The First International Moblogging Conference - 1imc - is the world's first event dedicated to the theory and experience of mobile Web publishing, with sessions focused on both technical and social aspects of this exploding practice.

Moblogging ('MoBlogging') is a blanket term that covers a variety of related practices, essentially the ability to update blogs while on the move. At its simplest, moblogging (from "mobile web logging") is merely the use of a phone or other mobile device to publish content to the World Wide Web, whether that content be text, images, media files, or some combination of the above. It's nothing new, just a collection of technologies bought together to enhance a popular and proven web-publishing technique. However, it gets much more exciting when you throw the new breed of GPRS, 3G, GPS and CDMA camera equipped phones into the fray.

Location-specific content goes one step further - it relates and connects to the specific physical place where it was created and published. This permits any particular set of real-world coordinated to be "tagged" with relevant information, from instant restaurant reviews to ski-slope hazard warnings to contextual jokes. >from *The First International Moblogging Conference site*. Tokyo, July 5, 2003.

related context
> Moblogging.org. Moblogging Experience
> Moblogging, Blogmapping and Moblogmapping related resources
> weblog, a new flow of information. may 15, 2002

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> moblogging: serching for service

Are DNA and living systems legitimate art materials? In recent years, artists have been persuading scientists to let them into their labs to develop contemporary art practices using living biological systems, by altering genetic structures or even creating their own unique life forms.

Working with Wetware explores the work of artists who work directly with living biological systems. The panel includes: Steve Kurtz, founder of Critical Art Ensemble; Marta de Menezes, artist in residence at Imperial College School of Medicine and creator of artist-designed butterflies; Oran Catts from SymbioticA, a pioneer of tissue engineering for artistic practice; Gina Czarnecki who created the installation Silvers Alter for the CleanRooms exhibition; and Brandon Ballengee, CleanRooms artist in residence, whose artistic practice includes breeding rare frogs. The forum is chaired by Kodwo Eshun, writer and cultural commentator. >from *Working With Wetware*. June 20, 2003

related context
> CleanRooms: art and biotechnology exhibition. october 9, 2002
> next sex. ars electronica 2000. september 2-7, 2000
> Working with wetware - design, technology, and the body by John Thackara. april, 1997
> Art and Genetics Bibliography. Leonardo On-Line.

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> wetware city complex

One Trees project by Natalie Jeremijenko is a public experiment that plants pairs of genetically identical trees -clones - throughout the San Francisco Bay Area's diverse microclimates and social contexts. Because the trees are genetically identical, as they grow they reveal the social and environmental differences to which they are exposed.

Cloning has made it possible to Xerox copy organic life and confound the traditional understanding of individualism and authenticity. In the public sphere, genetics is often reduced to 'finding the gene for .... (fill in the blank)', misrepresenting the complex interactions with environmental influences. The debate that contrasts genetic determinism and environmental influence has consequences for understanding our own agency in the world, be it predetermined by genetic inevitability or constructed by our actions and environment. The One Trees project is a forum for public involvement in this debate, a shared experience with actual material consequences.

There are also electronic components of the project which include Artificial Life (A-Life) trees that simulate the growth of the biological trees on your computer desktop. The growth rate of these simulated trees is controlled by a Carbon Dioxide meter (CO2 ). The project juxtaposes the simulated (A-Life) trees and their biological counterparts, so doing demonstrate what simulation don't represent as much as what they do.

Each of the tree(s) can be compared by viewers in the public places they are planted, to become a long, quiet and persisting spectacle of the Bay Area's diverse environment and a demonstration of a very different information environment. >from *One Trees. An information environment*.

related context
> CleanRooms: art and biotechnology exhibition. october 9, 2002
> next sex. ars electronica 2000. september 2-7, 2000
> Working with wetware - design, technology, and the body by John Thackara. april, 1997
> Art and Genetics Bibliography. Leonardo On-Line

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> exercise with photocopies of trees

A 'smart brick' developed by scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign could monitor a building's health and save lives.

"This innovation could change the face of the construction industry," said Chang Liu. "We are living with more and more smart electronics all around us, but we still live and work in fairly dumb buildings. By making our buildings smarter, we can improve both our comfort and safety."

In work performed through the university's Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology, Liu and graduate student Jon Engel have combined sensor fusion, signal processing, wireless technology and basic construction material into a multi-modal sensor package that can report building conditions to a remote operator.

Dubbed 'smart skin' by its inventors, the sensor material can be wrapped around any surface of interest, such as a robotic finger. "While a typical tactile sensor can only measure surface roughness, our sensor material can determine roughness, hardness, temperature and conductivity," Liu said. "The combined input gives you a much better idea of the type of material being touched."

