Birds, bees, and banks: lessons from collapsing ecosystems Figuring out why financial crises emerge in seemingly stable economies is tough. Widespread collapses are notoriously difficult to predict - to do so requires a comprehensive view of a complex, interconnected system. But help may be at hand: experts in finance are now looking to certain fields of ecology to help provide this viewpoint. Ecologists have long been concerned with how connections between species relate to the overall stability of an ecosystem. Rather than focus on an individual species, some use a powerful branch of mathematics called network theory to map out a web of interaction. These networks can then be compared to one another to provide insights into how an ecosystem might cope with external shocks. For example, in the 1940’s a drought-resistant plant native to Africa and Asia known as Buffelgrass was introduced to the south-west America’s Sonoran Desert as a means of feeding cattle. This snowballing cycle can be seen in financial crises as well.
New Bacterial Life-Form Discovered in NASA and ESA Spacecraft Clean Rooms High atop a platform inside a clean room at the European Space Agency’s (ESA) launch site in South America, scientists painstakingly searched for microbes near the Ariane 5 rocket due to launch the Herschel space telescope in May 2009. Only very unusual organisms can survive the repeated sterilization procedures in clean rooms, not to mention the severe lack of nutrients available. But the scientists’ careful inspection was fruitful, turning up a type of bacteria that had been seen only once before. Two years earlier this same bug had surfaced 4,000 kilometers away in the clean room at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida where engineers were preparing the Mars lander Phoenix for launch. The researchers named the bacterium Tersicoccus phoenicis. Scientists go to all this trouble for the purpose of “planetary protection”—which usually means protecting other planets from contamination by microbes originating on Earth.
21 Science Fictions That Became Science Facts In 2013 MIT's shapeshifting display lets you reach out and touch someone MIT has demonstrated a "Dynamic Shape Display" that can physically change shape to render 3D content. As Fast Company reports, the display is called inFORM, and it's a large surface that sits atop a series of pins, actuators, and linkages. By moving each actuator, inFORM can move the pin it's attached to up or down, allowing for a wide range of interactions. A projector mounted above the surface provides context to the shapeshifting pins, giving them color and highlighting depth. In a video released by MIT, the table is shown moving a ball, mirroring a book, displaying 3D charts, and giving an extremely visible smartphone notification. When used in conjunction with a Kinect sensor, inFORM gets a lot more interesting. MIT says it's exploring "a number of application domains" for inFORM. It's extremely impressive stuff, but it's just one step on a long path to what MIT calls Radical Atoms.
The Artificial Womb Is Born And The World of the Matrix Begins ”One by one the eggs were transferred from their test-tubes to the larger containers; deftly the peritoneal lining was slit, the morula dropped into place, the saline solution poured . . . and already the bottle had passed on through an opening in the wall, slowly on into the Social Predestination Room.” Aldous Huxley, ”Brave New World” The artificial womb exists. In Tokyo, researchers have developed a technique called EUFI — extrauterine fetal incubation. They have taken goat fetuses, threaded catheters through the large vessels in the umbilical cord and supplied the fetuses with oxygenated blood while suspending them in incubators that contain artificial amniotic fluid heated to body temperature. Yoshinori Kuwabara, chairman of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Juntendo University in Tokyo, has been working on artificial placentas for a decade. Kuwabara and his associates have kept the goat fetuses in this environment for as long as three weeks. Between Womb and Air
3-D Printed Car Is as Strong as Steel, Half the Weight, and Nearing Production | Autopia Engineer Jim Kor and his design for the Urbee 2. Photo: Sara Payne Picture an assembly line not that isn’t made up of robotic arms spewing sparks to weld heavy steel, but a warehouse of plastic-spraying printers producing light, cheap and highly efficient automobiles. If Jim Kor’s dream is realized, that’s exactly how the next generation of urban runabouts will be produced. Urbee’s approach to maximum miles per gallon starts with lightweight construction – something that 3-D printing is particularly well suited for. Jim Kor is the engineering brains behind the Urbee. “We thought long and hard about doing a second one,” he says of the Urbee. Kor and his team built the three-wheel, two-passenger vehicle at RedEye, an on-demand 3-D printing facility. Photo: Sara Payne Besides easy reproduction, making the car body via FDM affords Kor the precise control that would be impossible with sheet metal. Not all of the Urbee is printed plastic — the engine and base chassis will be metal, naturally.
