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Jake Corkin

Einstein's theory of relativity explained with four letter words (or smaller). - 0 views

www.muppetlabs.com/...al.html

relativity einstein modernism

shared by Jake Corkin on 27 Oct 10 - Cached
  • Jake Corkin on 27 Oct 10
     
    This is a great summary of how the theory actually works and it is done using small words (four letters or less). and it brings in a lot of the history of it all, including newton and aristotle's theories and how they were broken.
Brian Earley

2001: A Space Odyssey Interpreted - 1 views

www.kubrick2001.com

digiciv super computer hal 9000

shared by Brian Earley on 14 Nov 10 - Cached
  • Brian Earley on 14 Nov 10
     
    After watching the movie I was lost, but this interpretation gave me an understanding of the crucial bits without the drawn out breathing clips. If you watch this four part video for 30 minutes you've practically watched the movie.
Kristen Nicole Cardon

Sugata Mitra: The child-driven education | Video on TED.com - 3 views

www.ted.com/...he_child_driven_education.html

study education ted technology India self taught digital literacy

shared by Kristen Nicole Cardon on 08 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • Kristen Nicole Cardon on 08 Dec 10
     
    This is a fantastic video!  This guy put computers in India and they just taught themselves how to use them, even to the extent of learning English!  One group of kids learned how to record their own music after only four hours with a computer!  fabulous
Roger Morris

The Easiest Way To Earn From Your Books - 1 views

Being a book author, I already know that I could not easily get rich with this career because it takes time to have my books sold. Good thing that I have learned about Kindle Book Publishing and I ...

started by Roger Morris on 15 Sep 12 no follow-up yet
Megan Stern

Crowdsourcing by Scott Ekman on Prezi - 0 views

prezi.com/...crowdsourcing

digiciv crowdsourcing

shared by Megan Stern on 24 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • Megan Stern on 24 Oct 10
     
    Four different types of crowdsourcing.
Erin Hamson

MIT OpenCourseWare | Biology | 7.012 Introduction to Biology, Fall 2004 | Video Lecture... - 0 views

ocw.mit.edu/...embed32

evolution mit science

shared by Erin Hamson on 18 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • And what this means is that if you look at a pedigree like this, and for example, here we have a mother and a father, girls are always round, boys are square. And here you'll see the mitochondrial DNA, it's donated to all of the children, but the fact is that these boys, when they mate, when they have offspring, they will no longer pass along her mitochondrial DNA, so it will be lost. And the only way the mitochondrial DNA can be transmitted is through one of her daughters, who in turn, have daughters.
  • Here's some other interesting principles. Mitochondrial DNA passes always from the mother, so when a fertilized egg is formed, Dad gives his chromosomes, but he doesn't donate for any, doesn't donate any mitochondrial DNA.
  • animals are related to one another. This is kind of a fun undertaking. Look at this. Why is it fun? Well it's, it's kind of an amusing idea, how often were cows domesticated during the history of humanity? How often were sheep domesticated? Pigs, water buffalos, and horses. And what you see here is that cattle were domesticated on two occasions, probably once in Western Asia, the middle east, and once in Eastern Asia. Sheep were domesticated twice, all modern sheep following these two families here
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • And that is, certain genes can evolve progressively over a long period of time, because they don't encode vital functions, or they may even be sequences between genes that don't encode phenotype at all. Imagine, for example, we have a situation were here we have a gene which encodes a vital function, like the eye, here's another gene that encodes another function, oh I don't know, a leg. And here we have intergenic sequences. After all, as you have learned by now, more than 96% of the DNA in our genome, doesn't encode proteins, and probably isn't even responsible for regulating genes. So these sequences, right in here, can mutate freely during the course of evolution, without having a deleterious effect on the phenotype of the organism. There's no evolutionary pressure to constrain the evolution of these genes
  • And many of these neutral mutations, which have no effect on organismic fitness, but are simply evolutionary neutral, are sometimes called polymorphisms. The term polymorphism, -morph is once again morphology, derives from the fact that species tend to be polymorphic, we don't all have blond hair, we don't all have brown eyes.
  • If you look at two chimpanzees living on opposite sides of the same hill in West Africa, they are genetically far more distantly related to one another, than any one of us, by a factor of 10 to 15. Two chimpanzees, they look exactly the same, they have the same peculiar habits, but they're genetically far more distantly-related than we are to one-another, than I am to any one of you, or than any one of you is to one another. And what does that mean? It means that, roughly speaking, the species of chimpanzees is, at least, 10 or 15 times older than our species are. We're a young species, chimpanzees probably first speciated three or four million years ago, if the paleontological record is, is accurate. Paleontology is the study of old, dusty bones, so you can begin to imagine when chimpanzee bones become recognizable in the earth.
  • And what you see already, in such small populations, is that for example, this male here has two girls, and right away, to the extent he had an interesting Y chromosome, that Y chromosome was lost from the gene pool. This girl, here, had an interesting mitochondrial DNA, but right away that's lost, because she has, she has just two boys. And what you see, in very rapid order, in small populations, there's a homogenization of the genetic compliment, just because the alleles are lost within what's called, genetic drif
  • And if you ask that question, the answer is that we all had a common ancestress who lived about 150,000 years ago. All of us trace our mitochondrial DNA to her. Does that mean that there was only one woman alive there, she's called, Mitochondrial-Eve, again, we don't know her name. Does that mean there was only one woman alive, well it doesn't mean that at all because of what I just told you, in small populations the proto-human population.
  • How much are all of our mitochondrial DNA are related to one another, how distantly related are they to one another, given the rate of evolution of mitochondrial DNA sequences?
  • So where do we all come from, all of us human beings? How closely related are we to one another? Here's, here's a measurement of the distances between different mitochondrial DNA's from different branches of humanity. And what you see is something really quite extraordinary and stunning. Here, you'll see that the people, the non-African lineages here and here, are actually relatively closely related to one another.
  • And by the way, all the genes that are present here, the alleles that are present here, can also be found in Africa, but in relatively small proportions in Africa
    • Erin Hamson
      Erin Hamson on 18 Oct 10
       
