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Launch of science.TV

science.TV is a video-sharing website for people interested in science.

The aim is to create a platform for individuals and groups to communicate with each other, via pre-recorded and live video. It’s interesting for scientists and programme-makers, because it cuts out the broadcaster and helps creators and audiences find each other and does away with the need for dumbing-down for mass appeal.

Attila Csordas at Partial Immortalization has given us some interesting crit. There’s quite a bit that I want to say in response and I’ll hopefully be doing a blogterview with Attila soon.

Science, Technique, and Philosophy

Science is at a peculiar juncture. Despite all that has been written it has yet to be comprehensively defined both in contrast to earlier world-views and in terms adequate to include and discriminate its historical variations. And the distinction among what are called science, technology, and philosophy remains unsettled, if not neglected.

This article is an attempt to define science in contrast to technology and pre-scientific world-views, to identify science as a form of philosophy, and to make a case for the importance of a larger perspective and a more professional temperance in scientific society.

Looking To Fish For Answers in Climate Change

Several phenological studies seem to suggest a correlation of overfishing and climate linked temperature shifts may have resulted in a change in migration patterns of several cold water over the past decade. Considering that 71% of the earth’s surface is covered with water (Arnett, 2006) researchers have increased their attention to the earth’s oceans and its’ residents for clues.

Information theory is the basis of Gaussian adaptation

According to Kjellström, 1969, (see reference in the list
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaussian_adaptation#References)
a connection between GA and information theory is the average speed of stepwise random walks inside a high dimensional simplex region. It turns out that the speed is asymptotically proportional to (see also the point 7 in blog “Gaussian adaptation as a model of evolution”)
– P log(P),
where P is the probability that a random step will lead to a new feasible position inside the simplex. Maximum speed is obtained when P = 1/e = 0.37.

A plausible interpretation of this is that 1/P is proportional to the time/work needed to find a step leading to a feasible position, while –log(P) is the self-information obtained when such a step may be taken. Thus, – P log(P) may be seen as a measure of efficiency; information divided by the work/time needed to get the information. In addition GA maximizes the average information of a Gaussian distribution

Why languages can’t be learned

One of the most basic, essentially undisputed scientific facts about language — and the one that tends to get the most interest from laypeople — is that while learning a foreign language as an adult is very difficult, children learn their native languages with as much ease and proficiency as they learn to walk. This has led researchers such as Steven Pinker to call language learning an “instinct.” In fact, this “instinct” is more than remarkable — it’s miraculous. On careful reflection it seems impossible to learn even just a single word in any language, much less an entire vocabulary (and thus figuring out how we nonetheless all learned a language is a major area of research).

Pilot error declines as factor in airline mishaps

The number of airline mishaps attributed to pilot error significantly declined between 1983 and 2002, according to an analysis conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. While the overall rate of airline mishaps remained stable during that time, the proportion of mishaps involving pilot error decreased 40 percent. The rate of mishaps related to a pilot’s poor decision-making declined 71 percent. The researchers attribute the decline to better training and improvements in technology that aid pilot decision-making. The findings are published in the January 2007 edition of Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine.

Polarization technique focuses limelight

An international team of astronomers, led by Professor Svetlana Berdyugina of ETH Zurich’s Institute of Astronomy, has for the first time ever been able to detect and monitor the visible light that is scattered in the atmosphere of an exoplanet. Employing techniques similar to how Polaroid sunglasses filter away reflected sunlight to reduce glare, the team of scientists were able to extract polarized light to enhance the faint reflected starlight ‘glare’ from an exoplanet. As a result, the scientists could infer the size of its swollen atmosphere. They also directly traced the orbit of the planet, a feat of visualization not possible using indirect methods.

Farm women who handle bug spray at greater risk of asthma

New research on farm women has shown that contact with some commonly used pesticides in farm work may increase their risk of allergic asthma.

“Farm women are an understudied occupational group,” said Jane Hoppin, Sc.D., of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and lead author of the study. “More than half the women in our study applied pesticides, but there is very little known about the risks.”