Nogroski presented his results before the entire fifth-grade science community Monday, in partial fulfillment of his seventh-period research project. According to the review panel, which convened in the lunchroom Tuesday, “Otters” was fundamentally flawed by Nogroski’s failure to identify a significant research gap. “When Mike said, ‘Otters,’ I almost puked,” said 11-year-old peer examiner Lacey…
Sorry, we were unable to locate document(s) pertaining to your request. Did you mean: zirconium instead of kirschenbaum? —This Morning’s Lesson in Machine Learning (Or, So Said the Search Engine Unto Me) (MGK) This is tremendous news… search technology has advanced to the point where a search engine has become aware of Matt Kirschenbaum’s strong, metallic…
Are libraries and librarians willing to support initiative to provide weblog support for their community? The University of Minnesota Libraries think so: “It is our goal to develop a blog server through which everyone in the university community (faculty, staff, and student) can have access to their own individual blog” (University of Minnesota Libraries, accessed…
Super-volcano, robotic rebellion or terrorism? Kate Ravilious asks 10 scientists to name the biggest danger to Earth and assesses the chances of it happening. —What a way to go (Guardian) Just in case you’ve gotten lax and started feeling optimistic or something, and you were planning to get a good 8 hours sleep tonight, this…
He escaped Hitler’s Germany and devoted the rest of his life to humanitarian and pacifist causes with an authority unmatched by any scientist today, or even most politicians and religious leaders. He used his celebrity to speak out against fascism, racial prejudice and the McCarthy hearings. His FBI file ran 1,400 pages. His letters reveal…
The picture of gravitational collapse provided by classical general relativity cannot be physically correct because it conflicts with ordinary quantum mechanics. For example, an event horizon makes it impossible to everywhere synchronize atomic clocks. As an alternative it has been proposed that the vacuum state has off-diagonal order, and that space-time undergoes a continuous phase…
US scientists have designed a bionic eye to allow blind people to see again. It comprises a computer chip that sits in the back of the individual’s eye, linked up to a mini video camera built into glasses that they wear. Images captured by the camera are beamed to the chip, which translates them into…
“It’s Pi Day because the date is 3/14 — the first three digits of Pi,” said Howard Greenspan, who oversaw a Pi Day Party online with a Pi drop at MathematiciansPictures.com, a Web site that sells Pi paraphernalia. —Jan Paschal —Pi Day Gives Math Mavens Something to Celebrate (Yahoo/Reuters) Seton Hill celebrates Pi Day with a…
In one study, Martha Carr, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Georgia, looked at first graders who were learning to add and subtract using “manipulatives,” like counting with their fingers or with beads. Midway through the year, she noticed that most boys were abandoning the manipulatives and were doing the problems in…
Larry Summers is no more free to pop off at the mouth about a vexed academic question than George Bush is free to wander around the country dropping off-the-cuff remarks about Social Security or Islam. Of course both men are free in the First Amendment sense to say anything that comes into their pretty little…
The two researchers, Carol Stoker and Larry Lemke, do think they may have evidence for methane in Mars’ atmosphere. Methane cannot last long without being replenished, and it’s not easy to replenish it. There are non-biological ways (for example, sunlight + C02 plus water, which can be found on Mars), but life is the easiest…
Bowing to faculty demands, Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers on Thursday released a transcript of his controversial remarks on women and science. He did so while releasing yet another apology for those remarks and as the head of the Harvard Corporation released a statement backing Summers. —Scott Jaschik —What Larry Summers Said (Inside Higher Ed) I’m…
The pile of garbage included the equipment used by the children in the litter hunt: a dozen plastic bags and two dozen pairs of plastic gloves. The cost of this recycling equipment obviously exceed value of the recyclable items recovered. The equipment also seemed to be a greater burden on the environment, because the bags…
A pair of NASA scientists told a group of space officials at a private meeting here Sunday that they have found strong evidence that life may exist today on Mars, hidden away in caves and sustained by pockets of water. —Brian Berger —Exclusive: NASA Researchers Claim Evidence of Present Life on Mars (Space News) The…
The “Third Bridge” is the nanotechnology and artificial intelligence revolution, which Kurzweil predicts will deliver the nanobots that work like repaving crews in our bloodstreams and brains. These intelligent machines will destroy disease, rebuild organs and obliterate known limits on human intelligence, he believes. Immortality would leave little standing in current society, in which the…
NASA — Last year was the fourth warmest year on average for our planet since the late 1800s, according to NASA scientists. To determine if the Earth is warming or cooling, scientists look at average temperatures. To get an “average” temperature, scientists take the warmest and the coolest temperatures in a day, and calculate the…
A computer that learns to play a ‘scissors, paper, stone’ by observing and mimicking human players could lead to machines that automatically learn how to spot an intruder or perform vital maintenance work, say UK researchers. CogVis, developed by scientists at the University of Leeds in Yorkshire, UK, teaches itself how to play the children’s…
The model is: [W + (D-d)] x TQ M x NA The equation is broken down into seven variables: (W) weather, (D) debt, (d) monthly salary, (T) time since Christmas, (Q) time since failed quit attempt, (M) low motivational levels and (NA) the need to take action. —Jan. 24 called worst day of the year (MSN)…
“If you’re looking for a job with instant and guaranteed success, this isn’t it.” — David Atkinson, scientist whose 18 years of work on a space probe experiment were trashed when someone forgot to turn the thing on before the probe’s 1997 launch. —Professor’s Saturn Experiment Forgotten (AP/My Way)
You wouldn’t buy a car or a house without asking some questions about it first. So don’t go buying into someone else’s data without asking questions, either. Okay, you’re saying… but with data there are no tires to kick, no doors to slam, no basement walls to check for water damage. Just numbers, graphs and…