May 7, 2012
Azimuth originally shared this post: This New Yorker article is a good introduction to state of play in geoengineering – in particularly, the idea that artificially reducing the amount of sunlight hitting the Earth, or deliberately removing CO2 from the air, could limit global warming. I predict that at some point the majority public opinion on geoengineering will flip from “unthinkably risky” to “urgently desirable” – although, of course, not uniformly: it’ll be extremely divisive. “Last fall, the SPICE team decided to conduct a brief and uncontroversial pilot study. At least they thought it would be uncontroversial. To demonstrate how they would disperse the sulfur dioxide, they had planned to float a balloon over Norfolk, at an altitude of a kilometre, and send a hundred and fifty litres of water into the air through a hose. After the date and time of the test was announced, in the middle of September, more than fifty organizations signed a petition objecting to the experiment, in part because they fear that even to consider engineering the climate would provide politicians with an excuse for avoiding tough decisions on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. Opponents of the water test pointed out the many uncertainties in the research (which is precisely why the team wanted to do the experiment). The British government decided to put it off for at least six months.” On the other hand, removing CO2 from the air seems harder to do at the necessary scale, but it would prevent ocean acidification, and Richard Branson has offered a Virgin Earth Challenge prize of 25 million dollars to anyone who can devise a process that would drain large quantities of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Thanks to +Jim Stuttard for pointing this out. Can Geoengineering Solve Global Warming? The best solution, nearly all scientists agree, […]
May 6, 2012
h/t +Jon Lawhead Climate News originally shared this post: New forecasting system appeared to accurately forecast the US Summer heat wave. Luo and Zhang in GRL: “We found that starting from April 2011, the operational CFSv2 forecast consistently suggested an elevated probability of extremely hot days during the forthcoming summer over the Central Plains, and as the summer was approaching the forecast became more certain about the summer heat wave in its geographic location, intensity and timing. This study demonstrates the capability of the new seasonal forecast system and its potential usefulness in decision making process.” For more information about CFSv2 see http://cfs.ncep.noaa.gov/cfsv2.info/ h/t David Appell at http://davidappell.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/interesting-new-research.html Did we see the 2011 summer heat wave coming? Geophysical Research Letters publishes short, concise research letters that present scientific advances that are likely to have immediate influence on the research of other investigators. GRL letters …
May 6, 2012
John Baez originally shared this post: Most people are below average! Human performance is often not distributed according to the famous ‘bell curve’ or ‘Gaussian’. Instead, a small number of people vastly outperform the rest. A new study shows that in 186 out of 198 groups ranging from physics professors and Grammy nominees to cricketers and swimming champion, a small group of ‘superstars’ account for much of the success of the group as a whole. That means the majority are performing below the mathematical average – or to be precise, the ‘arithmetic mean’. This should not be depressing news, but it does mean that blindly modelling people’s behavior using a bell curve is a bad idea. So is expecting that ‘average’ means ‘typical’. Put Away The Bell Curve: Most Of Us Aren’t ‘Average’ : NPR For decades, teachers, managers and parents have assumed that the performance of students and employees fits what’s known as the bell curve — in most activities, we expect a few people to be very good…
May 6, 2012
What are Human Rights? I see people questioning the very idea of “human rights”, usually on the basis of a misunderstanding of just what a “right” is. They ask questions like “where do rights come from”, as if there must be some authority that makes “rights”, and absent such an authority, there are no rights. These are conceptual confusions, a product of a failure to educate ourselves in basic civics. So let’s learn some political theory together! A right is something that a community thinks is necessary for that community to be just. Rights are the duties that the society owes its members in order to respect their basic dignity, humanity, and autonomy. For instance, we think we have a right to free speech. This right doesn’t “come from” anywhere; instead, this is a value our society holds. If we were to stop stop respecting the people’s right to speak freely, we’ve explicitly come to a consensus that this would go against our collective values. If we start repressing free speech, we are in some important sense derelict in our duties to the public. So, for instance, when China violates human rights through internet censorship, the US will openly declare this to be a violation of human rights, and will urge them to change their ways. There is no “objective list” of what these rights are, and they aren’t eternal handed down from some absolute authority. Nevertheless, there are a series of rights that are acknowledged in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is the official UN document that is signed and endorsed by all its member states. The UDHR lists 30 distinct articles including both positive and negative rights. You can read the whole Declaration here: http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/ The preamble gives a great introduction to what a right is, […]
