Latest Data Shows Global Climate Continues Warming Trend Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday on Twitter Chart of the temperature anomalies for 1950-2013, also showing the phase of the El Niñ0-La Niña cycle. (Image Credit: NASA/GSFC/Earth Observatory, NASA/GISS) The latest statistics are in from 2013 and both NASA’s and NOAA’s measurements of global temperatures show Earth continued to experience temperatures warmer than those measured several decades ago. NASA scientists say 2013 tied with 2009 and 2006 for the seventh warmest year since 1880, continuing a long-term trend of rising global temperatures, while NOAA – which uses a different method of analyzing temperature data – said that 2013 tied with 2003 as 4th-warmest year globally since 1880. “The long-term trends are very clear, and they’re not going to disappear,” said climatologist Gavin Schmidt from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). Land and ocean global temperatures in 2013 from both NASA and NOAA. More from NASA:
Chemical process turns any plant matter—even trees—into biofuels Biofuel production focuses on taking the carbon that's already present in plants and converting it into burnable carbon-based fuels. Most of the carbon in a plant comes in the form of sugars, which can be readily converted into ethanol and less readily modified into other fuels. Sugar is relatively easy to obtain from things like fruit and seeds, but those are also the sorts of things we like to eat. Most of the sugar in the rest of a plant, however, is locked into a complex polymer called cellulose. Figuring out a way to easily break down cellulose has been one of the major hurdles to the expansion of biofuels. Now, researchers from the University of Wisconsin–Madison have figured out a chemical treatment that, given a bit of time, can completely dissolve any plant matter including wood. The key ingredient in the chemical treatment is gamma-valerolactone, a ring-shaped molecule that incorporates an oxygen in its ring.
Giant laser could arrange particles into enormous space telescope Sometimes scientists present stuff that just seems to hit a trifecta of awesomeness. In these cases, after I have finished giggling uncontrollably and making the guy next to me nervous, I start thinking about how I might describe it to others. Without further ado, let me present the trifecta of awesomeness: a seemingly ridiculous idea, one that works in a bizarre manner that has little to do with the justification given by the scientists, and—to really make matters special—it involves lasers in space. I think you will agree that the idea of making a giant telescope mirror by using a giant laser to control tiny beads in space has a degree of ridiculousness exceeding all safety limits. Even if the experimental results turned out to be highly subjective and slightly dodgy, there was no way that I could let this pass. Caught in a trap So let's start at the beginning. Now it gets a little complicated. Fault tolerant More interesting was an analysis of how fault tolerant the mirror would be.
One of the strangest animals on earth gets a little weirder Mantis shrimp, the psychedelic reef-dwellers that can wallop their prey with an astounding 200 pounds of force, have a large collection of unique qualities. One is an unusually large number of photoreceptors, the light-sensing proteins that contribute to color vision. Humans have three types of color receptors, birds and reptiles have four, and mantis shrimp have an astounding 12 different kinds. Each type of photoreceptor samples a small set of wavelengths in the color spectrum, but our vision demonstrates that just three or four channels are sufficient to distinguish between different hues even on a very fine scale. According to a new study in Science, mantis shrimp may use a vision system previously unknown to science. If you’re wondering how to determine whether an animal can discriminate between, say, burnt orange and dark yellow, you probably aren’t alone. As a comparison, humans can distinguish between colors with wavelengths less than five nanometers apart.
Google acquires AI pioneer DeepMind Technologies Re/code is reporting that Google is acquiring the artificial intelligence startup DeepMind Technologies. The sale price appears to be in the $400-500 million range. London-based DeepMind was founded in 2010, and it has brought together some of the preeminent researchers in deep learning. The company has a staff of 50-75, with 30 PhDs in a particular subset of machine learning called "deep learning," the development of algorithms that allow machines to learn as humans do. Deep learning models eschew pre-scripted forms of artificial intelligence and instead rely on experiential learning based on rudimentary capabilities. The models require vast server networks and can be broadly applied to any problem that requires advanced pattern recognition. DeepMind's well-funded work hasn’t yielded any commercial products, but a recent paper (PDF) demonstrates how far the company has come.
Visualization of Narrative Visualization | Tools and Inspiration | Press Visualization of Narrative Structure Can books be summarized through their emotional trajectory and character relationships? We visualized character interactions and relative emotional content for three very different books: a haunting memory play, a metaphysical mood piece, and a children's fantasy classic. Best viewed in Google Chrome. Created by Natalia Bilenko (contact) and Asako Miyakawa (contact). Tools and inspiration This visualization was created for Maneesh Agrawala's visualization class at UC Berkeley. Press
www.englandlab.com/uploads/7/8/0/3/7803054/2013jcpsrep.pdf Three arguments about climate change that should never be used Stop me if you've heard any of these before: "The warming is just part of a natural cycle." "We've been warming up since the last ice age." "To think humanity can influence the climate is pure arrogance." If you haven't heard these arguments before, it's clearly because you've never read any of the discussions attached to our climate articles. “The warming is just part of a natural cycle” Is this a natural cycle? The other reason that this is a nonsensical argument is that natural cycles aren't some sort of magic—like anthropogenic factors, they influence the climate for physical reasons. “We’ve been warming up since the last ice age” OK, so maybe there's something very subtle and longer-term going on around here. This warming influence peaked over 5,000 years ago. If you look at materials that capture indications of past temperatures, that's exactly what you see. “To think humanity can influence the climate is pure arrogance” There is really nothing sensible about any of these arguments.
Amelia Earhart: Breaking Barriers of Earth and Sky | Charles F. Bolden, Jr. Editor's Note: This post is part of a series produced by HuffPost's Girls In STEM Mentorship Program. Join the community as we discuss issues affecting women in science, technology, engineering and math. If Amelia Earhart were alive today, there is a good chance she would be a NASA astronaut. As we celebrate Amelia Earhart Day in recognition of one her greatest accomplishments - the first person to fly solo over the Pacific on January 11, 1935 -- I want to salute the contributions that both she and the field of aeronautics have made to our nation. While NASA was not officially born until 1958, twenty-one years after Earhart disappeared during her 1937 attempt to become the first woman to fly around the world, she had a connection to the agency. "If Amelia Earhart were alive today, there is a good chance she would be a NASA astronaut." Today, NASA technologies are aboard all U.S. commercial and military aircraft, and in use in every U.S. air traffic control tower.
Lexical Distance Among the Languages of Europe « Etymologikon™ Posted by Teresa Elms on 4 March 2008 This chart shows the lexical distance — that is, the degree of overall vocabulary divergence — among the major languages of Europe. The size of each circle represents the number of speakers for that language. Circles of the same color belong to the same language group. All the groups except for Finno-Ugric (in yellow) are in turn members of the Indo-European language family. English is a member of the Germanic group (blue) within the Indo-European family. So why is English still considered a Germanic language? The original research data for the chart comes from K. Like this: Like Loading...