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aqua satellite scientists will now be able to gain a reasonably accurate picture of the ocean s health and productivity about every week all over the planet data such as this will be critically important in evaluating the effect on oceans of global warming climate change desertification and other changes the researchers said it will also be a key to determining which areas of the ocean are limited in their productivity by iron deficiency as this study just showed the indian ocean was until now we ve really struggled to make this technology work and give us the information we need said michael behrenfeld an osu professor of botany the fluorescence measurements allow us to see from outer space the faint red glow of tiny marine plants all over the world and tell whether or not they are healthy that s pretty cool to grow however these phytoplankton absorb energy from the sun and then allow some of that energy to escape as red light that is called fluorescence the new measurements of fluorescence literally the dim glow that these plants put off will help complete the understanding of ocean health on a much broader and more frequent basis some surprises are already in it was known for instance that parts of the equatorial pacific ocean some regions around antarctica and parts of the sub artic pacific ocean below alaska were limited in production by the poor availability of iron the newest data however show that parts of the northern indian ocean during the summer are also iron limited a phenomenon that had been suggested by some ocean and climate models but never before confirmed amazing that they can measure the physiology of one of the smallest organisms on the planet from a satellite way above the earth this data will help to determine where fertilizing the oceans with iron will be most applicable via sciencedaily read more summary only at 7 04 2009 0 comments labels nature new twitter research men follow men and nobody tweets we examined the activity of a random sample of 300 000 twitter users in may 2009 to find out how people are using the service we then compared our findings to activity on other social networks and online content production venues our findings are very surprising we found that an average man is almost twice more likely to follow another man than a woman similarly an average woman is 25 more likely to follow a man than a woman finally an average man is 40 more likely to be followed by another man than by a woman these results cannot be explained by different tweeting activity both men and women tweet at the same rate these results are stunning given what previous research has found in the context of online social networks on a typical online social network most of the activity is focused around women men follow content produced by women they do and do not know and women follow content produced by women they know i generally men receive comparatively little attention from other men or from women we wonder to what extent this pattern of results arises because men and women find the content produced by other men on twitter more compelling than on a typical social network and men find the content produced by women less compelling because of a lack of photo sharing detailed biographies etc interesting i wonder how this compares with blogs twitter s usage patterns are also very different from a typical on line social network a typical twitter user contributes very rarely among twitter users the median number of lifetime tweets per user is one this translates into over half of twitter users tweeting less than once every 74 days at the same time there is a small contingent of users who are very active specifically the top 10 of prolific twitter users accounted for over 90 of tweets on a typical online social network the top 10 of users account for 30 of all production to put twitter in perspective consider an unlikely analogue wikipedia there the top 15 of the most prolific editors account for 90 of wikipedia s edits ii in other words the pattern of contributions on twitter is more concentrated among the few top users than is the case on wikipedia even though wikipedia is clearly not a communications tool this implies that twitter s resembles more of a one way one to many publishing service more than a two way peer to peer communication network while all follow a long tail some long tails are longer than others via harvard business blog and some more twitter stats from techcrunch here read more summary only at 7 04 2009 0 comments labels men vs women technology interesting articles of the week how the us surplus became a deficit why e books are stuck in a black and white world know thyself tracking every facet of life 24 7 365 for first time over 1 2 of energy funding goes to clean energy which has quadrupled in last 4 years giving up my ipod for a walkman read more summary only at 7 04 2009 0 comments labels interesting articles friday july 03 2009 first hybrid solar power plant opens in israel concentrating solar power csp plants are an amazing wonderful renewable energy technology as long as the sun is shining however solar power alone cannot provide on demand power especially in the case of off grid applications aora solar out of yavne israel is almost complete with the world s first ever solar hybrid plant which will combine concentrated solar power with a hybrid microturbine to generate power 24 hours a day this technology could help provide off grid communities the necessary power without having to run miles of costly transmission lines installation of the new hybrid system is less than 10 days away from being completed at the kibbutz sammar in israel once up and running on june 24th the plant will generate 100 kw of on demand power plus 170 kw of thermal power the plant consists of 30 heliostats mirrors that track the sun and direct its rays up to the 30 meter tall tower where all the sunlight from the heliostats is concentrated this concentrated sunlight heats compressed air which drives an electric turbine the tower itself is a welcome change from other power towers we have seen in the past it actually looks good with its tulip flower shape the hybrid part of the plant allows for on demand power due to its inline microturbine when the sun has set for the day or if it is cloudy biodiesel natural gas or bio fuels can be used to run the microturbine which then drives the electric turbine the hybrid system has the capacity to power 70 homes 24 7 a hybrid system like this has the potential to provide distributed generation or off grid power to communities companies or factories as production of bio fuels becomes more efficient and sustainable we re hoping to see more and more hybrid solar concentrating systems i like how it has the ability to use other fuels when the sun isn t shining this solves the intermittency problem of solar power i wonder how much it cost to build and how much they will charge per kwh via inhabit and tree hugger read more summary only at 7 03 2009 1 comments labels energy environmentalism solar sylvia earle s ted prize wish to protect our oceans sylvia earle explains her ted prize wish to bring knowledge of our oceans to a wide audience and galvanize support in favor of marine protected areas we invite a variety of responses from tedsters in pursuit of this goal development of technologies that would permit deep sea exploration in order to make the invisible visible supporting or organizing expeditions to explore proposed