ETech: Mobile Phones Reveal the Behaviors of Places and People

by Robert Kaye | comments: 3

[Quinn managed to scoop me blogging about Tony Jebara's presentation! But after I chatted with her, we both agreed that I should continue with my blog post and see if I can augment her post a little.]

Tony Jebara's presentation "Mobile Phones Reveal the Behaviors of Places and People" really opened my eyes to what amazing things you can derive from large data sets. Tony co-founded Sense Networks which specializes in taking GPS and mobile phone location data and deriving as much useful information as possible from it. Sense Networks works with mobile phone service providers who collected data from users who opted in to have their data be collected and mined. All the data they receive from the service provider is GPS location data -- no personal information at all was ever made available to Sense Networks.

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Uncommon Knowledge and Open Innovation: Building a Science Commons

by Robert Kaye | comments: 2

The first session I attended today was John Wilbanks' "Uncommon Knowledge and Open Innovation: Building a Science Commons" presentation. John talked about the process of establishing the Science Commons and how creating a science oriented commons presented unique challenges. John first pointed out that Metcalfe's Law works for both networked computers and documents. But, he went on to extend the law to more general data as well -- something I've believed in and espoused for a number of years now.

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Four short links: 11 Mar 2009

by Nat Torkington | @gnat | comments: 0

Four ETech-related links, from your humble author who is following the action from afar:

1. Criminals Are "Targeting Basic Blocks of the Internet" (Guardian) -- writeup of Alex Stamos's talk. "Basic infrastructure failure is what we're going to see over the next few years," he said. "The most interesting research is either taking things that we thought were unexploitable and exploiting them, and also the breaking of the basic building blocks of the internet from the 1970s and 1980s." For another "we're all so boned" moment on Internet security, read Peter Gutmann's overview of the commercial malware industry.
2. Phil Gyford's ETech 09 Posts -- Phil takes notes and attends a lot of the sessions I'd have wanted to be in, like Tim's "Work on Stuff that Matters".
3. Mary Lou Jepsen's Talk (Guardian) -- interesting bit for me was a low powered television set that can display high definition video but can run without being plugged in. "We've had a lot of pull," she said. "People want TV even if they don't have power… an HDTV that's under 10W and can be human-powered. We've figured out a way to do that." Not that I'm in love with television, but the technology that gets mass-produced for cud-chewing couch-butts gets cheaper for the likes of you and me. See her new company, Pixel Qi.
4. ETech on Hashtags -- see the latest tweets tagged with "#etech". E.g., @fortunebird's Rebecca Allegar: Don't predict the future, design it., and @Technomadia's We just controlled a chocolate lab live via iPhone. Now.. we eat more chocolate! I like this presentation lots!

ETech: Priorities for a Greener World: If You Could Design Anything, What Should You Do?

by Robert Kaye | comments: 1

The second session today I'd like to share with you was presented by a personal friend of mine, Jeremy Faludi. Jer started his session entitled "Priorities for a Greener World: If You Could Design Anything, What Should You Do?" by pointing out that if we want to change the world, we ought to know what the most important issues are, right? Good thinking! And with so much news about how humans affect the planet its hard to accurately determine what really is important and what we can safely ignore. Jer set out to educate future green hackers about the most important things to focus on. Jer provided a vast amount of information that I can't hope to adequately convey in one blog post. He covered: Climate change, species extinction and habitat Loss, resource depletion, pollution and overpopulation. At the end of his presentation, Jer provided us with an overall list of priorities -- I'll focus on those and will try to augment that summary with points from his main sections.

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Etech Session Liveblogging: Real Hackers Program DNA (Ginkgo Bioworks)

by Quinn Norton | comments: 6

GB is "Making the process of engineering biology easier."

Synth bio is the idea that biology is a technology to engineer novel systems- say drugs, biofuels, other sexy sexy projects.

This is to be a flavor of what engineering biology is all about.

We will be installing a program into E coli to make it turn red, glow in the dark, or smell like bananas... We get to pick!

The DNA is stapled to the pages that describe them in the notebook.

Some of the tools of synth bio: biobricks, interchangeable components that can be strung together into programs. The parts registry lets you snap programs together.

iGem participants get a kit in the mail and pick out parts and mix and match them into new programs they want- much like the one we're holding. The Scottish team made and E coli that turned red in response to arsenic contamination.

Standardized interchangeable components are limited, but let a lot more people get involved and democratizes access to the tools. This is still biology- it can seem kind of scary- do you trust your neighbor to engineer biology?

Question from the audience: how do you prevent the terrorists from building smallpox?
Answer: You can't perfectly. "How do you prevent a car bomb from blowing up outside?" You don't, but you can limit it, and create a community that self polices.

Question from the audience: What about release? Would the arsenic detector be scattered on the ground?
Answer: We don't understand how manufactured organisms will interact with the environment. We work with safe organisms, and we don't release our stuff. These E coli are pretty innocuous, so we're going to wash our hands before lunch.

It's pretty unlikely that anyone is going to make anything in a lab that's dangerous right now, but we should think about that.

It's a bit legally gray, the guidelines everyone follows are only required for people receiving NIH funding, and there's some places with local laws (like Cambridge) ... There's no clear answer.

We're punching out our DNA and dropping it in cells. (Ben has returned our vial, #19 and #10 to ice, while the receptive cells take up our dna)

We're installing on a plasmid. "You're literally just mixing the plasmid DNA with the cells." These cells are competent, which means they can take up DNA easily. We cool the DNA, then do a heat shot- then shock it in a 42 degree water bath for 30 seconds, time it, put it back on ice for two minutes. We're disrupting the membrane of the cells and letting them recover. Then we're adding media, food for the cells. Then we're incubating them with our bodies. I'm going to keep mine in my armpit, I think.

Can't mix the three bit of dna, because they're the same plasmid - they are ampecillin resistance plasmid, so there's a space collision, things aren't likely to play well together.

DIYbio.org is a good place to learn about good lab practices.

I am now heading to lunch, incubating a tube of e coli in each armpit. (Will update with pictures after lunch)

Update: I've now transferred my E. coli to a petri dish and a vial, freeing my arms.

...and no, I was in a hurry, and I didn't wash my hands before lunch. Phear my bad lab skillz. (& Know your organisms.)