But what do you get when you take the Rosetta engine and apply game theory to it? That would be a new type of distributed computing project called Fold It. As their tag line says, “Solve Puzzles for Science”, the game is a series of protein folding puzzles. The first puzzle can be seen at the right. The gist of the game involves reorganizing the amino acids and backbones of the proteins. You move them into configurations which are compact while requiring as little energy as possible to maintain such a configuration.

As the game progresses the puzzles become more difficult as the proteins which are presented become more complex. If there are people out there who simply can “see” how proteins work in their mind’s eye–protein savants–then this game could catapult protein research forward.

The Fold It site mentions that there will be a feature added over the summer that will allow for players to “design” proteins. Models which work in the Rosetta simulator can then be synthesized in the lab. This aspect of the project is most intriguing to me. It opens the door for anyone to have the chance at creating a protein which could be the key to curing AIDS, solving the world’s energy crisis or any number of issues.

If you would like the chance at helping with cracking one of the most important scientific problems biologists are currently tackling, have a look at Fold It. So far, I’m having a blast folding!

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It is obvious that someone who only knows English can not verbally communicate with someone who only knows Spanish. But it is less obvious when two English speakers come to the table to talk investments and one speaker does not know the language of finance. Unfortunately the conclusion often is that the speaker who lacks financial literacy is simply stupid. This type of attitude holds many people back from fixing his or her problem of ignorance so that he or she remains in the dark forever.

The line between being ignorant and lacking intelligence is a line which is rarely drawn. Ignorance can be fixed. Ignorance is simply a state of not being informed about a subject. This a problem which has a solution through education.

When it comes to literacy about subjects like physics, chemistry and biology the American culture has groomed its citizens to acquire the language of each subject through the university system. But this is not true of subjects like personal finance and investing for retirement. From talking with friends and family, it seems most people receive minimal education on such topics while in high school. Generally I hear they had to take a single class or there was a week or two of personal finance tucked away inside another class. My hope is that this changes promptly. [If anyone has examples of schools which are taking the time to teach students about finance, please let me know in a comment!]

Over the past few years I have slowly but surely been teaching myself exactly what money is and represents, becoming financially literate. While I recognize that there are already a slew of writers tossing their opinion in the ring, I intend to do what I can to help, if only within my small sphere of influence. The first step to fixing a problem is recognizing what the problem is, which from my experiences has generally been simple ignorance of financial language.

If you want to learn more, especially if you feel out of control of your finances, start by reading sites like Motley Fool and subscribe to Get Rich Slowly. Read the writings of authors like Warren Buffet and Robert Kiyosaki. The first step towards literacy is education and the Internet does an amazing job of bringing education into our homes at little to no cost.

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To pull off such a feat, augmented reality comes to the rescue! Augmented reality, or AR, is a blending of “true” reality and virtual reality. Generally AR systems use computers to track the motion of objects and use that data to overlay useful information into our field of vision–such as adding virtual objects to the real world. Most applications to date have involved camera setups which track 2D “barcodes” to achieve motion tracking.

A great example of this can be seen in the YouTube video I have embedded below. It shows a demo of such barcode tracking being used to turn everyday objects into fantastical imagery from Harry Potter. A baseball cap turns into the Sorting Hat, a stick turns into a sword, a piece of paper becomes The Marauder’s Map and a cardboard box holds a Golden Snitch.

One hurdle to putting augmented reality into general use is getting such functionality off a computer monitor and placed directly in front of our eyes. Head mounted displays with optics to overlay a screen onto the real world are the common solution. At this point in time, however, commercially available HMDs are bulky and generally in need of wired power sources. But that is changing quickly as more companies put R&D into augmented reality technologies.

So how does this relate to interior design and painting your living room walls? Take a look at the diagram below:

So here we have a gentleman who is ecstatic (if you could see his face, he’s got a huge grin) that he doesn’t have to get covered in paint in order to change the look of his wall. The funny looking symbols on the four corners of the wall are what an AR system would use to track the location of the wall. This would then be used to overlay whatever color, pattern or texture our happy ex-painter wishes. The next diagram shows that he settled on a Victorian wallpaper. Note that the tracking symbols would not be seen by the user of the system, I have simply left them visible as a reference point.

As I mentioned earlier, the easiest way of pulling this off with today’s technology is with a head mounted display. So a major limitation would be that only people who are wearing a HMD would be able to see the texture on the wall. In addition to the HMD, the motion tracking system would also need to be head mounted so the wall doesn’t require a camera to track the user’s head. But as technology proceeds forward, the limitations will disappear. People like Johnny Chung Lee are showing us how to use easily accessed devices like the Nintendo Wii remote to do high quality head tracking. Nanotechnology is driving the size of all technology smaller and smaller so that HMDs will turn into contact lens displays and allow batteries to supply the necessary power to make the systems mobile.

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This demo hits home for me, as I am a proponent of simulated reality technologies. The graphics hardware of tomorrow combined with advanced rendering software like CryENGINE 2 get us one step closer to simulated reality becoming…reality. The demo shows hundreds of thousands of (apparently rubber) teapots bouncing down a modeled street among many cars as bystanders watch wondering what the hell is going on. Take a peek and drool as you realize that video on par with Pixar movies is being rendered in real time.

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