Denise Caruso was one of the top technology writers of the 80s and 90s, hanging out with the A-list digerati and penning an influential column for The New York Times. Then in 2000 she dropped out, upset by the excess and bombast of the first Internet boom, to launch a small non-profit group in San Francisco called the Hybrid Vigor Institute. The name reflected Caruso’s belief that the best problem-solving happens when different fields of expertise converge to work together.
'Science' At AfterTek - Page 5
It is the world’s biggest flower, and maybe the stinkiest, too. Now scientists have used genetic analysis to solve the long-standing mystery of the lineage of the rafflesia flower, known for its blood-red bloom measuring three feet wide and its stench of rotting flesh.
Writing in the journal Science on Thursday, a team of researchers said rafflesia discovered in an 1818 scientific expedition to a Sumatran rain forest, comes from an ancient family of plants known not for big flowers, but for tiny ones.
In fact, many of its botanical cousins boast flowers just a few millimeters wide.
A group of high-school and college teachers and students have transmitted sound pulses faster than light travels at least according to one understanding of the speed of light. The results have conformed to Einstein’s theory of relativity. The work could help spur research that boosts the speed of electrical and other signals higher than before.
The standard metric for the speed of light is that of light traveling in vacuum. This constant, known as c, is roughly 186,000 miles per second, or roughly 1 million times the speed of sound in air. According to Einstein’s work, matter and signals cannot travel faster than c.