The University of Utah’s Genetic Science Learning Center has a fun interactive toy on their website which gives you a continuous zoom slider to go from grains of rice and coffee beans, down to individual carbon atoms. Along the way you can see bacteria, cells, virii, and DNA strands.
All 3 of you Windows Vista users out there can fire up Windows Update and download a new “Platform Update” that contains, among other things, DirectX11 support.
The Platform Update is meant for computers running Windows Server 2008 SP2 and Vista SP2, and is composed of four parts: The Windows Graphics, Imaging, and XPS Library contains DirectX 11, DirectCompute for hardware accelerated parallel computing, and the XPS Library for document printing.
The DirectX11 setup has been available in various beta forms since September, but this is the “official” release. No redistributable, so it’s currently only available through Windows Update. WindowsXP users are still left out in the cold with DirectX9.
via DailyTech – Directx 11 Now Available for Vista Through Platform Update.
In an attempt to stave off their own demise (along with the rest of the print industry, sadly), Esquire is banking on the popularity of Augmented Reality by adding various markers to the upcoming December issue. On the cover is an AR marker (shown) that will show Robert Downey Jr appearing and “offering half-improvised shtick on Esquire’s latest high-tech experiment for keeping print magazines relevant amid the digital onslaught.”. But that’s not all:
On the page is Esquire’s regular men’s fashion spread, while on the screen, the model is pelted by a computer-animated snow storm. Granger gives the page a quarter rotation, the weather turns sunny and the model starts throwing on summer clothes.
The magazine’s regular “Funny Joke from a Beautiful Woman,” feature gets a new twist from actress Gillian Jacobs in a gray nighty. She’ll tell a second, “dirtier” joke should readers return after midnight.
via Esquire’s December 2009: Augmented Reality Issue With 3-D Animation.
The National Geospatial Intelligence Agency wants to update their aging satellite maps and it seems the Department of Defense has ordered that the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) and other DoD Organizations must “play nice” and contribute to the efforts. Of course, not everything will be added as many of the maps are of such immense resolution as to be considered classified, but it seems they’ll be publishing content in the Global Content Delivery Server & Defense Enterprise Computing Center. The combined efforts will be rolling into the “Geospatial Visualization Shared Enterprise Service”.
Also, some of the information will be made available worldwide via the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications Systems.
Still gathering details on what exactly this means. Anyone know any more details about this?
DISA ordered to contribute to geospatial intelligence suite — Federal Computer Week.
A pair of big announcements from Unity3D. First off is the release of the new version 2.6 with new features like streaming, an animation editor, and better support for typical development tools like Subversion and Perforce. Also, the new 2.6 is now free to all to try out.
Unity is the foundation of several major games like Cartoon Network’s “FusionFall” MMO, and is a great way to get into cross-platform game development.
A new featurette for the upcoming 2012 shows some of the behind-the-scenes work that went into building, and subsequently destroying, Las Vegas. From the massive terrain deformations to the high-quality CG plane used to evacuate the ruins, it’s got some great details.
See the clip after the break.
MSI has unveiled their latest motherboard offering, the “Big Bang Gaming” series.
The first Big Bang branded mainboard, Trinergy is designed with eye-catching features such as NVIDIA SLI technology and QuantumWave™ audio processing with the latest THX TruStudio PC and Creative EAX ADVANCED HD 5.0 plus exclusive performance boost design from MSI.
The really interesting part is that this is the first motherboard (in my knowledge) to offer the Lucid HYDRA chipset, meaning you can run multiple GPU’s from multiple manufacturers in the same system.
Pricing and release date TBA.
Update: More news from Guru3D.
GOOD magazine has a great new infographic (“Transparency”) online visualizing various statistics about Health in various nations.
Every country in the world approaches health care differently, but the end goal is the same: Keep citizens as healthy as possible at the lowest cost . . . This is a look at 12 countries around the world that examines how far the money they spend on health care goes toward affecting the health of their citizens.
It’s a great graphic showing life expancy, various mortality numbers (per 100k population), and cost per capita on healthcare. It’s a great way of understanding why President Obama is looking to Canada and Australia for ideas on US Health Care Reform. However, much data is still missing, particularly on how much money is spent on cutting-edge, experimental, or research treatments.
Click for Full Size
HPCTech.com has leaked a slide purportedly coming from NVidia’s Chief Scientist Bill Dally that details an ExaScale machine. How big is an “Exascale” ? Well:
The problems in building a traditionally architected ExaScale machine are daunting, typically requiring Power and Cooling beyond anyone’s imagination. However, using NVidia’s new GPU’s (Next generation of Fermi?) it’s a possibility.
According to the slide leaked by hpctech.com, the ExaScale GPU will pack 2400 throughput cores (7200 FPUs) and 16 CPUs on a single chip with a TDP of 300W, delivering up to 40TFLOPs of single-precision floating-point processing power or 13TDLOPs of double-precision floating-point processing capabilities. Besides, each node of the chip will feature 128GB of memory, 2TB/s bandwidth, 512GB Phase-change/Flash for checkpoint and scratch.
via NVIDIA Scientist Promises ExaScale Machine in 2017 – Expreview.com.
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A new ad for Michelin’s “Fuel Efficient Tires” shows the work of 
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