      Suggesting that all people came from Africa
  • So, what happens there, that's a testimonial to the tragic fate of the Indians, where the conquistadors from Spain came in, killed all the men, and took all the women, to be their brides. How else can you explain the fact that there's no Indian Y chromosomes, there's all, there is instead only European Y chromosomes.
  • When you do genetic counseling of family these days, one of the strictures is, that you never tell the family if the children have genetic polymorphisms that don't match that of the person whom they think is their father. They don't look like their, the person whom they regard as father, but that's always assumed to be a role of the genetic dice.
  • Here's a fun story I like to tell each year, and it's about the Cohen and Y chromosome, and you'll see what an amusing story this is, just from genetics. Now the name Cohen, in Hebrew means, a high priest, and you've heard people named Cohen, it's not such an uncommon name among the Jews. And it says, in the Bible, in Genesis and Exodus, that all the high priests in the Bible are the descendants of Aaron, the brother of Moses.
  • hen it should be the case that all male Cohen's should have the same Y chromosome, right?
  • Because keep in mind, any single affair with the milkman or the mailman, over 3,000 years, would've broke this chain of inheritance, any single incidence of non-paternity. It's a really astounding story, and it's hard, there can be no artifact to it, there's no bias in it, there's no other way to explain it.
  • And what they found was that all members of the, almost all members of the ruling cast among the Lembas, had the same Y chromosome, and the Y chromosome had exactly the same polymorphisms of the Cohen Y chromosome
  • What I'm telling you is that these two genes are totally interchangeable, that they are effectively indistinguishable from one another, functionally they have some sequence relatedness, but in terms of the way they program development, they are effectively equivalent. And what this means is that the progenitor of these two genes must've already existed at the time that the flies and we diverged, which six or seven-hundred million years ago, and in the intervening six or seven-hundred million years, these genes have been totally unchanged.
  • once the gene was developed, evolution could not tinker with it, and begin to change it in different ways, ostensibly because such tinkering would render these genes dysfunctional, and thereby would inactivate them, thereby depriving the organism of a critical sensory organ.
  • Erin Hamson on 18 Oct 10
     
    An excellent discourse on who evolution works, and what it means for us today.
Katherine Chipman

