Amira › Comments

Read, download & share more than 850 free scientific books. - Amira from Bookmarklet

Big thanks Amira. I download "Huntington Disease" PDF and transfer this one into my Sony Reader. I make use of this source now and for the future. - Ami Iida

"The remarkable writing office designed by Travis Price architects for Wade Davis, National Geographic's "Explorer in Residence." (...) “Travis did a studio on M Street in Georgetown for me,” Davis says, noting that in his current home, zoning prohibited a detached building. While many need light-filled rooms for inspiration, he wanted to avoid large windows opening onto a residential neighborhood and sought a cave-like atmosphere to disappear into his work. Subtle light was brought in by other means when the architect built a dome above his client’s desk (which Price describes as similar to the rotunda of the oracle’s temple at Delphi) and filled it with the books he uses the most. Davis whimsically calls the space his “Navajo kiva of knowledge.” - Amira from Bookmarklet

"The 6ft long artwork has become the most expensive British sculpture ever sold after being snapped up for £19.1million, more than three times the highest estimate. It easily surpassed the previous record, set by Damien Hirst’s The Golden Calf which sold for £10.3million in 2008." - Adriano from Bookmarklet

I saw the largest public Henry Moore collection just week ago in AGO - Ontario's art gallery in Toronto. Simply amazing... - Amira

French architect Serge Salat has designed an infinite labyrinth of shapes and colours for a touring exhibition in China. - Amira from Bookmarklet

thank you Amira - Colorado Kid

crazy, amazing! shared on Twitter @NotSoRandomArt - Not So Random Art

RT @ericschmidt: Take 1 minute to sign Google's petition urging Congress to vote NO on PIPA and SOPA. Defend the web! https://www.google.com/landing... \\ See also http://protestsopa.com for details. - Adriano from Bookmarklet

See also: Forget SOPA, Europe is about to ratify its bigger brother ACTA http://www.siliconrepublic.com/new-med... Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... Polish members of Parliment wear Guy Fawkes maskes to protest ACTA today http://www.facebook.com/photo... - Amira

"What songwriting has to do with string theory. (...) The project began as a set of 26 songs, exploring the intersection of science and philosophy. Over the years, Bryanton began to see connections between his own ideas and scientific theories across quantum physics, multiple dimensions, and superstrings, including the “Many Worlds Theory” first advanced by physicist Hugh Everett III in 1957. In time, he developed a model of the universe based on the harmonics of superstring vibrations. Before launching into the additional dimensions, Bryanton also breaks down the familiar three. (...) A kind of scientific expressionism and creative exploration of curiosity, Imagining the Tenth Dimension might not rewrite the theories of Stephen Hawking, but it is certain to give you pause." - Amira from Bookmarklet

My brain's not dimensioned for thinking about this! - Eivind

See also: The Multiverse Has 11 Dimensions http://ff.im/NJxib - Amira

"This photograph of Boulevard du Temple in Paris was made in 1838 by Louis Daguerre, the brilliant guy that invented the daguerreotype process of photography. Aside from its distinction of being a super early photograph, it’s also the first photograph to ever include a human being. Because the image required an exposure time of over ten minutes, all the people, carriages, and other moving things disappear from the scene. However, in the bottom left hand corner is a man who just so happened to stay somewhat still during the shot — he was having his shoes shined. It’s interesting how sheer luck earned the guy a place in the history of photography. Too bad we’ll probably never know his identity." - Amira from Bookmarklet

Exactly! I see two people in that image, but I guess the lowly shoe-shiner doesn't count. - Brent

cf. the iPhone's marimba ringtone which recently halted the New York Philharmonic during a performance of Mahler's 9th symphony! ... hear Alan Gilbert: http://youtu.be/4MwdPvA5nGw - Adriano from Bookmarklet

yes, it was equally significant! :-) - Amira

"Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption. And the most spectacularly creative people in many fields are often introverted. (...) They’re extroverted enough to exchange and advance ideas, but see themselves as independent and individualistic. (...) Introverts are comfortable working alone — and solitude is a catalyst to innovation. (...) The New Groupthink has overtaken our workplaces, our schools (...) In one fourth-grade classroom I visited in New York City, students engaged in group work were forbidden to ask a question unless every member of the group had the very same question. (...) Privacy also makes us productive. (...) What distinguished programmers at the top-performing companies wasn’t greater experience or better pay. It was how much privacy, personal workspace and freedom from interruption they enjoyed. (...)" - Amira from Bookmarklet