hope spots helping make the scientific case for a network of mpas identifying and exploring candidate mpas creating a media campaign in support of mpas backing the upcoming oceans documentary to ensure wide viewership i think this is a great wish and hope she is successful in her endeavor as loyal fat knowledge readers know i am a huge fan of deep sea exploration mapping the bottom of the ocean is 4 on my list of scientific achievements i am looking forward to and wish all of nasa s funds would be redirected here her deep search foundation is a worthy cause as well aside it pains me to see that another of the ted prizes went to jill tarter who wants to improve seti if there is a bigger waste of brain power in the world than seti i don t know what it is while the chance of finding new strange and fascinating terrestrial life at the bottom of the ocean is almost 100 these guys are spending their time trying to find et which has worse odds than the lottery the more mpas the better i believe that mpas allow fishermen to have larger catches as well i am sure i have read this but can t find the link right now which gives it an economic rational as well the world database on protected areas is a cool google maps mashup that shows where all the mpas in the world are located hopefully we can go from 1 of the sea being protected to 5 in the next 50 years read more summary only at 7 03 2009 2 comments labels environmentalism nature video deforestation causes boom and bust development in the amazon clearing the amazon rainforest increases brazilian communities wealth and quality of life but these improvements are short lived according to new research published today 12 june in science the study by an international team including researchers at the university of cambridge and imperial college london shows that levels of development revert back to well below national average levels when the loggers and land clearers move on since 2000 155 thousand square kilometres of rainforest in the brazilian amazon have been cut down for timber burnt or cleared for agricultural use forest clearance rates have averaged more than 1 8 million hectares per year roughly the area of kuwait and the deforestation frontier is advancing into the forest at a rate of more than four football fields every minute the researchers analysis revealed that the quality of local people s lives measured through levels of income literacy and longevity as mentioned above increases quickly during the early stages of deforestation this is probably because people capitalise on newly available natural resources including timber minerals and land for pasture and higher incomes and new roads lead to improved access to education and medical care and all round better living conditions however the new results suggest that these improvements are transitory and the level of development returns to below the national average once the area s natural resources have been exploited and the deforestation frontier expands to virgin land quality of life pre and post deforestation was both substantially lower than the brazilian national average and was indistinguishable from one another this article shows that greed isn t the problem here but rather short sightedness that even from a selfish perspective it is not in anyone s long term interest to cut down the trees instead of using an environmental argument to stop those that would cut down the forest it would be more effective to show how it is not in their selfish long term interest to do so via sciencedaily read more summary only at 7 03 2009 0 comments labels economics environmentalism thursday july 02 2009 netflix ratings and the napoleon dynamite problem bertoni says it s partly because of napoleon dynamite an indie comedy from 2004 that achieved cult status and went on to become extremely popular on netflix it is bertoni and others have discovered maddeningly hard to determine how much people will like it when bertoni runs his algorithms on regular hits like lethal weapon or miss congeniality and tries to predict how any given netflix user will rate them he s usually within eight tenths of a star but with films like napoleon dynamite he s off by an average of 1 2 stars the reason bertoni says is that napoleon dynamite is very weird and very polarizing it contains a lot of arch ironic humor including a famously kooky dance performed by the titular teenage character to help his hapless friend win a student council election it s the type of quirky entertainment that tends to be either loved or despised the movie has been rated more than two million times in the netflix database and the ratings are disproportionately one or five stars worse close friends who normally share similar film aesthetics often heatedly disagree about whether napoleon dynamite is a masterpiece or an annoying bit of hipster self indulgence when bertoni saw the movie himself with a group of friends they argued for hours over it half of them loved it and half of them hated it he told me and they couldn t really say why it s just a difficult movie mathematically speaking napoleon dynamite is a very significant problem for the netflix prize amazingly bertoni has deduced that this single movie is causing 15 percent of his remaining error rate or to put it another way if bertoni could anticipate whether you d like napoleon dynamite as accurately as he can for other movies this feat alone would bring him 15 percent of the way to winning the 1 million prize and while napoleon dynamite is the worst culprit it isn t the only troublemaker a small subset of other titles have caused almost as much bedevilment among the netflix prize competitors when bertoni showed me a list of his 25 most difficult to predict movies i noticed they were all similar in some way to napoleon dynamite culturally or politically polarizing and hard to classify including i heart huckabees lost in translation fahrenheit 9 11 the life aquatic with steve zissou kill bill volume 1 and sideways i wonder if the problem isn t the movies as much as the rating system itself instead of a single 1 5 star rating maybe they should also include a score for the variance or list the probabilities that you will rank the movie from 1 5 stars when you looked at napoleon dynamite it could say you have a 30 chance of rating it 1 star 10 chance for 2 star 20 3 star 10 4 star and 30 5 star whereas x men might look like 5 1 star 20 2 star 50 3 star 20 4 star and 5 5 star while on average you are likely to give both a 3 star rating you could choose whether to take the gamble on a movie that you might love or stick with seeing on that you are likely to find very average more interesting information on the netflix prize and how people are trying to solve it in the article i am also curious how much the recommendations for any one person differ between the various engines does one engine do a significantly better job of recommending movies for some people than the other engines if that is the case then netflix should allow you which engine you want to use similar to how you could choose which of staff members on the staffs picks you wanted to go with but think twice before going with a gene pick over a vincent via ny times read more summary only at 7 02 2009 0 comments labels other nintendo wii vitality sensor and it looks like nintendo s answer to microsoft s project natal is a pulse detector yep ninty s just announced the wii vitality sensor a finger sensor whic...
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