Livehoods – Use-based urban analytics In conceptualizing and exploring the city we rely a range of smaller areas—neighbourhoods, boroughs, wards and districts—in order to make urban space intelligible. While we can readily discuss how neighbourhoods are shaped by physical geography (topography, adjacency to lakes or rivers, etc.), ordinance (zoning, access to public transit) and economics (real estate prices, average resident income), machine learning does not really spring to mind when we are considering how we might define ‘a neighbourhood’. Livehoods is a new project hatched within the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University that leverages 18 million Foursquare check-ins to draft up new urban ‘activity zones’ based on the patterns of frequent visitors. Livehoods.org | School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University
fMRI Evidence of ‘Mirror’ Responses to Geometric Shapes Mirror neurons may be a genetic adaptation for social interaction [1]. Alternatively, the associative hypothesis [2], [3] proposes that the development of mirror neurons is driven by sensorimotor learning, and that, given suitable experience, mirror neurons will respond to any stimulus. This hypothesis was tested using fMRI adaptation to index populations of cells with mirror properties. After sensorimotor training, where geometric shapes were paired with hand actions, BOLD response was measured while human participants experienced runs of events in which shape observation alternated with action execution or observation. Adaptation from shapes to action execution, and critically, observation, occurred in ventral premotor cortex (PMv) and inferior parietal lobule (IPL). Figures Citation: Press C, Catmur C, Cook R, Widmann H, Heyes C, et al. (2012) fMRI Evidence of ‘Mirror’ Responses to Geometric Shapes. Editor: Alessio Avenanti, University of Bologna, Italy Copyright: © 2012 Press et al.
A Super-Absorbent Solar Material A new nanostructured material that absorbs a broad spectrum of light from any angle could lead to the most efficient thin-film solar cells ever. Researchers are applying the design to semiconductor materials to make solar cells that they hope will save money on materials costs while still offering high power-conversion efficiency. Initial tests with silicon suggest that this kind of patterning can lead to a fivefold enhancement in absorbance. Conventional solar cells are typically a hundred micrometers or more thick. Some researchers are turning to exotic optical effects that emerge at the nanoscale to solve this conundrum. Atwater worked with Koray Aydin, now an assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Northwestern University, to develop the super-absorber design, which takes advantage of a phenomenon called optical resonance. Aydin and Atwater are now doing just that.
Data visualisation DIY: our top tools | News What data visualisation tools are out there on the web that are easy to use - and free? Here on the Datablog and Datastore we try to do as much as possible using the internet's powerful free options. That may sound a little disingenuous, in that we obviously have access to the Guardian's amazing Graphics and interactive teams for those pieces where we have a little more time - such as this map of public spending (created using Adobe Illustrator) or this Twitter riots interactive. But for our day-to-day work, we often use tools that anyone can - and create graphics that anyone else can too. So, what do we use? Google fusion tables This online database and mapping tool has become our default for producing quick and detailed maps, especially those where you need to zoom in. The main advantage is the flexibility - you can can upload a kml file of regional borders, say - and then merge that with a data table. This excellent tutorial by Google's Kathryn Hurley is a great place to start. Datamarket
Gettier and justified true belief: fifty years on | The Philosophers Magazine On the fiftieth anniversary of Gettier’s famous paper, Fred Dretske explains what we should have learned from it. This article appears in Issue 61 of The Philosophers’ Magazine. Please support TPM by subscribing. This is the golden – the fiftieth – anniversary of Edmund Gettier’s remarkable paper on why knowledge isn’t justified true belief. It seems like an appropriate time, therefore, to evaluate what we have learned – or should have learned – from his elegant counterexamples. Gettier’s paper had a tremendous impact on contemporary epistemology. Gettier’s counterexamples are constructed on the basis of two assumptions about justification, both of which were (at the time he made them) entirely uncontentious. 1: The justification one needs to know that P is true is a justification one can have for a false proposition. Almost all philosophers who aren’t sceptics accept 1 without hesitation. But, alas, accepting both 1 and 2 lands you in deep trouble. The problem is not solved.
Down to the wire: Inexpensive technique for making high quality nanowire solar cells developed (PhysOrg.com) -- Solar or photovoltaic cells represent one of the best possible technologies for providing an absolutely clean and virtually inexhaustible source of energy to power our civilization. However, for this dream to be realized, solar cells need to be made from inexpensive elements using low-cost, less energy-intensive processing chemistry, and they need to efficiently and cost-competitively convert sunlight into electricity. A team of researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has now demonstrated two out of three of these requirements with a promising start on the third. Peidong Yang, a chemist with Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division, led the development of a solution-based technique for fabricating core/shell nanowire solar cells using the semiconductors cadmium sulfide for the core and copper sulfide for the shell. Explore further: New physical phenomenon on nanowires seen for the first time
Subversive Cartographies What are subversive cartographies? This issue is addressed a series of presentations organized by Chris Perkins (University of Manchester) and Jörn Seemann (Louisiana State University) for the upcoming 2008 Association of American Geographers meeting (Boston, April 15-19 2008). “To be subversive, is to wish to overthrow, destroy or undermine the principles of established orders. As such subversive cartographies offer alternative representations to established social and political norms. Subversive Cartographies 1: Papers emphasizing the role of the aesthetic in the construction of alternative and artistic mappings. Deconstructing Intentionally Manipulative Maps (IMMs) Ian Muehlenhaus, University of Minnesota Radical Cartography: Artists Making Activist Maps Lize Mogel, Interdisciplinary Artist Decolonizing Historical Cartography Through Narrative: Champlain’s Voyages Revisited Margaret Wickens Pearce, Ohio University and Michael Hermann, University of Maine Discussant: Vincent J.
