that occurred throughout the years include the release of the iPod nano (2005), Intel-based Macs (2006), and the iPhone (2007). But perhaps as influential as anything else during this time frame is the "Get a Mac" campaign. The "I'm a Mac" and "I'm a PC" ads highlighted the benefits of a Mac and contrasted them with the downsides of owning a PC -- i.e., security issues, performance and lifestyle apps. Data for the University of Virginia ITC is collected by the group's student employees, known as Computing Advisors (CAs), a group of first-year students hired to advise and assist their peers with computing. The data is based on a census of first-year residence halls each fall conducted by the CAs, and can be found here. Hat tip to Glenn Fleishman.
Kindle DX trial at Darden concludes it's academically woeful, personally enjoyable
Amazon's experiment of replacing textbooks with Kindle DXs in classrooms already took a pretty hefty blow from Princeton's feedback -- which described the jumbo e-reader as "a poor excuse" for an academic tool -- but here comes some more punishment courtesy of the trialists at Darden. The Business School describes the DX as clunky and too slow to keep up with the pace of teaching, with up to 80 percent of users saying they wouldn't recommend it for academic use. There is a silver lining to this cloud of hate however, as up to 95 percent of all project participants would be happy to recommend the Kindle DX as a personal reading device. That meshes rather well with the high satisfaction and sales figures e-readers are enjoying, but it does show that the hardware has a long way to go before it convinces us to ditch our paperbacks. [Thanks, Miles B]
Kindle DX college plans revealed: only 300 students total
We knew the Kindle DX pilot programs at Arizona State, Case Western Reserve, Princeton, Pace, Reed, and Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia would be limited in number, but it sounds like students at those schools will have be extremely lucky or well-connected to get their hands on Amazon's latest -- according to Pace reps at today's launch event, each school will only receive around 50 Kindle DXs for the trial. That's just about 300 total Kindles, and it makes Amazon's crowing about revolutionizing education seem a little hasty. Not only that, but it's not like the program is particularly ready to go, either: the schools still haven't figured out which classes they'll try and switch over to the Kindle, instructors have yet to be brought on board, and it's still not clear whether Amazon or the schools themselves will pay for the Kindles, although students will definitely have to shell out for the books. That's a lot of dealmaking to get done -- looks like Amazon just gave itself some summer homework.
University of Virginia students give thumbs up to iPods
Matt Deegan at the Daily Progress reports that 67% of UVa's 3000-plus first year students surveyed said they owned an iPod. Students apparently preferred their iPods to MTV and to working out according to that survey, which of course means that someone has to come forward and explain why this is very very bad and will lead to the collapse of western civilization. UVa sociology professor Allison Pugh obligingly worried that the iPod would take the place of pickup basketball games and freshman Cara Magoon went on record as preferring to listen to songs in her head because it's harder for iPod users to "think clearly when they are constantly plugged in." The remaining 67% were too busy having fun and enjoying their music to comment.