Pierre Apkarian N. V. Q. Hung, H. D. Tuan, T. N. A. V. A. A. P. P. L'article faux qui a rapporté 1,4 million de visites à BuzzFeed - Capture d'écran de BuzzFeed - Au lieu de faire quelque chose de productif comme finir le deuxième chapitre de mon livre (c'est en bonne voie de toute façon), j'ai passé une heure ce mardi 3 décembre à regarder comment l'Internet s'était fait avoir par un nouveau canular. Elan Gale, un producteur de The Bachelor et donc une des pires personnes de la planète, a passé une partie de son Thanksgiving à live-tweeter ce qu'il affirmait être une querelle avec une femme irritante portant «des jeans de maman» qui se plaignait trop bruyamment du retard de son avion. Gale lui a envoyé des boissons et des petits mots pour lui dire de se taire et de «manger une bite» («eat a dick» en anglais, expression utilisée pour répondre en marquant son énervement à une attaque verbale). publicité Internet a adoré, surtout BuzzFeed. Problème: l'histoire de Gale n'était pas vraie. BuzzFeed s'est moqué de moi Je ne dis pas que BuzzFeed devrait virer qui que ce soit. Malheureusement fréquent «Trop bon pour vérifier»
L’homme au même niveau que l’anchois dans la chaîne alimentaire Dans la chaîne alimentaire, l'homme ne se situe pas au sommet, comme il pourrait le penser, mais au même niveau que... les anchois et les cochons. Bien loin, donc, d'un super prédateur. C'est la conclusion d'une étude originale, visant à mesurer l'impact de la consommation humaine sur les écosystèmes, publiée dans les Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences lundi 2 décembre. Pour arriver à ce résultat déroutant, l'équipe conjointe de l'Institut français de recherche pour l'exploitation de la mer (Ifremer), de l'Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD) et d'Agrocampus-Ouest a utilisé un outil classique en écologie, mais qui n'avait jamais été appliqué à l'homme auparavant : le niveau trophique, qui permet de positionner les différentes espèces dans la chaîne alimentaire. A la base de cette échelle, et donc tout en bas de la chaîne alimentaire, la valeur 1 correspond aux plantes et au plancton. Car manger un carnivore n'a pas le même impact que manger un végétal.
How snowflakes get their shape The key is here: each branch on a single snowflake experiences the same history of variations as it falls, but different flakes don't. The thing with (classical) physics is that if you start with identical starting conditions, and subject something to the same conditions, you get the same outcome. Each branch on the snowflake is subject to the same forces/temperatures/etc. But isn't it amazing that the snowflake is small enough that even then there are no variations on the conditions each of the six branches experiences?! It is amazing :D Snowflakes are such a weird size, really — just big enough that we can see them, but as you said, small enough to act like a "particle" when you consider its environment.
Listen to Isaac Asimov in 1988, explaining why scientists rule Each generation informs the next, a larger public belief in the mystical only hinders our progress as we return to that which we have ruled out as possible, many of these belief systems insisting that their followers act on blind faith and follow doctrine without question. A return to tradition only stifles progress as we are tempted to continue centuries old conflicts started by men long dead. It makes me sad to know that I shared the world with Issac Asimov and Carl Sagan and other great minds before I was aware of them or the brilliance of their vision and now that I have learned to respect them they are no longer here to admire. I am however grateful that they have left us with documents such as this interview where they speak from the heart for the coming generation that is ready to listen.