Richard Leis

Month: March 2005

  • Skype is the Limit

    In a little over a year Skype has gone from hype to 29 million registered users. SkypeIn (where people can call your computer using their regular phone) has 1 million paying users. It is no wonder that traditional telecommunications companies who recently dismissed Skype have become silent on the subject. Skype is heading to cell…

  • Plagiarism and Blogging Vigilantes

    This is an incredible story. What is even more incredible is the reaction to the story (see the comments, including a “fake” comment by someone pretending to be the student and another one that may or may not be from “her” lawyer.) Then, after you read about all that, click on “Main” at the top…

  • An Interview with Geologist Jay Quade – Page 1

    The Desert Laboratory sits on Tumamoc Hill overlooking the city of Tucson, Arizona. Rainfall amounts here have been above normal this winter and the desert is in bloom. I am sitting in the office of Dr. Jay Quade, from where the view of both Tucson and the desert is spectacular. A faculty member in the…

  • An Interview with Geologist Jay Quade – Page 2

    (Continued from Page 1.) Meanwhile, volcanoes in Ethiopia lay down layers of ash, pumice and other fragments through frequent eruptions. As this material begins to cement over time, it becomes tuff. Tuff sticks out from other layers because it is so light in color. The river and volcano activity are preserved in the varying layers…

  • An Interview with Geologist Jay Quade – Tools of Time

    Geology is like forensic work; it requires time, patience, and the right tools. To the layperson, rock sedimentary layers sometimes seem to blur together. The geologist uses common sense to determine how each layer is related to the other layers, what it is made of, and how it got there. Then, using this data, the…

  • An Interview with Geologist Jay Quade – Geology, Famine and War

    Embarking on a geology expedition might sound exciting or boring, depending on your interests. However, there is more going on behind the scenes than just scientific research. Sometimes scientists find themselves in the middle of suffering and violence, and they begin to question why they are there, even as their heart reaches out to those…

  • “Lost City”

    The structures, one of them 18 stories high, stick out from the summit of a mountain. The denizens survive on hydrogen and methane. Future city in Iceland? Alien civilization on another planet? Welcome to “Lost City“. The site is located right here on Earth but underneath the Atlantic Ocean. Unlike the black hydrothermal chimneys more…

  • “cl.one”

    The new movie “cl.one” was filmed by an unknown twentysomething working out of his basement over a period of six years with a budget that came to about $25,000. That amount is just a drop in a bucket compared to the budget for even the most modest Hollywood movie. So you might expect little interest…

  • “Still Life”

    This year’s Cinequest San Jose Film Festival was held March 2 through 13, 2005 and included films offered on the Internet at the Cinequest Online Digital Theater. Using video-on-demand technology from Kontiki, many trailers, short films, and features can be downloaded to fans’ computers in exceptional quality through April 13, 2005. The availability of these…

  • “Border Dynamics”

    “Border Dynamics” is a sculpture created by Mexican artists Guadalupe Serrano and Alberto Morackis. The piece has been permanently installed on the University of Arizona campus in Tucson, Arizona. The University of Arizona recently purchased the piece after originally displaying it in late 2003. The piece was commissioned by Beyond Borders Binational Art Foundation. Depicting…

  • Nanobacteria Implicated in Kidney Stones

    One of the original discoverers of nanobacteria (NB) and NASA researchers have presented evidence supporting the role of the mysterious agent in kidney stone formation. If further studies confirm the results, a better treatment for this painful condition may include antibiotics. Finnish researchers first forwarded the idea of NB as a novel life form and…

  • Age of Kibish, Ethiopia Hominid Fossils Determined

    As described in a letter published in the February 17, 2005 issue of Nature, scientists from Australia and the United States have estimated the age of anatomically modern human fossils in Ethiopia to be 195,000 years old, plus or minus 5000 years. McDougall, et al, reached this estimate after correlating rock layers at different sites…

  • One Year Later: Wall Monitors

    One year ago today the very first story on The Frontier Channel was published. It was a short paragraph I wrote about the future of wall monitors based on an article I read about a company who was licensing art for a plasma television screensaver. The Dream City site is still up and offering digital…

  • Introducing “ART at the Frontier”

    To celebrate the one year anniversity of The Frontier Channel, I am introducing a brand new section called “ART at the Frontier” (Update: this section was later merged with the rest of the Frontier Channel site.  Category is “Media”.) In this section I will explore the intersection of science and technology with art. This is…

  • Homo floresiensis Research Confirms “Separate Species” Theory

    Scientists from the United States, Australia and Indonesia have completed research supporting the theory that recently discovered hominid fossils on the island of Flores in Indonesia are of an early and separate species of humans, rather than a deformed or pigmy modern human as some skeptics claim. This and other research could help prove that…

  • Fractured Enceladus

    On March 09, 2005 the Cassini space probe flew by Enceladus, capturing new images of the bright white moon of Saturn. The lack of craters in some regions and intense fracturing suggest past tectonic activity and resurfacing, though neither activity has been confirmed yet. While scientists try to figure out what they are seeing in…

  • Homework? No…Karaoke!!!

    So, what do you do when you have tons of homework and a test in the morning? Study? No way…you watch karaoke! Winamp 5.0 is a surprise, with support for streaming Internet radio and television. But this isn’t your parents’ radio and television. This is content created by amateurs and independents, finding their outlet in…

  • The Dark Galaxy

    Most of the matter in the universe appears to be missing, based on mathematical models that tell scientists there simply has to be more mass out there than we are seeing. Of this, less than two percent appears to be of the type we are all familiar with, the normal matter that makes up visible…

  • Saturn’s Dragon Storm

    Scientists have been studying a feature they call the “Dragon Storm” on Saturn since it was first detected last year. This long-term storm appears to feed on an upwelling of energy. Cassini has detected radio bursts from the storm that seem to activate when the storm is on the planet’s night side and stop when…