"Brainstorming sessions are one of the worst possible ways to stimulate creativity. (...) Decades of research show that individuals almost always perform better than groups in both quality and quantity, and group performance gets worse as group size increases. (...) The one important exception to this dismal record is electronic brainstorming, where large groups outperform individuals;... more... - Amira

"An artificial brain has taught itself to estimate the number of objects in an image without actually counting them, emulating abilities displayed by some animals including lions and fish, as well as humans. Because the model was not preprogrammed with numerical capabilities, the feat suggests that this skill emerges due to general learning processes rather than number-specific mechanisms. "It answers the question of how numerosity emerges without teaching anything about numbers in the first place," (...)" - Amira from Bookmarklet

"In response to each image, the program strengthened or weakened connections between neurons so that its image generation model was refined by the pattern it had just "seen". Zorzi likens it to "learning how to visualise what it has just experienced". Infants demonstrate ANS without being taught, so the network was not preprogrammed with the concept of "amount". But when Zorzi and... more... - Amira

"Physics has definitely avoided what were traditionally considered to be foundational physical questions, but the reason for that goes back to the foundation of quantum mechanics. The problem is that quantum mechanics was developed as a mathematical tool. Physicists understood how to use it as a tool for making predictions, but without an agreement or understanding about what it was telling us about the physical world. And that’s very clear when you look at any of the foundational discussions. (...) Sean Carroll for example is very adamant about saying that time is real. You have others saying that time is just an illusion, that there isn’t really a direction of time, and so forth. I myself think that all of the reasons that lead people to say things like that have very little merit, and that people have just been misled, largely by mistaking the mathematics they use to describe reality for reality itself. If you think that mathematical objects are not in time, and mathematical... more... - Amira from Bookmarklet

"What people haven’t seemed to notice is that on earth, of all the billions of species that have evolved, only one has developed intelligence to the level of producing technology. Which means that kind of intelligence is really not very useful. It’s not actually, in the general case, of much evolutionary value. We tend to think, because we love to think of ourselves, human beings, as... more... - Amira

"For a nation whose culture and society have been shaped over millennia by its rice-, millet- and wheat-farming traditions, and whose ruling Communist Party rose to power in 1949 by mobilising a put-upon peasantry and encircling the cities, China has just passed a remarkable milestone. By the end of 2011, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, more than half of China’s 1.35 billion people were living in cities. (...) Touting a policy of “leaving the land but not the villages, entering the factories but not cities”, it sought industrialisation without urbanisation, only to discover that it could not have one without the other. (...) America reached the 50% mark before 1920. Britain passed it in the mid-19th century. (...)" - Amira from Bookmarklet

"The most interesting thing about the human species is our plasticity, our flexibility. (…) Over the past 10 years we have started to see powerful evidence that children might learn language statistically, by unconsciously tabulating patterns in the sentences they hear and using these to generalise to new cases. Children might learn language effortlessly not because they possess innate grammatical rules, but because statistical learning is something we all do incessantly and automatically. The brain is designed to pick up on patterns of all kinds. (...) You only have to stroll down the street to see that human beings are learning machines. (...) if you compare us with other species, our degree of variation is just so extraordinary and so obvious that we know prior to doing any science that human beings are special in this regard, and that a tremendous amount of what we do is as a result of learning. So empiricism should be the default position. The rest is just working out the details of how all this learning takes place. (...)" - Amira from Bookmarklet

"Philosophy tells us what is possible, and science tells us what is true. Cognitive science has transformed philosophy. At the beginning of the 20th century, philosophers changed their methodology quite dramatically by adopting logic. There has been an equally important revolution in 21st-century philosophy in that philosophers are turning to the empirical sciences and to some extent... more... - Amira

artificial intelligence :] - !lker yoldas. )°(

"Ambiguity actually makes language more efficient, by allowing for the reuse of short, efficient sounds that listeners can easily disambiguate with the help of context. (...) By comparing certain properties of words to their numbers of meanings, the researchers confirmed their suspicion that shorter, more frequent words, as well as those that conform to the language’s typical sound patterns, are most likely to be ambiguous — trends that were statistically significant in all three languages. (...) It is “cognitively cheaper” to have the listener infer certain things from the context than to have the speaker spend time on longer and more complicated utterances. The result is a system that skews toward ambiguity, reusing the “easiest” words. Once context is considered, it’s clear that “ambiguity is actually something you would want in the communication system.” (...) - Amira from Bookmarklet

"As long as words a different sense will bear, // And each may be his own interpreter, // Our airy faith will no foundation find; // The word’s a weathercock for every wind." — John Dryden, The Hind and the Panther (1687) :-) - Amira

