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"Humans move between ‘patches’ in their memory using the same strategy as bees flitting between flowers for pollen or birds searching among bushes for berries." - Maitani from Bookmarklet

"Researchers at the University of Warwick and Indiana University have identified parallels between animals looking for food in the wild and humans searching for items within their memory – suggesting that people with the best ‘memory foraging’ strategies are better at recalling items." - Maitani

"Scientists asked people to name as many animals as they could in three minutes and then compared the results with a classic model of optimal foraging in the real world, the marginal value theorem, which predicts how long animals will stay in one patch before jumping to another." - Maitani

hilarious site, thanks etesien. - Adriano

"When 28,800 bath toys fell off a cargo ship in the Pacific 20 years ago, they began an incredible journey. While some washed up in British Columbia and Hawaii, countless others circumnavigated the globe. Here, in an excerpt from his new book, Donovan Hohn follows the fantastic voyage" - Maitani from Bookmarklet

Same here. :-) - Maitani

"Most of the entries have been taken from the "Dictionary of Pali Names" by G P Malalasekera (1899-1973), which is available as printed version from "The Pali Text Society, London"." - Maitani from Bookmarklet

"Computers store every piece of text using a “character encoding,” which gives a number to each character. For example, the byte 61 stands for ‘a’ and 62 stands for ‘b’ in the ASCII encoding, which was launched in 1963. Before the web, computer systems were siloed, and there were hundreds of different encodings. Depending on the encoding, C1 could mean any of ¡, Ё, Ą, Ħ, ‘, ”, or parts of thousands of characters, from æ to 品. If you brought a file from one computer to another, it could come out as gobbledygook." - Maitani from Bookmarklet

"Unicode was invented to solve that problem: to encode all human languages, from Chinese (中文) to Russian (русский) to Arabic (العربية), and even emoji symbols like or ; it encodes nearly 75,000 Chinese ideographs alone. In the ASCII encoding, there wasn’t even enough room for all the English punctuation (like curly quotes), while Unicode has room for over a million characters. Unicode... more... - Maitani

"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

"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

"We present a general information-theoretic argument that all efficient communication systems will be ambiguous, assuming that context is informative about meaning. We also argue that ambiguity additionally allows for greater ease of processing by allowing efficient linguistic units to be re-used. We test predictions of this theory in English, German, and Dutch. Our results and theoretical analysis suggest that ambiguity is a functional property of language that allows for greater communicative efficiency. (...) Our results argue for a rational explanation of ambiguity and demonstrate that ambiguity is not mysterious when language is considered as a cognitive system designed in part for communication."

"Compression is a fundamental goal of both human language and digital communication, yet natural language is very different from compression schemes employed by modern computers. We partly explain this difference using the fact that information theory generally assumes a common prior probability distribution shared by the encoder and decoder, whereas human communication has to be robust to the fact that a speaker and listener may have different prior beliefs about what a speaker may say. We model this information-theoretically using the following question: what type of compression scheme would be effective when the encoder and decoder have (boundedly) different prior probability distributions. The resulting compression scheme resembles natural language to a far greater extent than existing digital communication protocols. We also use information theory to justify why ambiguity is necessary for the purpose of compression."

"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

“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

"[S]chleps are not merely inevitable, but pretty much what business consists of. A company is defined by the schleps it will undertake. The most dangerous thing about our dislike of schleps is that much of it is unconscious. Your unconscious won't even let you see ideas that involve painful schleps. That's schlep blindness. The trick I recommend is to take yourself out of the picture. Instead of asking "what problem should I solve?" ask "what problem do I wish someone else would solve for me?"" - Adriano

Aww - Rodfather

<3<3 Happy Day. - joey

"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

"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

It is a pseudocereal rather than a true cereal, or grain, as it is not a member of the grass family. As a chenopod, quinoa is closely related to species such as beets, spinach, and tumbleweeds. Quinoa grains contain essential amino acids like lysine and good quantities of calcium, phosphorus, and iron. Quinoa was of great nutritional importance in pre-Columbian Andean civilizations, secondary only to the potato, and was followed in importance by maize. In contemporary times, this crop has become highly appreciated for its nutritional value, as its protein content is very high (12–18%). Unlike wheat or rice (which are low in lysine), and like oats, quinoa contains a balanced set of essential amino acids for humans, making it a complete protein source, unusual among plant foods. It is a good source of dietary fiber and phosphorus and is high in magnesium and iron. Quinoa is gluten-free and considered easy to digest. - Ksana from Bookmarklet