May 5, 2012
The descriptions of the technology don’t do it justice, but the example applications at the end of this video will make your imagination run wild. Screenless devices ftw. h/t +Rebecca Spizzirri Patrick Beja originally shared this post: “Touché” brings touch technology to doorknobs and water. Yes, seriously. This opens up a bunch of cool possibilities that I can’t wait to see materialized into the world by science and tech warlocks. Cool stuff ! (source: http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2012/05/touche-brings-touch-controls-t.html)
May 4, 2012
This isn’t just one stupid judge. These are systemic problems. The existing order of things is categorically incapable of handling the terms and conditions of the digital age responsibly and coherently. We don’t just need news judges or new laws. We need a new organizational system entirely. Jerry Nguyen originally shared this post: Judge Jackson made it clear that Facebook posts (e.g. status updates, comments, etc.) “…constituted enough speech to be considered speaking out as a matter of public concern.” This wins Facebook posts that coveted “protected speech’ status. In other words, posts contain “actual statements”, but Facebook “likes”? A Facebook like “…is not the kind of substantive statement that has previously warranted constitutional protection.” Um…better write more posts! Thanks +Radium Yttrium for the article! Judge rules that you can be fired for “Liking” the wrong thing on Facebook You thought things were tense at the office when you hit ‘Like’ on the Team Edward Facebook page when your boss was overwhelmingly Team Jacob. This case involving a sheriff’s election might just make…
May 3, 2012
Ants use sophisticated forms of agriculture and architecture, requiring domestication and engineering techniques that easily match human efforts in scale and sheer awe. But unlike human beings, ants have been using these technologies sustainably for over 100 million years. We have the audacity to openly speculate whether we are the only intelligent life form in the universe, while these technological wizards are working miracles right under our noses. #ants are #awesome “The ants cut hairs from the plant and weave them together into a hollow gallery, which extends down the side of the tree’s branches. Within the gallery, the ants hide inside small holes, jaws agape. From the outside, nothing can see them. If an insect lands on the trap, hundreds of lurking jaws seize its legs and pull it spread-eagled, as if on a medieval ‘torture rack’. The victim is overpowered and dismembered. This alliance between ant and plant involves a third partner. Within their shelters, the ants grow a single species of fungus from the Chaetothyriales group. Many ants, including the famous leaf-cutters, grow fungi for food but the Allomerus ants use their fungi for construction instead. It acts as the glue that binds the plant hairs in their traps. The plant provides the bricks and the foundations, the fungus provides the mortar, and the ants do the manual labour.” Read more here: http://io9.com/5907344/these-amazonian-ants-build-one-of-the-freakiest-deathtraps-in-the-animal-kingdomh/t +Matt Uebel Allomerus decemarticulatus trap on Hirtella physophora
May 3, 2012
“Cordyceps fungi can decimate entire ant colonies, but some colonies can keep an infestation at bay and survive for long periods of time. A new study now reveals how they do so. It turns out that the zombie-ant fungus is itself parasitized by another fungus, which limits its ability to reproduce and prevents it from overwhelming the colony. This microbial defence system allows the two species to stably co-exist and ensures the long-term survival of the colony despite a high rate of infection. “The Cordyceps fungi manipulate worker ants to leave their nest and march off to a nearby site where they will eventually meet their fate. These sites are mass graves littered with the bodies of nest-mates that have succumbed to the fungus. They can persist in the same location for years, growing steadily as ants arrive one by one to die. “Sandra Andersen of the University of Copenhagen and her colleagues took advantage of this. They analysed the growth rate of five graveyards containing ant corpses infected with Ophiocordyceps camponoti-rufipedis, all located within a 400 hectare nature reserve in the Brazilian rain forest. “They identified a total of 432 infected ants in the five sites, and characterized each one according to the developmental stage of the fungus. This showed that 1/8 of the ants had been freshly killed, and a similar number were somehow damaged and showed no obvious signs of fungal growth. Another 1/8 had an immature mushroom growing from their heads, but only 1/16 had mature mushrooms that produced spores. They also found that more than half of the dead ants in each graveyard harboured a second parasitic fungus.” #ants #awesome Ergin Kocyildirim originally shared this post: Walking Dead This is a bit scary… Zombie-ant parasitic fungus kept in check by hyperparasitic fungus Ant colonies are […]
May 3, 2012