In addition to keeping tabs on a building's health, applications include monitoring nurseries, daycares and senior homes, and creating interactive 'smart toys' that respond to the touch of a child. "In a smart doll, for example, sensor capability would distinguish between caressing and slapping, allowing the doll to react accordingly," Liu said. "In the gaming industry, wireless sensors attached to a person's arms and legs could replace the conventional joystick and allow a 'couch potato' to get some physical exercise while playing video games such as basketball or tennis. The opportunities seem endless.". >from *Smart bricks could monitor buildings, save lives*. June 12, 2003

related context
> space of flows: characteristics and strategies. december 2, 2002
> flow: the design challenge of pervasive computing. november 6, 2002

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> the cause of health

NASA-funded research at Harvard University, that literally stops light in its tracks, may someday lead to breakneck-speed computers that shelter enormous amounts of data from intruders. The research is conducted by a team led by Dr. Lene Hau, a Harvard physics professor.

In their laboratory, Hau and her colleagues have been able to slow a pulse of light, and even stop it, for several-thousandths of a second. They've also created a roadblock for light, where they can shorten a light pulse by factors of a billion.

"This could open up a whole new way to use light, doing things we could only imagine before," Hau said. "Until now, many technologies have been limited by the speed at which light travels." These breakthroughs may eventually be used in advanced optical-communication applications. "Light can carry enormous amounts of information through changes in its frequency, phase, intensity or other properties," Hau said. When the light pulse stops its information is suspended and stored, just as information is stored in the memory of a computer. Light-carrying quantum bits could carry significantly more information than current computer bits. Quantum computers could also be more secure by encrypting information in elaborate codes that could be broken only by using a laser and complex decoding formulas.

Hau's team is also using slow light as a completely new probe of the very odd properties of Bose-Einstein condensates. For example, with the light roadblock the team created, they can study waves and dramatic rotating-vortex patterns in the condensates. >from *Frozen Light: Cool NASA Research Holds Promise*. May 21, 2003

related context
> speed of light broken with basic lab kit. september 16, 2002
> the magic of light: light art exhibition . february 8, 2002
> 7-qubit quantum computer: first demonstration of shor's factoring algorithm. january 3, 2002
> toward atomtronics: discovers of new state of matter nobel prize. october 11, 2001

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> frozen assets composition

Recent results of a joint experiment indicate that the scientists have succeeded in reproducing matter as it first appeared in the universe; this matter is called the quark-gluon plasma. The latest Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) findings come from experiments conducted from January through March of 2003, in which a beam of heavy gold nuclei collides head-on with a beam of deuterons.

The scientists are not yet ready to claim the discovery of the quark-gluon plasma, however. That must await corroborating experiments, now under way at RHIC.

If further scientific research proves that a quark-gluon plasma has been made, the physics story has just begun. By studying the behavior of free quarks and gluons in the plasma, RHIC scientists hope to learn more about the strong nuclear force - the force that holds quarks together in protons and neutrons. >from *Exciting First Results from Deuteron-Gold Collisions at Brookhaven . Findings intensify search for new form of matter*. June 11, 2003

related context
> quark-gluon plasma
> oldest light: milestone in cosmology. february 17, 2003
> first light . august 14, 2001

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> whatever the smallest, most fundamental entities seem to be

Last week-end, here and there around the world (France, USA, UK, Australia...), light was the pretext to transform our daily life in space of eccentric sharing.

"Faites de la Lumiere" is a French play-on-words meaning both: "Do your own Light" & "Light Party"... where artists, inhabitants or anyonelse transform their daily space, by film projection or video or slide or chinese shadow or street theater or light window competition or exhibition in the heart of hands... directly onto any possible surface (facade, hanging sheet, windscreen, beach, tree...)

The aim :
Use any public space to transform it in sharing, presentation, experimentation place.
Just to participate at the daily transformation of our daily life, invite anyone to participate, to propose to unknown people some visions, testimonies, UFO ...
Just to surprise ...
Just to use any unknown pretext to transform the vision of our public space.

Coordinators are Blick & Navarro. At the beginning of the project, they ran a pirate tv in Paris, a public access tv (a non commom idea in France). These coordinators are connected to the associations which founded Faites de la Lumiere Federation:TV Plaisance / Tolbiac and Cinex, eccentric cinema workshop. >from *Faites de la Lumiere site*.

related context
> citymine[d] + umos presentation. may 30, 2003
> psy-geo-conflux: the meaning of living in a city. may 14, 2003
> manifesto of urban televisions: open access television. april 23, 2003
> hackitecture and other data flow' architectures. march 28, 2003
> pure-data beta rave. january 18, 2003

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> la lumiere: celebration set

Whether someone is looking directly at you or not when they are angry or afraid has an effect on how your brain interprets those expressions, says a group of Dartmouth researchers. In their study, the researchers found that the direction of another's gaze influences how your brain responds to fear and anger expressed by that person, specifically in your amygdala. , which is the area in the brain that regulates emotions, detects potential threats and directs emotional behavior.

