I have added a Google gadget to the right side column of the Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog that translates our blog into 35 languages. I have been proving a direct link to 6 languages, so this is a great increase in languages covered.
All that is required to add this capability to your site is add a short bit of javascript from the Google Translate gadget site. And as they add more languages that additional coverage will automatically be reflected on your site.
The usability of the Google translate is excellent, I think. If you are reading the translated page, say in Chinese, and you follow a link to another page on our site it translates that page for you automatically.
I hope you enjoy this new capability.
Related: Funding Google Gadget Development - Google Offers $10 Million in Awards for Google Phone Development - Marissa Mayer on Innovation at Google - Is Google Overpriced? - Javascript books
“Fat is catching” theory exposed
Excellent reminder of the risks of analyzing data for correlations. We continue to, far to often, fail to interpret data properly. Both authors of the study, received PhD’s from the University of Wisconsin-Madison which strengthens my belief that it is teaching students well (just kidding).
Also another example of the scientific inquiry process where scientists challenge the conclusions drawn by other scientists. It is a wonderful system, even if confusing and not the clean idea so many have of how science works.
Related: Correlation is Not Causation - Seeing Patterns Where None Exists - Statistics for Experimenters - 500 Year Floods - Playing Dice and Children’s Numeracy - The Illusion of Understanding - All Models Are Wrong But Some Are Useful - Data Doesn’t Lie But People Can Draw Faulty Conclusions from Data
Rumors of Software Engineering’s Death are Greatly Exaggerated by Steve McConnell
Related: Who Killed the Software Engineer? - Is Computer Science a Science? - What Ails India’s Software Engineers? - Federal Circuit Decides Software No Longer Patentable - A Career in Computer Programming
More posts on how things work: Why do We Sleep? - Why is it Colder at Higher Elevations? - What Are Flowers For?
Diamonds show comet struck North America, scientists say
The nanodiamonds, so small that they are barely visible in an electron microscope, are thought to be remnants of that comet, which would have hit about 65 million years after the much larger collision that wiped out the dinosaurs.
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Battered by fire and ice, as many as 35 species of mammals, including American camels, the short-faced bear, the giant beaver, the dire wolf and the American lion, either immediately vanished or were so depleted in number that humans hunted them to extinction.
The humans, a Paleo-Indian grouping known as the Clovis culture for the distinctive spear points they employed, suffered a major population drop, disappearing in many areas for hundreds of years.
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gems can only be created under the extreme temperatures and pressures of a massive explosion, such as a comet striking the Earth’s surface.
“There’s no other way we can interpret the presence of these diamonds other than an extraterrestrial impact,” said James Kennett, a paleooceanographer.
Such an impact would be the most likely source of nanodiamonds, critics agreed. But many argued that the one-page paper in Science did not provide enough evidence to support the authors’ claim.
“Nanodiamonds could be a good indicator of an impact event . . . but after reading the paper, I wasn’t convinced they found diamonds,” said physicist Tyrone Daulton of Washington University in St. Louis. “Maybe they found diamonds and maybe they didn’t.”
Related: Nanoengineers Use Tiny Diamonds for Drug Delivery - Antarctica’s Unique Meteorites - Mars Sunset
My first post in 2009 is the 2009th post for the blog. Here are some highlights from 2008:
Swarm of Yellowstone Quakes Baffles Scientists
So far the most powerful quake over the last few days has been one at 3.8 on the Richter scale. An earthquake of 4.0-4.9 “Noticeable shaking of indoor items, rattling noises. Significant damage unlikely.” The Richter scale is a logarithmic scale, meaning a measure of 4.0 is 10 times as powerful as 3.0 quake, and 5.0 is 100 times more powerful than a 3.o quake.
Related: Scientists Chart Record Rise in Yellowstone Caldera (2007) - Yellowstone Is Rising on Swollen “Supervolcano” - Live earthquake measurements at Yellowstone - Quake Lifts Island Ten Feet Out of Ocean - Wabash Valley, Illinois Earthquakes
Planetary scientist Jennifer Heldmann discusses the Moon. From Fora.tv which has a wide selection of great webcasts.
Related: Science and Engineering Webcast Directory - China Reaches for the Moon - Astronomers Find a Planet Denser Than Lead - Studying Martian Soil for Evidence of Microbial Life - Cool Astronaut photo
Not Free at Any Price by Richard M. Stallman
The OLPC had practical inconveniences, too: no internal hard disk, a small screen, and a tiny keyboard. In December 2007 I test-drove the OLPC with an external keyboard, and concluded I could use it with an external disk despite the small screen. I decided to switch.
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If you want to support a venture to distribute low-priced laptops to children, wait a few months, then choose one that donates MIPS-based machines that run entirely free software. That way you can be sure to give the gift of freedom.
He is more anti-microsoft than I am but I agree with this contention that what we should support is a open source solution to provide laptops to children around the world. It is a shame, I really liked the potential for OLPC. I still wish them success I just am not interesting in directly supporting that effort but instead would like an alternative open source solution.
The Sylvania Netbook is available from Amazon now with the Ubuntu operating system (linux version). I use Ubuntu and it is excellent.