"For her final university project, the young German graphic designer Maria Fischer produced Traumgedanken (Thoughts on Dreams), a one-of-a-kind book featuring ”a collection of literary, philosophical, psychological and scientifical texts which provide an insight into different dream theories.” The artistic twist comes in the form of colored threads which weave through the text, connecting important concepts and creating an otherworldy reading experience. At several points throughout the book, the strands converge to form abstract geometric illustrations related to the text. (...) All of the stitching took ”two weeks, working from early morning till late at night.” Even if the process was labor-intensive, though, the finished book looks like a dream come true." - Amira from Bookmarklet

"Growing up with the Internet gives today’s children a very unique view on the way the world works — one that is vastly different from that of older generations. (...) Taking a deeper look at the stories the children created, the survey found that unlike many adults who see technology as separate from humanness, it seems that “kids tend to think of technology as fundamentally human: as a social companion that can entertain, motivate, and empower them in various contexts.” While this dreamy perspective is partially the result of childhood imagination (something kids from any generation can have), it is clear that kids are eagerly anticipating new ways that tech can enhance their lives. Sure, it’s easy to dismiss how children look forward to the future and dream without inhibitions, but that’s exactly what some of the greatest innovators of our time have done. Children don’t just react, they imagine, and that’s why this study can’t be overlooked." - Amira from Bookmarklet

"More than 500 million years ago, single-celled organisms on Earth’s surface began forming multi-cellular clusters that ultimately became plants and animals. (…) The yeast “evolved” into multi-cellular clusters that work together cooperatively, reproduce and adapt to their environment—in essence, they became precursors to life on Earth as it is today. (…) How one-celled organisms made the switch to living as a group, as multi-celled organisms.” (…) Analysis showed that the clusters were not just groups of random cells that adhered to each other, but related cells that remained attached following cell division." - Amira from Bookmarklet

"That was significant because it meant that they were genetically similar, which promotes cooperation. When the clusters reached a critical size, some cells died off in a process known as apoptosis to allow offspring to separate. (...) “A cluster alone isn’t multi-cellular,” “But when cells in a cluster cooperate, make sacrifices for the common good, and adapt to change, that’s an... more... - Amira

"It’s important to note that more complex doesn’t necessarily mean better. (...) Evolution only leads to increases in complexity when complexity is beneficial to survival and reproduction. Indeed, simplicity has its perks: the more simple you are, the faster you can reproduce, and thus the more offspring you can have. Many bacteria live happy simple lives, produce billions of offspring,... more... - Amira

"What better way to celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.? Today, the King Center has made available online 200,000 papers belonging to the civil rights leader — the first step to bringing more than one million documents to the web. The documents give you a good glimpse of Dr. King’s role as a scholar, father, pastor and catalyst for change. And, among the papers, you will find “speeches, telegrams, scribbled notes, patient admonitions and urgent pleas.” Notable documents worth visiting include King’s 1964 Nobel Prize Acceptance Lecture, his Eulogy for the Four Girls Murdered in Birmingham (1963), a draft of his world-changing “I Have a Dream” speech, and much more." http://www.openculture.com/2012... - Amira

"We're building a new way for you to explore, follow, share and interact with published papers throughout history, and as they happen - in real time. Connect discoveries to the teams, fields and places where they were produced, and navigate the rich human context of scientific research." - Amira from Bookmarklet

“There are only patterns, patterns on top of patterns, patterns that affect other patterns. Patterns hidden by patterns. Patterns within patterns. If you watch close, history does nothing but repeat itself. What we call chaos is just patterns we haven’t recognized. What we call random is just patterns we can’t decipher. What we can’t understand we call nonsense. What we can’t read we call gibberish.” — Chuck Palahniuk - Amira from Bookmarklet

@Adriano: Indeed - and Quantum Mechanics shows us where the real randomness lies. - Björn Brembs

"Scientists' greatest pleasure comes from theories that derive the solution to some deep puzzle from a small set of simple principles in a surprising way. These explanations are called "beautiful" or "elegant". Historical examples are Kepler's explanation of complex planetary motions as simple ellipses, Bohr's explanation of the periodic table of the elements in terms of electron shells, and Watson and Crick's double helix. Einstein famously said that he did not need experimental confirmation of his general theory of relativity because it "was so beautiful it had to be true." Since this question is about explanation, answers may embrace scientific thinking in the broadest sense: as the most reliable way of gaining knowledge about anything, including other fields of inquiry such as philosophy, mathematics, economics, history, political theory, literary theory, or the human spirit. The only requirement is that some simple and non-obvious idea explain some diverse and complicated set of phenomena." - Amira from Bookmarklet