Published in the June 6 issue of Science, the study reports that when viewing pictures of angry expressions, people exhibit more amygdala activity when the angry person in the picture is looking away. When viewing expressions of fear, the amygdala is more active when there is direct eye contact. This study is the first to demonstrate that gaze direction is an important signal in how we perceive facial expressions, according to the authors.

"Some people may be surprised to learn that the amygdala actually responded most when threat cues were ambiguous," said Reginald Adams, the lead author on the paper. "This may indicate that the amygdala perceives heightened threat in uncertainty, or that the amygdala has to work harder to make sense of the ambiguity surrounding the threat. This finding highlights the need for including eye gaze direction in future research examining how emotion is processed and perceived," said Adams.

The other authors on the paper include Heather Gordon, Abigail Baird, Nalini Ambady, and Robert Kleck. >from *How the brain perceives emotion. Be careful where you look when emotional, it will make a difference in how others perceive your emotion*. June 5, 2003

related context
> vision and art: how artists can manipulate the human visual system. february 20, 2003
> action-based video games enhance visual attention. may 28, 2003
> eye gaze: implications for new-age technology. december 4, 2002
> emotion and cognitive skills: how emotion influence brain performance. march 21, 2002
> human perception: controlled by single neurones. january 29, 2002
> screen addiction: based on biological orienting response. january 28, 2002

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> i recognize that snarl on your look

ONCE, the Organization of Spanish Blind people, has just developed a system based on GPS to guide blind people. The system called 'Tormes', named after a famous Spanish 16th century story, is a computer with a Braille keyboard and satellite navigation technology that gives verbal directions.

The accuracy given by GPS is not precise enough and not guaranteed. A new tool, developed by ESA could be the breakthrough: EGNOS (European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service). EGNOS corrects the GPS signals and gives an accuracy of 2 m while GPS provides an accuracy of only 15 to 20 m. It also warns the users of any problem with the signal thus giving integrity information. EGNOS is transmitted to the ground via geostationary satellites, so sometimes signals are blocked by buildings. To solve this problem, engineers had the idea of getting the data through the Internet via a GSM connection, a project called SISNeT (Signal In Space through Internet). This makes EGNOS available anywhere downtown. Blind people who are able to access this information could distinguish streets.

Tormes, the hand held device, speaks to the user, like any GPS device in a car, but weighting less than one kilo it can be carried over the shoulder. It can be used in two ways: to guide the user to their destination or to tell them where they are as they walk around.

Ruben Dominguez, a blind mathematician who has tried out the device says 'This completes what exists for assisting blind people: the dog or the white cane, but furthermore it will really improve the life of the blind community by giving a lot more autonomy when moving around town, specially in unknown places.'

When EGNOS is operational in spring 2004, blind people can expect unprecedented assistance giving them more autonomy. EGNOS paves the way for Galileo, the first civil global satellite navigation system. >from *More autonomy for blind people thanks to satellite navigation*. June 4, 2003

related context
> Galileo becomes a reality for Europe. "Galileo will complement the existing satellite navigation system, which presently relies entirely on GPS, the American Global Positioning System. Galileo is designed to provide a complete civil system. Scheduled to be operational by 2008". may 26, 2003
> satellite navigation system.

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> dice Tulio: 'la honra cría las artes'

University of Utah researchers showed it is possible for an atomic force microscope to make images of the wing-shaped paths of minuscule electrons as they orbit atoms.

The new study - led by Feng Liu, a professor of materials science and engineering - supports a controversial 2000 study by German physicist Franz Giessibl, who claimed he was able to use an atomic force microscope to detect subatomic structures in silicon atoms.

An atom is made of a core or nucleus surrounded by rapidly orbiting electrons. Depending on an atom's size, the electrons' orbital paths - called atomic orbitals - have different geometries, often shaped like figure-eights so they point out in different directions like atomic 'wings.'

Liu says his extensive computations at the University of Utah's Center for High Performance Computing "demonstrated the feasibility of seeing not only the atom but also the atomic orbitals when imaging the [silicon] surface with atomic force microscopy."