One cooking method is to treat quinoa much like rice, bringing two cups (or less) of water to a boil with one cup of grain, covering at a low simmer and cooking for 10–15 minutes or until the germ separates from the seed. The cooked germ looks like a tiny curl and should have a slight bite to it (like al dente pasta). As an alternative, one can use a rice cooker to prepare quinoa,... more... - Ksana

“It [writing] has enormous meta-cognitive implications. The power is this: That you cannot only think in ways that you could not possibly think if you did not have the written word, but you can now think about the thinking that you do with the written word. There is danger in this, and the danger is that the enormous expressive and self-referential capacities of the written word, that is, the capacities to keep referring to referring to referring, will reach a point where you lose contact with the real world. And this, believe me, is very common in universities. There’s a technical name for it, I don’t know if we can use it on television, it’s called “bullshit.” But this is very common in academic life, where people just get a form of self-referentiality of the language, where the language is talking about the language, which is talking about the language, and in the end, it’s hot air. That’s another name for the same phenomenon.” - Amira from Bookmarklet

"In 1776, whether you were declaring America independent from the crown or swearing your loyalty to King George III, your pronunciation would have been much the same. At that time, American and British accents hadn't yet diverged. (...) It is the standard British accent that has drastically changed in the past two centuries, while the typical American accent has changed only subtly. Traditional English, whether spoken in the British Isles or the American colonies, was largely "rhotic." Rhotic speakers pronounce the "R" sound in such words as "hard" and "winter," while non-rhotic speakers do not. (...) It was around the time of the American Revolution that non-rhotic speech came into use among the upper class in southern England, in and around London. (...)" - Amira from Bookmarklet

"According to John Algeo in "The Cambridge History of the English Language" (Cambridge University Press, 2001), this shift occurred because people of low birth rank who had become wealthy during the Industrial Revolution were seeking ways to distinguish themselves from other commoners; they cultivated the prestigious non-rhotic pronunciation in order to demonstrate their new upper-class... more... - Amira

such brutality ! "Having spent 2 years testing the algorithm McGuire and his team used about 700 million CPU hours at the Irish High End Computing Center in Dublin searching through possible grids with the hitting set algorithm." -- where's the elegant proof? :-) - Adriano

What’s great about this is that “the hitting-set idea that he developed for the proof has been used in papers on gene-sequencing analysis and cellular networks“. It really is fascinating. And here is the elegant proof and last but not least a sudoku checker:) : There is no 16-Clue Sudoku: Solving the Sudoku Minimum Number of Clues Problem by Gary McGuire, Bastian Tugemann, Gilles... more... - etesien

thanks for the follow-up papers... average case complexity is given as O(d^(k-2))... but what I meant by proof is a purely mathematical one which sheds insight on NP-complete problems (as opposed to algorithmic speed-up for doing exhaustive computer verification). - Adriano

Xavier Niel, the maverick founder of Free.fr broadband service, will redefine the mobile landscape with Free Mobile, a new approach thanks to a cutting-edge network that blends Wi-Fi, HSPA+ 3G, femtocells and its all-fiber backbone, offering unlimited voice, texting and data for cheap. - Loic Le Meur

hear Niel give his presentation (in French) regarding the new unlimited mobile service (20 EUR/mon, without contract), http://live.free.fr/ And the iPhone 4S can be pre-ordered on January 20, http://www.iliad.fr/presse... (unlocked presumably). - Adriano

Good essay, giving an overview of the good: "Functional + universal data structure + homoiconic = power" and the bad: "Modern Linux distributions are midden piles of configuration daemons to manage permissions daemons to give your configuration GUI access to the configuration daemons. Or we find ourselves installing a database to manage a few kilobytes of metadata." - Goran Zec

integration trick: within a shell script, consider using Here Document to call other language features, e.g. define a bash variable: pyout=$(python <<HereDoc \ import any_library (use class, objects, list comprehension, etc) \ HereDoc) - Adriano