“There are no rules in Starcraft. Unless you hack the program with a 3rd party mod, there’s literally nothing you can do in-game that is “unfair” or “against the rules”. You can’t break the law because there are no laws to break; anything you do within the game is considered fair. You can cheese, but everyone understands that cheesing is part of the game and dealing with it correctly is part developing your skills. There are referees in tournament play and sometimes refs issue decisive rulings, but those rulings almost always have to do with instances where the game has broken down through no fault of the players, either by lag or a disconnect or some other technical problem. The only way to cheat at Starcraft is to hack the technical infrastructure; otherwise, it’s all fair game. So there are security issues to manage hacking, but the issue of ensuring a fair match between the players themselves has almost no refereeing overhead. Like chess, but unlike just about every other sport, the game of Starcraft allows opponents to engage in full out, no-holds-barred competition. And in some deeply meaningful way, for patrick and thousands of other gamers, this competition is fair. Cruel, perhaps, but ultimately just.” #starcraft #attentioneconomy #playtowin Starcraft 2 is brutally honest: Lessons for the Attention Economy Starcraft 2 is brutally honest. You open it up, log on to Battle.net, click Find Match, and you’re almost instantly paired up with someone deemed to be within your skill level. Then you play, you …
May 3, 2012
If Prof. Ishiguro looks familiar, you might remember seeing lots of him before: Robot Looks Like Inventor Ergin Kocyildirim originally shared this post: Huggable robot with a beating heart The Hugvie is a cushion in a minimalistic human form. It contains a pocket into which you can put your mobile phone, transforming it into a physical communication medium. The shape of this huggable cushion is based on the Telenoid robot developed by Osaka University’s Professor Ishiguro. It contains a microcontroller and vibrators which match the characteristics of the caller’s voice, so people can have a richer communication experience when talking on the phone with loved ones. The two vibrators produce a throbbing sound like a heartbeat. That pulse can get faster or stronger, depending on the volume and tone of the caller’s voice.
May 3, 2012
The title comes from Playing to Win (at life). For context: Starcraft 2 is brutally honest. You open it up, log on to Battle.net, click Find Match, and you’re almost instantly paired up with someone deemed to be within your skill level. Then you play, you win or you lose, and eventually it’s over. You can study the graphs and the replays, you can watch professional streams and the Day[9] Daily and read all the forum threads you want–at pretty much no point does the game not reward you for doing an infinite amount of homework–but at the end of the day, you have to click that Find Match button again, play another game, and inevitably lose if you want to get better. As professional player Aleksey “White-Ra” Krupnik puts it, “More GG, more skill.” There are plenty of games that are competitive. You can play Call of Duty online and get your balls e-stomped by lots of folks. The difference is that Starcraft 2 don’t fuck around. There are no teammates or lucky shots. There is no respawning. There are no unlockables or pay-to-win mechanics. The only difference between you and the guy who won is that the guy who won has trained harder and worked more so he was capable of outplaying you and sending you back to the Lose screen that helpfully reminds you that you’re ranked in the bottom 20th percentile in the world. It is cruel, almost. It’s a fandom article, and it is passionate and sincere so I mean that with all due respect. I like that the author makes good on the frequent comparisons between Starcraft and chess, which which are easy to dismiss as superficial by someone not immersed in the community. But I want to give a bit more of an […]
May 2, 2012
There’s been lots of recent discussion about mining space asteroids, and everyone is in a tizzy about how awesome it is to be alive in such exciting times. Criticisms over the proposal are largely over whether it is technically feasible, and whether it is a good (read: profitable) idea. I want to approach the question from a different direction. The Planetary Resources video (which curiously has not itself gone viral, even if the news of it has) ends with the following line: “We are going to change the way the world thinks about natural resources.” You might immediately react to this line: Good! Wonderful! We treat natural resources like trash right now. Our poor treatment of this environment is part of the reason why we are looking for off-planet solutions. Hopefully we do start to think about natural resources differently, and if this massive and inspiring project can help us do so, all the better! So how exactly will the mining of asteroids change the way we think about natural resources? Well, the engineering and economic challenges are formidable, of course, but the engineering challenges for terrestrial mining are no joke either. Everyone got a nice long look at the incredible engineering feats responsible for both building and then repairing the Deepwater Horizon mining operation. Okay, space mining might be more challenging in the details (bigger profits, vastly more epic failures), but is this really “changing the way we think about natural resources”? Or is it more of the same at a more dramatic scale? For that matter, how do we think about natural resources now? The natural answer to this kind of question in the Digital Age is to consult Wikipedia’s entry on natural resources. But the Wiki definition starts off by distinguishing natural resources as “undisturbed by humans”; […]
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