"The mind is willing, but the flesh is weak": th... [Psychol Sci. 2012] Challenge 5 - Curate Resources using Pearltrees If you listened to the episode of the Instructional Tech Talk podcast that discussed curating content in the classroom you know how valuable curating resources can be both with students and for your own resources. Social bookmarking has become a huge activity – spreading many genres and via many platforms. It has revolutionized the way in which we share and find information. Like I mentioned, there are many ways to participate in social content curation and each way looks a little different. Pearltrees is a way to store all the websites you use on a regular basis (and even the ones that you won’t use again for 2 years) to allow for instant reference. The Challenge Create a Pearltrees account and start curating resources. How to Complete the Challenge 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Here is a brief screencast showing you how to get signed up and started with Pearltrees:
Nightingale’s Rose January 9, 2008, 4:06 pm By Henry Woodbury Two ways of reading the word area — its general vs. its mathematical meaning — leads to confusion in this otherwise superb article on Charts in the Economist. The chart in question is Florence Nightingale’s “Diagram of the Causes of Mortality in the Army of the East.” The data is plotted by month in 30-degree wedges. The Economist explains how to interpret the diagram: As with today’s pie charts, the area of each wedge is proportional to the figure it stands for, but it is the radius of each slice (the distance from the common centre to the outer edge) rather than the angle that is altered to achieve this. Herein lies the confusion. Our Creative Director, Piotr Kaczmarek, recalibrated Nightingale’s chart to correct this error. Nightingale’s diagram, often referred to as Nightingale’s Rose or Nightingale’s Coxcomb, represents one of the inherent risks in visual explanation. This is better: a stacked bar chart that introduces a scale (!) Comments
Why Living in the Moment Is Impossible | University of Pittsburgh News « Tracing Knowledge … Στα ίχνη της Γνώσης Research done at Pitt shows that decision-making memories are stored in a mysterious area of the brain known to be involved with vision and eye movements Aug 8, 2012 PITTSBURGH—The sought-after equanimity of “living in the moment” may be impossible, according to neuroscientists who’ve pinpointed a brain area responsible for using past decisions and outcomes to guide future behavior. The study, based on research conducted at the University of Pittsburgh and published today in the professional journal Neuron, is the first of its kind to analyze signals associated with metacognition—a person’s ability to monitor and control cognition (a term cleverly described by researchers as “thinking about thinking.”) “The brain has to keep track of decisions and the outcomes they produce,” said Marc Sommer, who did his research for the study as a University of Pittsburgh neuroscience faculty member and is now on the faculty at Duke University. “You need that continuity of thought,” Sommer continued.
Japan Earthquake, 2 Years Later: Before and After - In Focus In a few days, Japan will mark the 2nd anniversary of the devastating Tohoku earthquake and resulting tsunami. The disaster killed nearly 19,000 across Japan, leveling entire coastal villages. Now, nearly all the rubble has been removed, or stacked neatly, but reconstruction on higher ground is lagging, as government red tape has slowed recovery efforts. Use j/k keys or ←/→ to navigate Choose: The tsunami-devastated Kesennuma in Miyagi prefecture, is pictured in this side-by-side comparison photo taken March 12, 2011 (left) and March 4, 2013 (right), ahead of the two-year anniversary of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that damaged so much of northeastern Japan. This before-after pair of images shows a private plane, cars and debris outside Sendai Airport in Natori, Miyagi prefecture on March 13, 2011, and the same area two years later, on February 21, 2013. - javascript required
Infographics Are Broken. We Can Do Better. | Erick Schonfeld: TechStream Infographics on the web are so bad and so broken. They are everywhere, yet few actually do a decent job of conveying information (click on the one at left to see what I mean). Some even argue that they are ruining the Internet. There are many reasons why they suck. I know we can do better, which is why I’ve applied for a grant from the Knight News Challenge on Data to build a data visualization platform to address some of these shortcomings (please like it or reblog it on Tumblr). As I note in my Knight News application: Infographics are very popular on the web, but most of them aren’t very good. And yet people love them because humans are visual creatures. Infographics are the scourge of the Internet. What publishers need is a better way to create and present visual data. But wait. Producing a great interactive chart is only half the battle. Initially, the platform will be geared towards bloggers and news organizations, but could expand to other industries and types of data. Like this:
Smelling a skunk after a cold: Brain changes after a stuffed nose protect the sense of smell Has a summer cold or mold allergy stuffed up your nose and dampened your sense of smell? We take it for granted that once our nostrils clear, our sniffers will dependably rebound and alert us to a lurking neighborhood skunk or a caramel corn shop ahead. That dependability is no accident. It turns out the brain is working overtime behind the scenes to make sure the sense of smell is just as sharp after the nose recovers. A new Northwestern Medicine study shows that after the human nose is experimentally blocked for one week, brain activity rapidly changes in olfactory brain regions. Previous research in animals has suggested that the olfactory system is resistant to perceptual changes following odor deprivation. "You need ongoing sensory input in order for your brain to update smell information," said Keng Nei Wu, the lead author of the paper and a graduate student in neuroscience at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.