A random walk of interesting stuff
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fotoclix - Andy Bitterer Photography - Tumblr
Copyright 2005-2011 Andy Bitterer, fotoclix. All rights reserved. Design created by Prashanth Kamalakanthan and customized by Andy Bitterer. Content powered by Tumblr .
PeteSearch: Launching the Data Science Toolkit
I'm very pleased to announce the launch of the Data Science Toolkit . It's a collection of the most useful open source tools and data sets I've found, wrapped in an easy-to-use REST/JSON interface, and available for download as a turnkey virtual machine image. Over the past few years I've discovered some amazing open-source tools, and built a few I'm pretty proud of myself, but they've always required a lot of effort from developers to use. Take Boilerpipe for example. It's by far the best approach I've found for extracting the main text from a news story or blog post, a vital first step for many data processing operations.
CultureLab: Let the geek worship begin
"IT IS almost a miracle that modern teaching methods have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry," Albert Einstein once observed, expressing his frustrations with his early formal education. "For what this delicate little plant needs more than anything, besides stimulation, is freedom." He would have found a kindred spirit in Amir Abo-Shaeer, a physics teacher at Dos Pueblos High School in Goleta, California, who is the heart and soul of Neal Bascomb's new book. For Abo-Shaeer, it's all about engaging and inspiring students. That's why the crowning achievement of his engineering academy is having the final-year students design and construct their own robot to enter into the annual FIRST schools robotics competition.
March 24, 2011 - High-temperature Superconductor Spills Secret: A New Phase of Matter
An unprecedented three-pronged study has found that one type of high-temperature superconductor may exhibit a new phase of matter. As in all superconductors, electrons pair off (bottom) to conduct electricity with no resistance when the material is cooled below a certain temperature. But in this copper-based superconductor, many of the electrons in the material don’t pair off; instead they form a distinct, elusive order (shown as orange peaks and blue troughs) that interacts with the electron pairs. (Illustration by Greg Stewart, SLAC.) Menlo Park, Calif. — Scientists have found the strongest evidence yet that a puzzling gap in the electronic structures of some high-temperature superconductors could indicate a new phase of matter.
By Robert Frank Researchers and journalists (myself included) often refer to the rich as a fixed group. There are the “the rich” who keep getting richer, with ever-rising shares of the nation’s income and wealth. And then there are “the rest,” who aren’t getting much of either. The rich also fall At a time when the American Dream is supposedly dead for most Americans, while Wall Streeters are seen as permanently ensconced in government-backed luxury, the chances of moving up or down would appear slim.
The Myth of the Permanent Rich - The Wealth Report - WSJ
For a small group of people—perhaps just 1% to 3% of the population—sleep is a waste of time. Natural "short sleepers," as they're officially known, are night owls and early birds simultaneously. They typically turn in well after midnight, then get up just a few hours later and barrel through the day without needing to take naps or load up on caffeine. They are also energetic, outgoing, optimistic and ambitious, according to the few researchers who have studied them. The pattern sometimes starts in childhood and often runs in families.
The Sleepless Elite - WSJ.com
Geologists routinely find themselves in some of the most remote, beautiful and strange spots on Earth. Photographing geological features is an important aspect of the science, and every now and then every geologist captures an image that is scientifically interesting and stands out aesthetically as well. We asked the geologists among our Wired Science and Clastic Detritus readers, and anyone else who had a great photo of some nice rocks, to send them in. There were far too many awesome shots among the almost 350 submissions, but we've included the 11 that we thought were the best (in no particular order) in this gallery. Wadi Rum is a strange landscape with mountains ranging up to 5,600 feet high separated by flat, red-sand-filled valleys. It's so alien that it stood in for the surface of Mars in the movie Red Planet and is nicknamed "Valley of the Moon"
Hot Rocks: Geology Photo Contest Winners | Wired Science | Wired.com
Heat is a sad fact of life for current generation electronics. Any Android, iPhone, or BlackBerry user can tell you that smartphones tend to get pretty hot at times. And by today's standards a balmy 85 degrees Celsius, while hot enough to cook an egg, is a pretty "good" operating temperature for a high-powered PC graphics processing unit . But that could all soon change, according to the results of a new study by researchers at the University of Illinois.
An Incredible Discovery: Graphene Transistors Self-Cool
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There are only a handful of investors who are so well-known that they can draw a crowd of 500. Fred Wilson is one of those investors. As a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures , Fred has invested in Web 2.0 success stories including Disqus and Etsy. He’s also a prominent blogger, sharing his thoughts on entrepreneurship and the investment landscape on his A VC blog .
Small Business, Entrepreneurship & Startup Blog | Sprouter » Fred Wilson’s Ten golden Principles for Successful Web Apps
How Will You Measure Your Life? - Harvard Business Review
How Will You Measure Your Life? Editor’s Note: When the members of the class of 2010 entered business school, the economy was strong and their post-graduation ambitions could be limitless. Just a few weeks later, the economy went into a tailspin. They’ve spent the past two years recalibrating their worldview and their definition of success.The pine trees framing the entrance to the forest appear to be normal. Unremarkable. But the crackling dosimeter says otherwise. On this freezing February afternoon, about 2 miles from the concrete sarcophagus that now entombs the number four reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, Gennadi Milinevsky, a physicist from a university in Kiev, walks along a path carpeted with pine needles and patches of recent snow.
Is Chernobyl a Wild Kingdom or a Radioactive Den of Decay? | Magazine
New Scientist TV: Up close and personal with an active volcano
Sandrine Ceurstemont, video producer Few people would venture up close to an erupting volcano. But photographer Dr Richard Roscoe specialises in capturing volcanoes in action so he was eager to be one of the first to spend a night on the rim of Mount Bromo in Eastern Java, Indonesia. Since November 2010, the volcano has entered an unusually long active phase , displaying strombolian activity , towering ash columns and occasionally powerful shockwaves.Thirty five years ago I had yet to be born, but artist Scott Weaver had already begun work on this insanely complex kinetic sculpture, Rolling through the Bay, that he continues to modify and expand even today. I have used different brands of toothpicks depending on what I am building. I also have many friends and family members that collect toothpicks in their travels for me. For example, some of the trees in Golden Gate Park are made from toothpicks from Kenya, Morocco, Spain, West Germany and Italy. The heart inside the Palace of Fine Arts is made out of toothpicks people threw at our wedding.