Saturday, July 18, 2009

BBC Earth TwitterNews July 18, 2009

In High Schools, Science is often taught as something that happened then. The fact is that science is something that is happening now. Below is an example of what a daily or weekly Science A4 might look like. It could be delivered as a standalone. Or it could be the sidebar for a student newspaper, a clickable newspaper.

Unlike a textbook, it could be delivered fresh every day or every week. When students get fresh food for thought, it's much more likely that they will think. If CodeZ QR is embedded, it gives the teacher/mentor information about which student is looking, when and where. That information can be shared with parents and other teachers. As that body of information is analyzed, it will make it practical for the teacher to use it to plan appropriate interventions.

  1. BBC_Earth
    BBC_Earth BBC Science&Nature: Brazil demands return of UK waste http://bit.ly/x7Jfl
  2. BBC_Earth Geology.com: First Deepwater Well Off Libya: Exxon Mobil began drilling the first deepwater explorat.. http://bit.ly/PorwH
  3. BBC_Earth Telegraph: British companies accused of dumping toxic waste http://bit.ly/gIbA

  4. BBC_EarthTelegraph: Most polluting postcodes in Britain identified in heart of middle England http://bit.ly/BId00
  5. BBC_EarthTelegraph: Bottom 1000 least polluting postcodes in Britain http://bit.ly/zEZ4n
  6. BBC_EarthGeology.com: Petroleum Product Demand at Ten Year Low: An article at the Oil and Gas Journal website.. http://bit.ly/NI35P
  7. BBC_EarthScienceDaily: Reintroduced Chinese Alligators Now Multiplying In The Wild In China http://bit.ly/rfiT0

  8. BBC_EarthGeology.com: Micronesia Islands Seek Help: The President of the Federated States of Micronesia has a.. http://bit.ly/jJdUA
  9. BBC_EarthGeology.com: Amazon and Manaus Rivers in Flood: Earth Observatory has satellite images that show spe.. http://bit.ly/FwdNG
  10. BBC_EarthGeology.com: Unconventional Gas Conference: The 11th annual Unconventional Gas Conference will be be.. http://bit.ly/137IPO
  11. BBC_EarthEnviroCentric: NASA, CU-Boulder airborne expedition chases Arctic sea ice questions: A small NASA .. http://bit.ly/KVjAq
  12. BBC_EarthDiscovery Earth: Climate Changes May be Slower Than Expected http://bit.ly/1lqny

Friday, July 17, 2009

Twitter + Clickable A4 + CodeZ = Actionable Information for Any Enterprise : Including Education

From MSNBC
  1. Personal stories of economic struggle and recovery http://ow.ly/hqlh #elkhart
  2. JPMorgan Chase posts $2.7 billion profit in second quarter, beating expectations http://bit.ly/H2h58
  3. Space shuttle Endeavour launches on mission to space station http://bit.ly/125cwH
  4. After several delays, space shuttle prepares for liftoff. Watch live @ http://ow.ly/hnyz
  5. LIVE: Obama addresses health care reform from White House Rose Garden. http://ow.ly/hlQT
  6. Senate committee passes health bill, first panel to act on Obama's overhaul http://bit.ly/3xg1cs
  7. Sotomayor begins Day 3 of Supreme Court confirmation. Watch live and tweet along at http://ow.ly/hk9W
  8. 150 feared dead in Iran jet crash http://bit.ly/f0622