The researchers conclude it is feasible to 'see' the orbitals by sensing the forces created by the electrons as they whip around an atom. >from *Observing the 'Wings' of Atoms Study Indicates It Is Possible to See Electrons' Orbital Paths Around Atoms*. June 2, 2003

related context
> artificial landscapes: an aerial tour to the nanoland. october 24, 2002
> microscopy with subatomic resolution. "scientists of the university of augsburg have built an advanced scanning force microscope, the first microscope to provide images of individual atoms with subatomic resolution." july 20, 2000
> the 1986 nobel prize in physics. "Ernst Ruska for his fundamental work in electron optics, and for the design of the first electron microscope, jointly to Dr Gerd Binnig and Dr Heinrich Rohrer for their design of the scanning tunnelling microscope." october 15, 1986
> timeline of microscope technology

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> atomic force microscope images

The student-visa crisis emerged from understandable concerns, since a number of 9/11 terrorists held non-immigrant student visas. Unfortunately, suspicion seems to have turned in some quarters to something worse--xenophobia, a fear or hatred of "foreigners," which may hinder progress, notes Alan I. Leshner, chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

"Multi-national research supports life-saving advances and technological innovation, and it enriches the learning environment," Leshner says. "It's important for the scientific community to speak out against xenophobia. It jeopardizes the long-standing, important tradition of cross- cultural research collaborations, and it works against scientific advances that promise to benefit us all."

Since a shaken U.S. government tightened visa rules in the wake of terrorist attacks, the backlog of visa applications from young scholars has continued to grow--from 1,000 cases tagged for review during 2000 to 14,000 in 2002. Sadly, a few members of the U.S. Congress recently have begun to suggest that foreign students may be taking university slots that would otherwise be given to Americans.

International students play an important role on U.S. campuses, since visa holders made up 36 percent of all graduate enrollments in U.S. science and engineering fields in 2000. Computer science, engineering and other fields have reported serious difficulties in recruiting qualified U.S. graduate students. Some 583,000 international students were expected to add almost $12 billion to the American economic machine during the 2001- 02 school year. >from *Fear of 'foreigners' may slow scientific progress*. May 30, 2003

related context
> amnesty international report 2003. people around the world are more insecure today than at any time since the end of the cold war. may 28, 2003
> directory of persecuted scientists and health professionals. human rights are preconditions for scientific endeavor and should be defended and encouraged as a matter of scientific freedom and responsibility. may 12, 2003
> attacks on science: ethics and public health. "january 11, 2002
> ground zero: 911 keys. september 11, 2001 [updated: january 1, 2002]

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> where you end and i begin

2003 June 2 - Mars Express - Launch of ESA (Europe) Orbiter and Lander (Beagle2) to Mars
2003 June 8 - Mars Exploration Rover 1 - Launch of NASA (USA) Rover Mission to Mars
2003 June 19 - Nozomi - Earth flyby of ISAS (Japan) Mars Orbiter
2003 June 25 - Mars Exploration Rover 2 - Launch of NASA Rover Mission to Mars

This summer, Mars and the Earth will be especially close to each other. Although launch opportunities to go to Mars occur every 26 months - when the Sun, Earth and Mars form a straight line - this year the planets will be in their closest positions which occurs every 15 to 17 years.

related context
> the interplanetary internet: a communications infrastructure for mars exploration. 53rd International Astronautical Congress. october, 2002
> blur music from mars: signal for mars landing . february 7, 2002
> artist join the beagle 2 mars team. june 1, 1999
> a chronology of mars exploration

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> who is next?

Proposed changes in the primate order are stirring up evolutionary debate. Humans and chimpanzees should be grouped in the same genus, Homo, according to Wayne State University researchers in a May 19 article (#2172) published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Although WSU's Morris Goodman has already proven with non-coding DNA sequences that chimpanzees are closest in kinship to humans rather than to gorillas, evolutionary traditionalists say chimps and humans are functionally markedly different and therefore belong on different branches of the family tree.

New analyses show humans and chimpanzees to be 99.4 percent identical in the functionally-important DNA, which codes for proteins and is shaped by natural selection. This provides further evidence for revisions in our genus classification. Dr. Goodman proposes that all living apes should occupy the family Hominidae (which currently contains only humans), and that both humans and chimpanzees should occupy the genus Homo.

In traditional taxonomic schemes that are still widely employed, humans are classified as Hominids, while orangutans, gorillas, and chimpanzees are classified as Pongids. Genetically, however, chimpanzees are more closely related to humans than they are to gorillas. "The accumulating DNA evidence provides an objective non-anthropocentric view of the place of humans in evolution. We humans appear as only slightly remodeled chimpanzee-like apes," Dr. Goodman said.

Researchers determined that humans and chimpanzees diverged from a common ancestor roughly five to six million years ago, which in turn diverged from gorillas about six to seven million years ago. >from *DNA Demands Chimps Be Grouped in the Human Genus, Say Wayne State Researchers*. May 19, 2003

related context
> apes: catastrophic decline. april 14, 2003
> orangutan culture, push back the origins of culture. january 21, 2002
> first chimpanzee archaeological dig: reinterpreting early human sites. may 28, 2002
> the great ape project. "the idea is radical but simple: to include the nonhuman great apes within the community of equals by granting them the basic moral and legal protection that only human beings currently enjoy."

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> are we really genus brothers?