Tag: Idea

technology

How Artificial Intelligence Can Aid Inventors To Prevent Idea Theft

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Stealing another company’s ideas is nothing new in the cut-throat corporate world.

Steve Jobs, the late CEO of Apple, once said: “We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.” Facebook helped build out its global empire with a copycat strategy when it lacked its own imagination and invention, prompting The Wall Street Journal to write: Facebook employees’ new motto? “Don’t be too proud to copy.”

But innovative companies must stand up to this longstanding practice of “borrowing” their ideas; this should not be dismissed as simply the cost of doing business in the fast-paced world of technology. It may not be easy, but coming to the rescue to protect ideas is technology itself.

Companies need to understand the options available to protect them.

Copyright is certainly used but has a very narrow scope. Trademarks are valuable but also limited because they only protect the likes of a business name

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technology current events

Pubs, theatres, sport events dealt a blow as UK government puts pin in vaccine passport idea

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Pubs, theatres and sport events were dealt a blow on Tuesday morning as senior minister Michael Gove denied that the government would plan a system of vaccine passports when a coronavirus vaccine is rolled out nationally.



Michael Gove wearing a suit and tie: Britain's Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Michael Gove arrives to attend a cabinet meeting at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in London, Britain November 10, 2020. REUTERS/Toby Melville

Britain’s Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Michael Gove arrives to attend a cabinet meeting at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in London, Britain November 10, 2020. REUTERS/Toby Melville

The idea would see those without a COVID-19 vaccination prevented from going to the pub or attending events — a scheme that could see the economy reopening faster.

Gove told Sky News this morning: “I certainly am not planning to introduce any vaccine passports and I don’t know anyone else in government (who is).”

Nadhim Zadhawi, the minister in charge of vaccines, said on Monday he expects that people who refuse the vaccine may be barred entry to some bars, restaurants, cinemas and sports

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science

A mildly insane idea for disabling the coronavirus

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Colorful blobs cluster together like a bunch of grapes.
Enlarge / Diagram of the structure of the virus’ spike protein.

When the COVID-19 pandemic was first recognized for the threat that it is, researchers scrambled to find anything that might block the virus’ spread. While vaccines have grabbed much of the attention lately, there was also the hope that we could develop a therapy that would block the worst effects of the virus. Most of these have been extremely practical: identify enzymes that are essential for the virus to replicate, and test drugs that block similar enzymes from other viruses. These drugs are designed to be relatively easy to store and administer and, in some cases, have already been tested for safety in humans, making them reasonable choices for getting something ready for use quickly.

But the tools we’ve developed in biotechnology allow us to do some far less practical things, and a paper released today describes how they

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science

We Have No Idea What Makes A Planet ‘Potentially Habitable’

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One of the most compelling scientific goals humanity has set for itself is to find extraterrestrial life: biological activity originating and continuing to occur on a world beyond Earth. It isn’t just our imaginations that have run wild with this possibility, it’s that we have a lot of indirect evidence identifying other potential locations where life could have arisen through similar processes to whatever occurred on Earth in our past. If we compare what’s out there with our expectations for what life requires, there’s a lot that appears to make sense.

While it might be a

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science

Texas astronomers revive idea for ‘Ultimately Large Telescope’ on the moon

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Texas astronomers revive idea for 'Ultimately Large Telescope' on the moon
Ultimately Large Telescope. Credit: University of Texas McDonald Observatory

A group of astronomers from The University of Texas at Austin has found that a telescope idea shelved by NASA a decade ago can solve a problem that no other telescope can: It would be able to study the first stars in the universe. The team, led by NASA Hubble Fellow Anna Schauer, will publish their results in an upcoming issue of The Astrophysical Journal.


“Throughout the history of astronomy, telescopes have become more powerful, allowing us to probe sources from successively earlier cosmic times—ever closer to the Big Bang,” said professor and team member Volker Bromm, a theorist who has studied the first stars for decades. “The upcoming James Webb Space Telescope [JWST] will reach the time when galaxies first formed.

“But theory predicts that there was an even earlier time, when galaxies did not yet exist, but where

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science daily

Leaf-cutter bees as plastic recyclers? Not a good idea, say scientists — ScienceDaily

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Plastic has become ubiquitous in modern life and its accumulation as waste in the environment is sounding warning bells for the health of humans and wildlife. In a recent study, Utah State University scientist Janice Brahney cited alarming amounts of microplastics in the nation’s national parks and wilderness areas.

Bioengineers around the world are working to develop plastic-eating “super” enzymes that can break down the human-made material’s molecular structure faster to aid recycling efforts. In another research effort published in 2019, entomologists noted leaf-cutter bees were using plastic waste to construct their nests. The researchers suggested such behavior could be an “ecologically adaptive trait” and a beneficial recycling effort.

Not so fast, says USU evolutionary ecologist Joseph Wilson. Just because bees can use plastic, doesn’t mean they should.

Wilson and undergraduate researcher Sussy Jones, along with colleagues Scott McCleve, a naturalist and retired math teacher in Douglas, Arizona, and USU

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technology

Dan Bongino Has No Idea Why Facebook Loves Him

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Granted, Mr. Bongino’s shtick is not exactly new. His brand of right-wing pugilism is similar to what talk-radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin have been doing for decades. He is good at turning daily culture-war skirmishes into hyperpartisan outrage-bait, with a cast of recurring left-wing villains and right-wing heroes who inevitably show up to dunk on them. (Typical headline: “CNN’s Fredo SCHOOLED On His Brother’s Coronavirus Policies.”) And he is skilled at a certain type of industrial-scale content production that is valuable on today’s internet, flooding social media with a torrent of original posts, remixed memes and videos and found footage.

“We’ll take some interesting clip of maybe the president or Kayleigh McEnany, and we’ll intermingle it with clips of my show, and it seems to work well for us,” he said. “Wherever my content is posted, we just get an incredible response.”

Along with his Facebook page,

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science and technology

Carbon-Negative Food Made From Thin Air? This Science Fiction Idea May Be A Reality Sooner Than You Think

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Consumer awareness of climate change and animal welfare are driving a meatless meat revolution. Unlike pasture-raised meats, plant- and fermentation-based proteins are low-emission, and require very little water and land use. Transitioning away from mega-greenhouse gas-emitting foods like beef only tackles part of the crisis. Our planet is still choking on excess carbon dioxide. 

With synthetic biology, it is possible to transform CO2 from a harmful gas into delicious, life-sustaining nutrition. I’ve previously written about the forgotten space tech that could feed the world, one of its practitioners is Lisa Dyson, Ph.D., CEO of Kiverdi, whose initiative Air Protein aims to transform carbon dioxide into meat-free meat. In recognition of her work, Dyson was recently awarded the SynBioBeta 2020 Bio-Innovator of the Year

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