An introduction to the John Scopes (Monkey) Trial - 0 views

www.law.umkc.edu/...evolut.htm

evolution

shared by Katherine Chipman on 09 Nov 10 - Cached
  • By 1925, Bryan and his followers had succeeded in getting legislation introduced in fifteen states to ban the teaching of evolution. In February, Tennessee enacted a bill introduced by John Butler making it unlawful "to teach any theory that denies the story of divine creation as taught by the Bible and to teach instead that man was descended from a lower order of animals."  
  •     Opening statements pictured the trial as a titanic struggle between good and evil or truth and ignorance. Bryan claimed that "if evolution wins, Christianity goes." Darrow argued, "Scopes isn't on trial; civilization is on trial." The prosecution, Darrow contended, was "opening the doors for a reign of bigotry equal to anything in the Middle Ages." To the gasps of spectators, Darrow said Bryan was responsible for the "foolish, mischievous and wicked act." Darrow said that the anti-evolution law made the Bible "the yardstick to measure every man's intellect, to measure every man's intelligence, to measure every man's learning." It was classic Darrow, and the press--mostly sympathetic to the defense--loved it.
  •     On the seventh day of trial, Raulston asked the defense if it had any more evidence. What followed was what the New York Times described as "the most amazing court scene on Anglo-Saxon history." Hays asked that William Jennings Bryan be called to the stand as an expert on the Bible. Bryan assented, stipulating only that he should have a chance to interrogate the defense lawyers. Bryan, dismissing the concerns of his prosecution colleagues, took a seat on the witness stand, and began fanning himself.     Darrow began his interrogation of Bryan with a quiet question: "You have given considerable study to the Bible, haven't you, Mr. Bryan?" Bryan replied, "Yes, I have. I have studied the Bible for about fifty years." Thus began a series of questions designed to undermine a literalist interpretation of the Bible. Bryan was asked about a whale swallowing Jonah, Joshua making the sun stand still, Noah and the great flood, the temptation of Adam in the garden of Eden, and the creation according to Genesis. After initially contending that "everything in the Bible should be accepted as it is given there," Bryan finally conceded that the words of the Bible should not always be taken literally. In response to Darrow's relentless questions as to whether the six days of creation, as described in Genesis, were twenty-four hour days, Bryan said "My impression is that they were periods."     Bryan, who began his testimony calmly, stumbled badly under Darrow's persistent prodding. At one point the exasperated Bryan said, "I do not think about things I don't think about." Darrow asked, "Do you think about the things you do think about?" Bryan responded, to the derisive laughter of spectators, "Well, sometimes." Both old warriors grew testy as the examination continued. Bryan accused Darrow of attempting to "slur at the Bible." He said that he would continue to answer Darrow's impertinent questions because "I want the world to know that this man, who does not believe in God, is trying to use a court in Tennessee--." Darrow interrupted his witness by saying, "I object to your statement" and to "your fool ideas that no intelligent Christian on earth believes." After that outburst, Raulston ordered the court adjourned. The next day, Raulston ruled that Bryan could not return to the stand and that his testimony the previous day should be stricken from evidence.
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  • A year later, the Tennessee Supreme Court reversed the decision of the Dayton court on a technicality--not the constitutional grounds as Darrow had hoped. According to the court, the fine should have been set by the jury, not Raulston. Rather than send the case back for further action, however, the Tennessee Supreme Court dismissed the case. The court commented, "Nothing is to be gained by prolonging the life of this bizarre case."
  • The Scopes trial by no means ended the debate over the teaching of evolution, but it did represent a significant setback for the anti-evolution forces. Of the fifteen states with anti- evolution legislation pending in 1925, only two states (Arkansas and Mississippi) enacted laws restricting teaching of Darwin's theory.
  • Katherine Chipman on 09 Nov 10
     
    Overview of the John Scopes (Monkey) Trial
Jeffrey Whitlock

Cellphones - Third World and Developing Nations - Poverty - Technology - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...13anthropology-t.html

shared by Jeffrey Whitlock on 17 Nov 10 - No Cached
    • Jeffrey Whitlock
      Jeffrey Whitlock on 17 Nov 10
       
      This is a great article
  • From an unseen distance, Chipchase used his phone to pilot me through the unfamiliar chaos, allowing us to have what he calls a “just in time” moment. “Just in time” is a manufacturing concept that was popularized by the Japanese carmaker Toyota when, beginning in the late 1930s, it radically revamped its production system, virtually eliminating warehouses stocked with big loads of car parts and instead encouraging its assembly plants to order parts directly from the factory only as they were needed. The process became less centralized, more incremental. Car parts were manufactured swiftly and in small batches, which helped to cut waste, improve efficiency and more easily correct manufacturing defects. As Toyota became, in essence, lighter on its feet, the company’s productivity rose, and so did its profits. There are a growing number of economists who maintain that cellphones can restructure developing countries in a similar way. Cellphones, after all, have an economizing effect. My “just in time” meeting with Chipchase required little in the way of advance planning and was more efficient than the oft-imperfect practice of designating a specific time and a place to rendezvous. He didn’t have to leave his work until he knew I was in the vicinity. Knowing that he wasn’t waiting for me, I didn’t fret about the extra 15 minutes my taxi driver sat blaring his horn in Accra’s unpredictable traffic. And now, on foot, if I moved in the wrong direction, it could be quickly corrected. Using mobile phones, we were able to coordinate incrementally. “Do you see the footbridge?” Chipchase was saying over the phone. “No? O.K., do you see the giant green sign that says ‘Believe in God’? Yes? I’m down to the left of that.”
  • To get a sense of how rapidly cellphones are penetrating the global marketplace, you need only to look at the sales figures. According to statistics from the market database Wireless Intelligence, it took about 20 years for the first billion mobile phones to sell worldwide. The second billion sold in four years, and the third billion sold in two. Eighty percent of the world’s population now lives within range of a cellular network, which is double the level in 2000. And figures from the International Telecommunications Union show that by the end of 2006, 68 percent of the world’s mobile subscriptions were in developing countries. As more and more countries abandon government-run telecom systems, offering cellular network licenses to the highest-bidding private investors and without the burden of navigating pre-established bureaucratic chains, new towers are going up at a furious pace. Unlike fixed-line phone networks, which are expensive to build and maintain and require customers to have both a permanent address and the ability to pay a monthly bill, or personal computers, which are not just costly but demand literacy as well, the cellphone is more egalitarian, at least to a point.
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