From CNN
  1. Personal stories of economic struggle and recovery http://ow.ly/hqlh #elkhart
  2. JPMorgan Chase posts $2.7 billion profit in second quarter, beating expectations http://bit.ly/H2h58
  3. Space shuttle Endeavour launches on mission to space station http://bit.ly/125cwH
  4. After several delays, space shuttle prepares for liftoff. Watch live @ http://ow.ly/hnyz
  5. LIVE: Obama addresses health care reform from White House Rose Garden. http://ow.ly/hlQT
  6. Senate committee passes health bill, first panel to act on Obama's overhaul http://bit.ly/3xg1cs
  7. Sotomayor begins Day 3 of Supreme Court confirmation. Watch live and tweet along at http://ow.ly/hk9W
  8. 150 feared dead in Iran jet crash http://bit.ly/f0622
  9. Sotomayor defends her judicial philosophy at confirmation hearing. Watch live and tweet along http://ow.ly/he9q #sotomayor
  10. For Sotomayor, the grilling begins http://bit.ly/WyILJ
  11. Crooked cops pose threat to Afghanistan http://bit.ly/fq87
From WhatTheyThink:
  1. What's Wrong with This Picture? http://bit.ly/eTpl1
  2. Going Green: Wal-Mart Speaks Sustainability... and It May Affect You! http://bit.ly/vKMQD
  3. Print CEO: Industry Icons http://bit.ly/CPv3V
  4. PNI and Walmart to Offer Printing Services in Canada http://tr.im/sG2y
  5. Mixing Up Capital With Credit, Inflation Growing, and Print's Trade Surplus http://tr.im/sEAo
  6. Going Green: Reward Your Employees for Green Ideas http://bit.ly/13fQay
  7. Going Green: "Print on Demand" is not just for paper any more! http://bit.ly/rKi21
  8. Print CEO: The @LVI Bankruptcy: A Larger Lesson http://bit.ly/bdc6h
  9. Print CEO: Business as Unusual http://bit.ly/FtISG
  10. Interveiw: Johnson Printing Recognized for Environmental Excellence http://tr.im/sogy #sustainability #print
  11. Kodak Sells First PROSPER S10 Imprinting System to Instant Data Forms in Hong Kong http://tr.im/socQ #inkjet
  12. Examination of Variable Data Printing (Part 1): Insights on VDP http://tr.im/snjN
  13. Print imports from China -$155mm, from Canada -$144mm YTD May 2008 vs 2009 (via @wtterc)
  14. Xerox Offers Premier Partners Free Premium Membership to WhatTheyThink http://tr.im/slic
  15. Print CEO: Recessionary Marketing Practices Provide Opportunity for Savvy Print and Marketing Services Providers http://bit.ly/11QQzU
  16. Printing Office: PIA Says It's Wary of New Managed Print Service Offerings by HP http://bit.ly/GgaAv
  17. May commercial printing shipments were $7.3 billion, down -9.4% compared to May of last year. More info+access to data: http://tr.im/sayt
  18. Print CEO: LVI Seeks Creditor Protection and Sale to HubCast http://bit.ly/nzAr1
  19. Printing Office: Virtual Press Clips: Print Firms in the News http://bit.ly/4eWvSW
  20. LaVigne (LVI) Files For Bankruptcy http://tr.im/rMGm Assets to be sold to HubCast Inc
From Oce North America:
  1. Symposium on July 23 at the Océ Solutions Studio in Renton, WA #PPIA #Oce http://bit.ly/UqJyn
  2. Increase productivity, mitigate risk and enhance business performance with outsourcing of document lifecycle management. http://bit.ly/S6rpO
  3. Congratulations to John Reilly! Appointed President of Océ North America, Document Printing Systems #office #documents #digitalprinting
  4. http://twitpic.com/8h230 - Duncan Newton, Business Development Manager, Océ North America, on "Implementation of the Individuated Newspa ...

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

In the news cycle, nemes spread more like a heartbeat than a virus

The point is that memes move through cognitive space. Genes move in physical space. News stories that spread have an emotional component. A neme is a coined word to include the meme, the embodied information in a gene and the emotion we can call a lumene.


In the news cycle, memes spread more like a heartbeat than a virus
Nieman Journalism Lab:
"The New York Times reports today: “For the most part, the traditional news outlets lead and the blogs follow, typically by 2.5 hours, according to a new computer analysis of news articles and commentary on the Web during the last three months of the 2008 presidential campaign.” By that measure, I’m past due in responding, but here’s why the Times has it wrong.

The study in question demonstrates a fascinating technique, borrowed from genetics research, for tracking memes in media coverage, and produces some surprising results that I’ll get to below. But part of the paper is based on a flawed methodology that totally discredits the findings highlighted by the Times. Here’s the illustration of that two-and-a-half-hour gap between peak coverage of memes — in this case, phrases from the 2008 presidential election — in the mainstream media and on blogs:. . .
From that perspective, the paper has quite a bit to add. First, it’s fascinating that memes in political reporting can be tracked with methods drawn from bioinformatics and genetic sequence analysis. As Bill Wasik explains in his new book on viral culture, And Then There’s This, the term meme was coined by the British biologist Richard Dawkins, who wrote in The Selfish Gene:
I think that a new kind of replicator has recently emerged on this very planet. It is staring us in the face. It is still in its infancy, still drifting clumsily about it its primeval soup…The new soup is the soup of human culture. We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. ‘Mimeme’ comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like gene. I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme.

Monday, July 13, 2009

Darwin's mystery explained

The point is that this is pretty much how I think it works for all life forms.

Science Centric
Darwin's mystery explained:
The rapid increase in the fantastic diversity of flowering plants - linked to their rapid conquest of the Earth - was one of the greatest puzzles faced by Charles Darwin. In a letter to Joseph Hooker dated 22 July 1879, he referred to an 'abominable mystery.' The great diversity of fossil flowering plants from the late Cretaceous, while there were virtually no fossils known from the early Cretaceous, appeared to be completely in conflict with his vision that the emergence of new species could only take place very gradually.
. . .
"According to Berendse and Scheffer, we must think in a totally different direction. They postulate that the flowering plants were able to change the world to suit their own needs. They grew more rapidly and therefore required more nutrients. In a world that was poor in nutrients and was entirely dominated by the gymnosperms, that kept the soil poor - with their poorly degradable litter - flowering plants had great difficulties to establish. But at some locations where the gymnosperms had temporarily disappeared, for example due to floods, fires or storms, the angiosperms could increase so that they were capable of improving their own conditions with their easily degradable litter.

