Group items tagged

"This is a website hosted by the University of Southampton. The aim of this website is to provide people with a tool to colloboratively create TimeLines, with a suitable visualisation tool. Proceed to the About page to read more about the visualistion tool."

The Tree of Life Web Project (ToL) is a collaborative effort of biologists and nature enthusiasts from around the world. On more than 10,000 World Wide Web pages, the project provides information about biodiversity, the characteristics of different groups of organisms, and their evolutionary history (phylogeny).

"The best learning experience. That means something different for everyone. Expect more than an old one-size-fits-all LMS. Brightspace is an online teaching and learning platform that's easy, flexible, and smart."

interactive data visualizations on: The most notable projects around the world. The winners of the Loebner Prize (which tests chatterbots on their performance in the Turing Test). More than 750 chatterbots currently available.

ScienceDaily (July 1, 2010) - A new analysis of the extinction of woolly mammoths and other large mammals more than 10,000 years ago suggests that they may have fallen victim to the same type of "trophic cascade" of ecosystem disruption that scientists say is being caused today by the global decline of predators such as wolves, cougars, and sharks.

Exquisite measurements of the radiation left over from the big bang led us to believe that we could work out the curvature of the universe to within a few per cent. In doing so, we have determined how much energy the universe contains and that most of it is in an exotic form called dark energy, which is driving the expansion of space. However, recent discoveries have left me wondering if these claims were premature. As we learn more about dark energy and its effect on the expansion of space and time, we find that dark energy and the shape, or geometry, of the universe are worryingly intertwined.

Back in 1958, Ted Schwarzrock was an 8-year-old third grader when he became one of the "Torrance kids," a group of nearly 400 Minneapolis children who completed a series of creativity tasks newly designed by professor E. Paul Torrance. Schwarzrock still vividly remembers the moment when a psychologist handed him a fire truck and asked, "How could you improve this toy to make it better and more fun to play with?"

New research looks at the effects of studying a form of meditation on brain connectivity. Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, researchers in China and the University of Oregon describe experiments on 45 students, some of whom were taught a meditation technique known as integrative body-mind training (IBMT). The researchers used brain imaging techniques to examine fibers connecting brain regions before and after training. Students trained in the IBMT approach for 11 hours or more appeared to develop new fibers in a part of the brain that helps a person regulate behavior. Control subjects did not form the new fibers. But what does the presence of those fibers actually mean -- and what is the meditation technique doing? We'll talk about it.

A new process that simultaneously combines the light and heat of solar radiation to generate electricity could offer more than double the efficiency of existing solar cell technology, say the engineers who discovered it and proved that it works. The process, called 'photon enhanced thermionic emission," or PETE, could reduce the costs of solar energy production enough for it to compete with oil as an energy source.

"Researchers at Ohio State University have demonstrated the first plastic computer memory device that utilizes the spin of electrons to read and write data. An alternative to traditional microelectronics, the "spintronics" device could store more data in less space, process data faster, and consume less power."

ScienceDaily (Sep. 4, 2010) - Global agricultural expansion cut a wide swath through tropical forests during the 1980s and 1990s. More than half a million square miles of new farmland -- an area roughly the size of Alaska -- was created in the developing world between 1980 and 2000, of which over 80 percent was carved out of tropical forests, according to Stanford researcher Holly Gibbs.

"More than 35 years ago, Matthieu Ricard left a promising career in cellular genetics to study Buddhism in the Himalayas. After earning a doctorate in biology from the prestigious Pasteur Institute in France, Ricard left Paris and moved to Darjeeling, India to study with a great Tibetan master. Today, Ricard draws upon his recent writings, research into brain plasticity and cognitive neuropsychology, and his work with neuroscientists and Buddhist practitioners at the Mind and Life Institute (co-founded by the Dalai Lama), while examining the interconnecting relationship between meditation, brain circuitry, and emotional balance."

(PhysOrg.com) -- The fact that our female ancestors dispersed more than our male ancestors can lead to conflicts within the brain that influence our social behaviour, new research reveals.

The Known Universe takes viewers from the Himalayas through our atmosphere and the inky black of space to the afterglow of the Big Bang. Every star, planet, and quasar seen in the film is possible because of the world's most complete four-dimensional map of the universe, the Digital Universe Atlas that is maintained and updated by astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History. The new film, created by the Museum,  is part of an exhibition, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, at the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan through May 2010.     Data: Digital Universe, American Museum of Natural History  http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/universe/    Visualization Software:  Uniview by SCISS    Director: Carter Emmart  Curator: Ben R. Oppenheimer  Producer: Michael Hoffman  Executive Producer: Ro Kinzler  Co-Executive Producer: Martin Brauen  Manager, Digital Universe Atlas: Brian Abbott    Music: Suke Cerulo    For more information visit http://www.amnh.org

ScienceDaily (Dec. 1, 2010) - Many coastal wetlands worldwide -- including several on the U.S. Atlantic coast -- may be more sensitive than previously thought to climate change and sea-level rise projections for the 21st century.

ScienceDaily (Dec. 3, 2010) - IBM scientists have unveiled a new chip technology that integrates electrical and optical devices on the same piece of silicon, enabling computer chips to communicate using pulses of light (instead of electrical signals), resulting in smaller, faster and more power-efficient chips than is possible with conventional technologies.

When you hear about nanotechnology (and you will hear about it more and more since it's moving into the mainstream of manufacturing), you might wonder what a nanomachine might look like. Since you can't see them with your unaided eye, you have to look at highly magnified images. But for the folks whose job it is to design the tiny parts for the nanomachines, some powerful design software comes into play.

It's a cute graphic, but not much more than that. You move the cursor and the simulated night sky moves in response - and it's a great example of how the Internet can take us in the wrong direction. Do you remember kids getting books and ... gasp ... going outdoors at night, looking upward and finding those constellations, instead of searching for them on an animation?

Free, research level articles in a variety of scientific fields. When one remembers that research journals often go for hundreds of dollars per year in hardcopy form, a resource like this is appreciated even more, in this time of widespread long term unemployment in the pure and applied sciences.

An illness that has been decimating US honeybees for more than three years probably isn't caused by a single virus, but by multiple viruses that wear down the bees' ability to produce proteins that can guard them against infection, according to a new study.