<3 My heart goes out to you. *hugs* - Zulema ⋅ spicy cocoa tart from Android

Kelli, you are amazing and I am happy and proud to know you. - Friar Will (:^)

"This review article shows that the occurrence of macroscopic flow configuration is a universal natural phenomenon that can be explained and predicted on the basis of a principle of physics (the constructal law): “For a flow system to persist in time (to survive) it must evolve in such a way that it provides easier and easier access to the currents that flow through it”. The examples given in this article come from natural inanimate flow systems with configuration: duct cross-sections, open channel cross-sections, tree-shaped flow architectures, and turbulent flow structure (e.g., eddies, laminar lengths before transition). Other examples that are treated in the literature, and which support the constructal law, are the wedge-shape of turbulent shear layers, jets and plumes, the frequency of vortex shedding, B´enard convection in fluids and fluid-saturated porous media, dendritic solidification, the coalescence of solid parcels suspended in a flow, global atmospheric and oceanic... more...

you will never see the formation of river basins in the same way again :-) - Adriano

"The constructal law puts forth the idea that the generation of design (configuration, pattern, geometry) in nature is a physics phenomenon that unites all animate and inanimate systems, and that this phenomenon is covered by the Constructal Law. The constructal law was stated by Adrian Bejan in 1996 as follows: "For a finite-size system to persist in time (to live), it must evolve in such a way that it provides easier access to the imposed currents that flow through it." Design in nature is attracting interest across the entire range of science, from biology and geophysics to social dynamics and engineering. (...)" - Amira from Bookmarklet

cool way to view self-similar Geometry emerging from thermodynamics: minimization of energy expended or entropy generated, i.e. attain highest flow configuration at lowest cost. - Adriano

“Much of what living cells do is carried out by “molecular machines” – physical complexes of specialized proteins working together to carry out some biological function. (…) In a study published early online on January 8, in Nature, a team of scientists from the University of Chicago and the University of Oregon demonstrate how just a few small, high-probability mutations increased the complexity of a molecular machine more than 800 million years ago. By biochemically resurrecting ancient genes and testing their functions in modern organisms, the researchers showed that a new component was incorporated into the machine due to selective losses of function rather than the sudden appearance of new capabilities. (...) The increase in complexity was due to complementary loss of ancestral functions rather than gaining new ones. (...) “It’s counterintuitive but simple: complexity increased because protein functions were lost, not gained,” Thornton said. “Just as in society, complexity... more... - Amira from Bookmarklet

"The accumulation of simple, degenerative changes over long periods of times could have created many of the complex molecular machines present in organisms today. Such a mechanism argues against the intelligent design concept of “irreducible complexity,” the claim that molecular machines are too complicated to have formed stepwise through evolution. (...) “These really aren’t like... more... - Amira

"Kodak operated under the idea that it could sell cheap cameras, then make its money on high-margin items such as film. That market slumped when Fuji entered with lower-priced film, but Kodak chose to file complaints about the company rather than finding a way to remain competitive. Then digital happened. Kodak found itself quickly outclassed in the digital camera market by makers such as Lumix, Canon and Nikon. Not only was it outclassed, it was undershot on pricing. (...) Unfortunately it seems that Kodak has fallen into the trap that we usually associate with old media. A lack of agility and a propensity to blame failures on someone else just doesn’t work in today’s market. Now, relying on a cash injection by either the sale of patents or somehow gathering funding, Kodak finds itself in the proverbial doghouse." http://thenextweb.com/insider... - Amira

"While Mark Zuckerberg called Timeline "an important next step to help you tell the story of your life" that would allow you to "highlight and curate all your stories so you can express who you really are." John Updike reminds us in a 2007 essay that Kodak once had the slogan, "Let Kodak keep the story." (...) Combine Apple's with-you-everywhere gadgets with Facebook's new... more... - Amira

LOL! This is a real story? - Infosystem

Yep:) - etesien

No: http://www.snopes.com/politic... - Goran Zec