7puzzleblog.com | Home of the daily Maths Challenge Augmented Reality Online Shopping: Not the Right Fit (Yet) Modern women dream of the day when they can buy a super cute dress or practical pair of pants online that will fit perfectly on arrival. That day is not yet here, but two new products from Zugara and FaceCake Marketing, presented at the DEMO Spring conference, combine augmented reality with online shopping, hoping to take womankind one giant visual leap forward. Regrettably, they also fall short of that mission. Swivel, from FaceCake Marketing, taps into Microsoft Kinect's motion-sensing technology to offer a virtual at-home dressing room. Users grab an item of clothing or accessory, and get to see how it could look in real life. Shoppers can select a background to see how items translate to settings, say a ski slope. In demonstrations, Swivel feels more like a game than a shopping tool. Zugara's solution is the Webcam Social Shopper. Despite the delight of experiencing something avant garde and high-tech, I found trying on several dresses to be terribly disappointing.
Miguel Nicolelis Says the Brain is Not Computable, Bashes Kurzweil’s Singularity Miguel Nicolelis, a top neuroscientist at Duke University, says computers will never replicate the human brain and that the technological Singularity is “a bunch of hot air.” “The brain is not computable and no engineering can reproduce it,” says Nicolelis, author of several pioneering papers on brain-machine interfaces. The Singularity, of course, is that moment when a computer super-intelligence emerges and changes the world in ways beyond our comprehension. Among the idea’s promoters are futurist Ray Kurzweil, recently hired on at Google as a director of engineering, who has been predicting that not only will machine intelligence exceed our own, but people will be able to download their thoughts and memories into computers (see “Ray Kurzweil Plans to Create a Mind at Google—and Have It Serve You”). Nicolelis calls that idea sheer bunk. The debate over whether the brain is a kind of computer has been running for decades. But if he’s right, us ain’t machines, and never will be.
Puzzle Page Each week we'll upload a brand new puzzle, taken from the extensive library of Mathematic Teaching Journals. You can view all of our journals if you become a member today, for as little as £25 a year! Membership gives you access to the entire library, dating all the way back to issue 1. That is a LOT of puzzles AND articles AND research AND MATHS! Puzzle 3 - Taken from MT199 Puzzle 2 - Taken from MT198 Puzzle 1 - Taken from MT195 A Java library for the Twitter API me Daily Hexa-Trex | Nucleus Learning | Nucleus Learning Unsolved Hexa Trex:
Retro Programming Resourceaholic: 5 Maths Gems #4 Well the summer holidays are well and truly over. Many teachers, particularly those who are relatively new to teaching, will spend this weekend making lists, planning lessons and experiencing that unsettling feeling of nervous excitement. If you have time to read this week's set of maths gems, I hope they provide a little light relief. 1. I feel that my knowledge of secondary school core mathematics is pretty sound but this week Ed Southall (@edsouthall) inadvertently pointed me in the direction of James Tanton's website (@jamestanton) and within minutes I was learning new things! If asked to sketch the graph of y = x2 + 4x + 5, I'd realise that it can't be factorised so I'd check the discriminant to confirm that this function has no real roots. This seems pretty obvious now. I also discovered that i is not the square root of minus one (watch this video to see why) and that the order of quadrants is based on the rising and setting of the sun! 2. 3. Harry's post also gave me a new idea.
crowdflow.net | combining crowdsourced geodata 5 Maths Gems #38 Hello and welcome to my 38th gems post. This is where I share five teaching ideas I've seen on Twitter. As teachers start making plans and preparing resources for September, there's been a flurry of inspiring ideas on Twitter - I can barely keep up! 1. Tessellation It's quite rare that there's exciting news in the world of mathematics, but we've recently seen the discovery of a new type of tessellating pentagon. I like teaching tessellation - it follows nicely from polygon angles. I've never seen tessellation animations before so thanks to @MathsMastery for sharing these, I'll use them the next time I teach tessellation. 2. There's been lots of tweets and posts about displays this week. I also like this growth mindset display from English teacher Rebecca Foster (@TLPMrsF) which is similar to the mindset display that I first wrote about in Gems 3, but would fit on a smaller noticeboard. 3. 4. 5. Lesley Hall (@lhmaths) created a great set of exit tickets that can be found here.
Earth Outreach Organisation Jane Goodall Institute URL du site Web principal www.janegoodall.org AuteurLilian Pintea, vice-président du département des sciences de la préservation Outils utilisés Google Earth, Google Maps, Open Data Kit * Remarque : Le Jane Goodall Institute ne cautionne en aucun cas le traitement ou le trafic de chimpanzés sauvages. "Les informations collectées par les observateurs forestiers ne sont pas seulement utiles au village. Elles contribuent à un effort mondial de surveillance des forêts et des ressources naturelles de la planète." – Lilian Pintea, vice-président du département des sciences de la préservation, JGI L'objectif du Jane Goodall Institute est de protéger les grands singes africains, en particulier les chimpanzés, ainsi que leur habitat. Mode opératoire En 2006, le Jane Goodall Institute a mis en place le Gombe Chimpanzee Blog avec des mises à jour quotidiennes d'Emily Wroblewski, chercheur sur le terrain. Chronique du blog par la chercheuse Emily Wroblewski