"Where memories might be stored. (...) The answer lies in the multitude of tiny modifiable connections between neuronal cells, the information-processing units of the brain. These cells, with their wispy tree-like protrusions, hang like stars in miniature galaxies and pulse with electrical charge. Thus, your memories are patterns inscribed in the connections between the millions of neurons in your brain. Each memory has its unique pattern of activity, logged in the vast cellular network every time a memory is formed. It is thought that during recall of past events the original activity pattern in the hippocampus is re-established via a process that is known as “pattern completion”. (...) The physical structure of your brain is malleable." - Amira from Bookmarklet

+ - Amir

"Manuel Lima, senior UX design lead at Microsoft Bing, explores the power of network visualisation to help navigate our complex modern world." See also: The Story of Networks http://aminotes.tumblr.com/post... - Amira from Bookmarklet

"The world’s smallest magnetic data storage unit is made of just 12 atoms, squeezing an entire byte into just 96 atoms, a significant shrinkage in the world of information storage. It’s not a quantum computer, but it’s a computer storage unit at the quantum scale. By contrast, modern hard disk drives use about a million atoms to store a single bit, and a half billion atoms per byte. Until now, it was unclear how many (or how few) atoms would be needed to build a reliable, lasting memory bit, the basic piece of information that a computer understands. Researchers at IBM and the German Center for Free-Electron Laser Science decided to start from the ground up, building a magnetic memory bit atom-by-atom. They used a scanning tunneling microscope to create regular patterns of iron atoms aligned in rows of six each. They found two rows was enough to securely store one bit, and eight pairs of rows was enough to store a byte. (...) “If you take a single atom, you have to look at quantum mechanics when you describe its behavior,” (...)" - Amira from Bookmarklet

According to Wolfram it's 1,25 X 10^68 GB of information... I'll better stay with my 1 to 3 posts a day... ;-) Take a look also here (article from yesterday): 'Scientists Create World's Tiniest Ear' -- "Have you ever wondered what a virus sounds like? Or what noise a bacterium makes when it moves between hosts? If the answer is yes, you may soon get your chance to find out" http://news.sciencemag.org/science... - Amira

"We’re all born with it. Albert Einstein dubbed it “holy,” Alistair Cooke called it “free-wheeling intelligence.” It’s that piquing force that nudges us to try it again, explore it some more, poke at it, question it and turn it inside out. From the moment we open our eyes, it fuels our existence. With each new answer we find, our world expands and our passions grow. We can't wait to share what we’ve learned and teach others how to do it themselves. (...) The future belongs to the curious. The ones who are not afraid to try it, explore it, poke at it, question it and turn it inside out." http://www.skillshare.com/about... - Amira from Bookmarklet

"Africans are asking whether China is making their lunch or eating it." - Amira from Bookmarklet

"He wants to explore his consciousness, to encounter a language as a living entity, and to collect the esoteric knowledge of these encounters. “Most of the languages I’ve studied I’ve never spoken, and I probably never will,” he told me. “And that’s okay with me. That’s nice if you can do that, but it’s rare that you have an interesting conversation in English. Why do I think it would be any better in another language?”" - Amira

Oh, I didn't plan to post this here. It was first posted by Fåruk Ahmet http://ff.im/Pae9H - Maitani

faith in Climate change is the real heresy in secular culture. I'm not a bible literalist, but there is more historical fact in the Torah then any other ancient document. That is why the Palestinians are so afraid of Jews and Christians digging for facts. with all we know about time and space it is very sad to hear the arrogance of secular culture's hostility to time mechanisms... that... more... - NoahDavidSimon

Can't beat the irony of reality :-) - Björn Brembs

"Iain Macarthur is an artist from Swindon, United Kingdom who, at the young age of eight, became an art fanatic through cartoon shows and comic books. The Batman series started his obsession with drawing fantasy characters and when he grew older, his style matured to include more detailed illustrations of realistic figures and faces. Cartoons still inspire him, as well as lighting, people’s facial expressions, eyes and different forms of patterns and shapes." - Amira from Bookmarklet

"We have no ways to directly observe molecules and what they do -- Drew Berry wants to change that. At TEDxSydney he shows his scientifically accurate (and entertaining!) animations that help researchers see unseeable processes within our own cells." - Amira from Bookmarklet