According to the theory of Berendse and Scheffer, this led to positive feedback; as a result, the flowering plants could increase even more rapidly and were capable of replacing the angiosperms in much of the world. Ultimately, the improved edibility of the leaves and fruits of the flowering plants led to a tremendous increase in the number of plant eaters on the Earth, which opened the way to the rapid evolution of mammals, and finally to the appearance of humans."

In Case you thought iPhone was just for kids, think again.

Top 5 Medical Apps for iPhone - ABC News:
"Medical apps make up a little more than one percent of all apps, but the downloadable medical apps are becoming so useful to doctors that the Georgetown University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C., now requires all of its students to carry an iPhone or iTouch."

Monkeys And Humans Use Parallel Mechanism To Recognize Faces

The point is that learning depends on what you see. What you see depends on genes and memes and proximate benefit/risk decisions.

Monkeys And Humans Use Parallel Mechanism To Recognize Faces:
"ScienceDaily (July 12, 2009) — Researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University, have demonstrated for the first time rhesus monkeys and humans share a specific perceptual mechanism, configural perception, for discriminating among the numerous faces they encounter daily. The study, reported in the June 25 online issue of Current Biology, provides insight into the evolution of the critical human social skill of facial recognition, which enables us to form relationships and interact appropriately with others"

Link Between Oral Infections And Cardiovascular Disease Morbidity Explained

The point is that small events can have big consequences in a complex system. The earlier one can see the signs, the easier is the intervention. As it is with healthy arteries, so it is with healthy learning.
Link Between Oral Infections And Cardiovascular Disease Morbidity Explained:
"In addition, a new screening diagnostic system called STAT-CK (developed by Dr. Gottehrer) which gives the dentist and the patient a simple solution to visualize and categorize the stages of periodontal disease using grades A – F (A being minor damage to gums, F being the most severe case of damage to the gums and bone, needing surgical attention). This diagnostic tool can be personalized for each patient and it allows all doctors to understand the patient's periodontal condition. “This tool can help improve the communication between the dentist and doctor, as well as the treatment and health of the patient,” says Dr. Gottehrer"

Sunday, July 12, 2009

In a few years, it's likely that "No One Could Have Predicted" dynamic Qr codes and Augmented Reality.

But then no one could have predicted the financial meltdown. Blablablabla.

From Seeking Alpha,
A research paper, published in June by Dirk J. Bezemer, Groningen University, addresses this question and says the answer is that many saw it coming but those with the power to act did nothing. Bezemer contends that the problem is that economic policy is executed using macro equilibrium models and what is needed to establish economic policy that can anticipate crises, such as we have now, and take actions to head them off, are micro accounting cash-flow models. The entire paper can be read here.
The point is we need less economists and more accountants. Read the column by clicking on the title of the snippet.

Newborn Brain Cells Improve Our Ability To Navigate Our Environment

I'm not sure of the exact point as of today. But it has to do with new brain cells making finer distinctions. It feels like that means learning.
Newborn Brain Cells Improve Our Ability To Navigate Our Environment:
"ScienceDaily (July 11, 2009) — Although the fact that we generate new brain cells throughout life is no longer disputed, their purpose has been the topic of much debate. Now, an international collaboration of researchers made a big leap forward in understanding what all these newborn neurons might actually do. Their study, published in the July 10, 2009, issue of the journal Science, illustrates how these young cells improve our ability to navigate our environment."
read more by clicking the title.

Positive Emotions Increase Life Satisfaction By Building Resilience

The point is that "micro-moments" are the appropriate scale on which to measure emotions. What are the micro moments in a normal school day?
Positive Emotions Increase Life Satisfaction By Building Resilience:
"“ . . . Getting those daily reports helped us gather more accurate recollections of feelings and allowed us to capture emotional ups and downs,” said Fredrickson, a leading expert in the field of positive psychology.

Building up a daily diet of positive emotions does not require banishing negative emotions, she said. The study helps show that to be happy, people do not need to adopt a “Pollyanna-ish” approach and deny the upsetting aspects of life.

“The levels of positive emotions that produced good benefits weren’t extreme. Participants with average and stable levels of positive emotions still showed growth in resilience even when their days included negative emotions.”

Fredrickson suggested focusing on the “micro-moments” that can help unlock one positive emotion here or there.
. . .
“A lot of times we get so wrapped up in thinking about the future and the past that we are blind to the goodness we are steeped in already, whether it’s the beauty outside the window or the kind things that people are doing for you,” she said. “The better approach is to be open and flexible, to be appreciative of whatever good you do find in your daily circumstances, rather than focusing on bigger questions, such as ‘Will I be happy if I move to California?’ or ‘Will I be happy if I get married?’”