Urban Sketchers Portugal Panamath History and Geography of Europe Watercolor Painting Free lessons and tutorials, Step-by-step paintings, techniques, hints and tips Press releases - Turing's Sunflowers Thursday 22 March 2012 Thousands of sunflowers will be planted in honour of the mathematician Alan Turing as part of a new research project led by MOSI (Museum of Science & Industry, Manchester) and Manchester Science Festival, in association with The University of Manchester. A hundred years after Turing was born families, schools, community groups and businesses will be encouraged to plant over 3000 sunflowers to celebrate his work and help solve a mathematical riddle that he worked on before his death in 1954. Alan Turing is famous for his code-breaking skills which helped to crack the Enigma Code during the Second World War, and as a founder of computer science and artificial intelligence, but later he became fascinated with the mathematical patterns found in stems, leaves and seeds - a study known as phyllotaxis. Erinma Ochu, Project Manager of Turing’s Sunflowers said: “This is a fantastic opportunity to learn about the wonder of maths in nature. Notes to editors
A global movement for localised food and farming: The beginning of agriculture in Europe | TABLE Debates Image: Kelly Reed, Reconstructed Neolithic house at Sopot, Croatia The world we inhabit today has changed dramatically since we first began farming thousands of years ago. Yet the challenge to provide food security to all is not new and has been a common struggle throughout our past. This blog starts at the beginning, when early immigrant farmers moved into Europe from southwest Asia, gradually replacing and assimilating mobile hunter-gatherers who lived in this region. How did the advent of farming change the scale of food production in Europe? Agriculture originated in several small hubs around the world. Hunter-gatherer populations today, as in the past, have always maintained very small and relatively mobile groups; they also tend to consume hundreds of different edible plants on a seasonal basis. Neolithic farmers, in contrast, seemed to take responsibility for “making” their environments, by burning fields and turning over the soil. Domesticated barley crop. References
Baby Laughter Survey | The Baby Laughter project The laughter of tiny babies is not just a phenomenally popular theme for YouTube videos, it is also a fantastic window into the workings of the human brain. You can’t laugh unless you get the joke and neither can your baby. At Birkbeck Babylab we study how babies learn about the world. We believe that studying early laughter in detail will throw new light on the workings of babies’ brains, as well as offering new insights into the uniquely human characteristic that is humour. There are LOTS of ways you and your baby can help us: 1. 2. 3. Thank you, Dr. (Visited 230 time, 8 visit today) Like this: Like Loading...
Your Book Review: On The Natural Faculties - Astral Codex Ten [This is the second of many finalists in the book review contest. It’s not by me - it’s by an ACX reader who will remain anonymous until after voting is done, to prevent their identity from influencing your decisions. I’ll be posting about two of these a week for the next few months. When you’ve read all of them, I’ll ask you to vote for your favorite, so remember which ones you liked. - SA] If you’re looking for the whipping boy for all of medicine, and most of science, look no further than Galen of Pergamon. Centuries went by, but not much changed. And so on until the present day. Consider Galen, the second-century physician to Rome’s emperors…Galen was untroubled by doubt. Scott then says, After hearing one too many “everyone thought Columbus would fall off the edge of the flat world” -style stories, I tend to be skeptical of “people in the past were hilariously stupid” anecdotes. This strikes me the same way. I’m also concerned that this criticism doesn’t pass the sniff test.
MyHeartMap Challenge The Device That Saves Lives, But Can Be Hard to Find November 12, 2012 | By Ron Winslow If you needed an automated external defibrillator to help a victim of sudden cardiac arrest, chances are you would have trouble finding one, even if a device were located nearby. That's despite the fact that about one million AEDs—portable devices that can jump-start the heart and save lives when sudden cardiac arrest strikes—are installed in office buildings, malls, schools and sports stadiums around the U.S. <read more> Contest aims to map Philadelphia's AEDS January 31, 2012 | Action News AEDs - or automated external defibrillators can save lives. Health: MyHeartMap Challenge Saves Lives With Cell Phones January 31, 2012 5:15 PM | By Stephanie Stahl There's a new challenge for people in Philadelphia. Global contest will lead to help during heart attacks January 31, 2012 3:01 AM | By Marie McCullough | Inquirer Staff Writer Man Who Suffered Near Fatal Heart Attack Reunited With His 'Angels'
James Franklin: The Renaissance Myth James Franklin ( Quadrant 26 (11) (Nov. 1982), 51-60) THE HISTORY OF IDEAS is full of more tall stories than most other departments of history. Here are three which manage to combine initial implausibility with impregnability to refutation: that in the Middle Ages it was believed that the world was flat; that medieval philosophers debated as to how many angels could dance on the head of a pin; that Galileo revolutionised physics by dropping weights from the Leaning Tower of Pisa. None of these stories is true, and no competent historian has asserted any of them, but none shows any sign of disappearing from the public consciousness. The walnut signifies Christ, the sweet kernel is His divine nature, the green and pulpy outer peel is His humanity, the wooden shell between is the Cross ...
World Water Monitoring Challenge : Test. Share. Protect. The East India Company: How a trading corporation became an imperial ruler In 1600, a group of London merchants led by Sir Thomas Smythe petitioned Queen Elizabeth I to grant them a royal charter to trade with the countries of the eastern hemisphere. And so, the ‘Honourable Company of Merchants of London Trading with the East Indies’ – or East India Company, as it came to be known – was founded. Few could have predicted the seismic shifts in the dynamics of global trade that would follow, nor that 258 years later, the company would pass control of a subcontinent to the British crown. The company has recently been featured in BBC1’s period drama Taboo – central character James Delaney, played by Tom Hardy, comes into conflict with the EIC, which is characterised as a mighty and villainous organisation. In reality, how did this company gain and consolidate its power and profit? With Emperor Jehangir’s permission, they began to build small bases, or factories, on India's eastern and western coasts. A player in politics A ‘colony of exploitation’