Related: Will Desktop Linux Take Off? - Lemote (fully open source laptop) - 13 Things For Ubuntu - posts on Ubuntu - Great Freeware - One Laptop Per Child - Give One Get One - OLPC’s Open Source Rift Deepens
The Year in Bad Science Ben Goldacre reviews some of the science lowlights of the year.
In the world of evidence based social policy we saw how the government quietly dropped death as an outcome indicator for their drugs policy, the fascinating inconsistencies in food additive judgment calls, and more. We also watched with delight as right-wing think tank Reform produced a report on the crisis in maths in which they got their maths wrong.
Related: Illusion of Explanatory Depth - The Most Trusted Sources in Science - Seeing Patterns Where None Exists - Bigger Impact: 15 to 18 mpg or 50 to 100 mpg? - Poor Reporting and Unfounded Implications
photo by John Hunter of wine-berries from his Garden.Food needs ‘fundamental rethink’
I agree. The food system is broken. We have moved to mono-culture food production. We have changed our diets to eat food like concoctions. We need to return to healthier and sustainable food production.
Related: Grow Your Own Food and Save Money - Protecting the Food Supply - Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. - The Science of Gardening - Pigs Instead of Pesticides - Obesity Epidemic Explained - Kind Of
An Introductory Science Curriculum for 21st Century Biologists by David Botstein (webcast)
Very good look at future of biology education.
Related: MIT Faculty Study Recommends Significant Undergraduate Education Changes - The Importance of Science Education - Webcast: Engineering Education in the 21st Century - Educating the Engineer of 2020: NAE Report
Pasco high school students to work as interns in engineering
By the time graduation rolls around, students will have had three six-week apprenticeships and received industry certifications in computer-assisted design and other applications. They also will be ready to go to work or enroll in a university program. Even those who go to work still would attend college at least two days a week.
Related: Engineering Internship Openings - Summer Jobs for Smart Young Minds - Toyota Cultivating Engineering Talent - Internships Increasingly Popular - careers in science and engineering
Brain reorganizes to make room for math
The findings support the idea that humans’ ability to match specific quantities with number symbols, a skill required for doing arithmetic, builds on a brain system that is used for estimating approximate quantities. That brain system is seen in many nonhuman animals.
When performing operations with Arabic numerals, young adults, but not school-age children, show pronounced activity in a piece of brain tissue called the left superior temporal gyrus, says Daniel Ansari of the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada. Earlier studies have linked this region to the ability to associate speech sounds with written letters, and musical sounds with written notes. The left superior temporal gyrus is located near the brain’s midpoint, not far from areas linked to speech production and understanding.
In contrast, children solving a numerical task display heightened activity in a frontal-brain area that, in adults, primarily serves other functions.
Related: Brain Development - The Brain Hides Information From Us To Prevent Mistakes - How The Brain Rewires Itself - posts about brain research
Very cool, it is amazing what happens in life. And that bird is remarkably patient. Getting, even playfully, ambushed by a cat doesn’t seem like something what would come naturally. At least with polar bears and huskies they both are used to playing rough with their own.
Related: fun with cats - Bunny and Kittens - Bird Brains: thinking crows - Photos by Fritz the Cat - animal planet on the cat and crow
Self Adjusting Glasses for 1 billion of the world’s poorest see better
More than two decades after posing that question, Josh Silver [a physics professor at Oxford] now feels he has the answer. The British inventor has embarked on a quest that is breathtakingly ambitious, but which he insists is achievable - to offer glasses to a billion of the world’s poorest people by 2020.
Some 30,000 pairs of his spectacles have already been distributed in 15 countries, but to Silver that is very small beer. Within the next year the now-retired professor and his team plan to launch a trial in India which will, they hope, distribute 1 million pairs of glasses. The target, within a few years, is 100 million pairs annually.
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Silver has devised a pair of glasses which rely on the principle that the fatter a lens the more powerful it becomes. Inside the device’s tough plastic lenses are two clear circular sacs filled with fluid, each of which is connected to a small syringe attached to either arm of the spectacles.
The wearer adjusts a dial on the syringe to add or reduce amount of fluid in the membrane, thus changing the power of the lens. When the wearer is happy with the strength of each lens the membrane is sealed by twisting a small screw, and the syringes removed. The principle is so simple, the team has discovered, that with very little guidance people are perfectly capable of creating glasses to their own prescription.
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Oxford University, at his instigation, has agreed to host a Centre for Vision in the Developing World, which is about to begin working on a World Bank-funded project with scientists from the US, China, Hong Kong and South Africa. “Things are never simple. But I will solve this problem if I can. And I won’t really let people stand in my way.”
Cool. A couple points I would like to make:
1) this professor is making a much bigger difference in the “real world” than most people ever will. The idea that professors are all lost in insignificant “ivory towers” is a very inaccurate view of what really happens.
2) Spending money on this kind of thing seems much more important for the human race than spending trillions to bail out poor moves by bankers, financiers… It sure seems odd that we can’t find a few billion to help out people across the globe that are without basic necessities yet we can find trillions to bail out the actions of few thousand bad actors.
Related: Adaptive Eyecare - Bringing Eye Care to Thousands in India - River Blindness Worm Develops Resistance to Drugs - Strawjet: Invention of the Year (2006) - Fixing the World on $2 a Day - Appropriate Technology
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