sensemaking

VIVACE stands for Vortex Induced Vibrations for Aquatic Clean Energy. It doesn't depend on waves, tides, turbines or dams. It's a unique hydrokinetic energy system that relies on "vortex induced vibrations." Vortex induced vibrations are undulations that a rounded or cylinder-shaped object makes in a flow of fluid, which can be air or water. The presence of the object puts kinks in the current's speed as it skims by. This causes eddies, or vortices, to form in a pattern on opposite sides of the object. The vortices push and pull the object up and down or left and right, perpendicular to the current.

Vortex Induced Vibrations (VIV) result from vortices forming and shedding on the downstream side of a bluff body in a current. Vortex shedding alternates from one side to the other, thereby creating a vibration or oscillation. The VIV phenomenon is non-linear, which means it can produce useful energy at high efficiency over a wide range of current speeds.

Increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may make Earth's oceans more acidic faster than previously thought-unbalancing ecosystems in the process, a new study says

Soil organic matter is what makes dirt fertile and able to support plant life - both of which are especially important for agriculture. Organic matter retains water in the soil and prevents erosion. Natural processes of decomposition of soil organic matter provide plants and microbes with the energy source and water they need to grow, and carbon is released into the atmosphere as a by-product of this process. Warming temperatures are expected to speed up this process which will increase the amount of CO2 that is transferred to the atmosphere.

Group sensemaking strikes me as more like science, if it isn't 'meta-science'. In other words, we want to make sense we all agree on that isn't just another kind of ideology or dogma, but based on objective reality. Where science, or at least the reductive approach, aggregates facts and data, sensemaking, like integrative methods, puts the facts into context with a larger environment. Sensemaking, in my view, is about understanding reality sufficiently well that one feels comfortable making statements about the future. That is, not necessarily making predictions, but anticipating future possibilities based on understanding how the world works.

Newropeans is a trans-European political project founded to democratise the European Union. We will stand for elections to the European Parliament in 2009 in all 27 member states. We are building a large network of Europeans and an organisation voicing the common expectations of European citizens. Our projects and activities will increasingly influence the public agenda. Newropeans is built and financed by its members and supporters, independent from EU and national institutions.

Making sense of the world is a ubiquitous activity, taking place around the margins of what we know. At work, your boss says, "Can you give a presentation next week on how wireless will affect our business?" Or perhaps, you join a new committee, and wonder "Who are these people? Who is in charge? What is our mission? What are we really going to do?" Maybe you move to a new neighborhood, and you try to make sense of the streets, schools, parks, shopping, and neighbors. Or you say to yourself, "I really need to get an updated cellphone-what has been happening with the current set of features, costs, plans and new gadgets?" Sensemaking can be a core professional task in itself, as for researchers, designers, or intelligence analysts. It arises when we change our place in the world or when the world changes around us. It arises when new problems, opportunities, or tasks present themselves, or when old ones resurface. It involves finding the important structure in a seemingly unstructured situation. It is an activity with cognitive and social dimensions, and has informational, communicational, and computational aspects.

In Technology as Experience, John McCarthy and Peter Wright argue that any account of what is often called the user experience must take into consideration the emotional, intellectual, and sensual aspects of our interactions with technology. We don't just use technology, they point out; we live with it. They offer a new approach to understanding human-computer interaction through examining the felt experience of technology. Drawing on the pragmatism of such philosophers as John Dewey and Mikhail Bakhtin, they provide a framework for a clearer analysis of technology as experience.

VE can be used in a wide variety of ways depending on the context. Here are the five basic steps for using VE to facilitate a group conversation around a shared question. These steps can be altered or elaborated for particular situations as described in the VE Guidebook. 1. Frame 2. Browse 3. Reflect 4. Share 5. Extend

Primarily, we want to create a new tool that uses the unique features of virtual environments to facilitate education, collaboration, and understanding. The output of many supercomputing applications - from astronomical simulations to medical models - is complex and often highly visual. Creating a persistent, standardized environment where these models can reside will make it easier to share and explore these data sets with other researchers. Also, for educators, ScienceSim will provide an interactive 3-D environment that can be used to explain complex concepts such as gravity in a highly intuitive manner.

Primarily, we want to create a new tool that uses the unique features of virtual environments to facilitate education, collaboration, and understanding. The output of many supercomputing applications - from astronomical simulations to medical models - is complex and often highly visual. Creating a persistent, standardized environment where these models can reside will make it easier to share and explore these data sets with other researchers. Also, for educators, ScienceSim will provide an interactive 3-D environment that can be used to explain complex concepts such as gravity [see video below] in a highly intuitive manner.

The scientists, Daniel Barrie and Daniel Kirk-Davidoff of the University of Maryland, calculated "what might happen if all the land from Texas to central Canada, and from the Great Lakes to the Rocky Mountains, were covered in one massive wind farm," according to Discovery News. The result of such an unlikely installation: a real serious Butterfly Effect.

In this page you will find information that will help you in making the first steps with the Nepomuk software.

A quiet land rush is under way among the buttes of southeastern Wyoming, and it is changing the local rancher culture. The whipping winds cursed by descendants of the original homesteaders now have real value for out-of-state developers who dream of wind farms or of selling the rights to bigger companies.

The key phrase is "forced browsing". Scientific discovery is often a story of serendipity, of stumbling on an idea that has been neglected or discarded (it's one of those remote Google search results that you don't bother to click on). The question is whether putting science on the internet makes such unexpected encounters less likely.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

In the following, we document the following types of information for behaviors (e.g., group goal setting), phenomena (e.g., team performance), or concepts (e.g., process gain), pathologies (e.g., social loafing), biases (e.g., loss aversion). For each, we list one or more of the following, depending on the richness of available research, listing both theories and empirical evidence where available: * Typology (what is it?) * Origins, mechanisms, mediators (how does it work?) * Issues, pathologies, biases (what are the problems with its workings?) * Determinants, moderators (what affects it, directly or indirectly?)