The Physics arXiv Blog produces daily coverage of the best new ideas from an online forum called the Physics arXiv on which scientists post early versions of their latest ideas. Contact me atKentuckyFC @ arxivblog.comThe Physics arXiv Blog produces daily coverage of the best new ideas from an online forum called the Physics arXiv on which scientists post early versions of their latest ideas. Contact me atKentuckyFC @ arxivblog.com [Read the full article]

According to the best estimate of Heather "Marilyn Monrobot" Knight, a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University, there are almost certainly more robots associated with CMU than there are people working in the university's robotics program."Which is insanity," says Knight, referring not to the number of robots--CMU is the only university in the U.S. to specifically offer a degree, rather than a specialization, in robotics--but to the number of people on campus whose entire working existence is devoted to creating them. "There are 599 people [in the robotics program], including 100 or 120 people working in a government lab that's off campus," she adds. [Read the full article]

If I tweet my feelings about an artificial sweetener, Coca-Cola wants to know about it. Am I discussing new scientific findings about sweeteners? Praising the taste of one while maligning another? Talking about how they've helped me lose weight? Marketers typically pay big money for research into what people are thinking about--to gauge success, identify threats, ferret out misinformation, and pick up on themes that resonate with consumers.These days, ample clues to the future direction that products should take are hidden in the fields and streams of the Web. "Brands don't become great by monitoring the past," says Stan Sthanunathan, vice president of marketing strategy and insights for the Atlanta-based Coca-Cola Company. [Read the full article]

The Physics arXiv Blog produces daily coverage of the best new ideas from an online forum called the Physics arXiv on which scientists post early versions of their latest ideas. Contact me atKentuckyFC @ arxivblog.comOver the weekend, I received this email from Christine Corbett Moran, a theoretical physicist at the University of Zurich:"I'm a big fan of http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/ (I'm doing a PhD in astrophysics) and wanted to have a minute-by-minute best-of-the-arXiv site, so I built phygg.com on top of the open source CMS platform pligg. The content is identical to arXiv with a twist: voting papers up and down is enabled, and when a paper gets enough votes it moves from the upcoming section to the front page a la digg.com.I was wondering if you would consider writing about it as I'm trying to build the user base so that it's even more informative and useful. [Read the full article]