Sightseeing mixed with stunning long-exposure photography. This is a composite of a series of images photographed from a mounted camera over the course of multiple orbits from the International Space Station.
Source: A Room With a View: Scenes From the International Space Station, TIME
Motherboard is hosting “Drone Day” at SXSW. Check it out.
What are barnacles?
not rock nor slug but very ugly
Barnacles are not rocks or molluscs (limpets are often confused with barnacles) but are actually a unique type of Crustacean which belongs to the infraclass Cirripedia. But unlike alot of arthropods barnacles are special and certainly don’t look like any other arthropods. This is simply due to their weird anatomy. The barnacle can be simply explained as an animal laying on its “back” and waving its feet in the air to bring in any organic particles that may float past it. In a more scientific sense adult barnacles permanently attach themselves upside down via cement glands on their modified first antennae, from there the animal is permanently encased on its back where it uses six pairs of modified legs called cirri to filter food from the water and move it towards the mouth. To get to this sessile form barnacles go through two larval forms called Nauplius and Crypids to find an acceptable substrate and cement its self to it. Also their ugliness is known to kill people….
jstn:
Discovery/NHK’s show about the giant squid is a must-watch if you’re into such things. There’s some debate about how interesting the footage is and whether or not it’s technically The First, but personally I think it’s incredible. They lure it with a smaller squid as bait, and it hangs around eating for 23 minutes while they film it in bright white light. It’s much better than a couple tentacles flashing by in infrared. From NHK’s press release:
During a dive by Dr. Kubodera, an NHK cameraman, and the submersible pilot at the depth of 630 meters, they came face-to-face with the giant squid and followed it to a depth of 900 meters. The squid was missing its characteristic two longest tentacles, but nevertheless measured about 3 m in length. If this pair of tentacles had been intact, the creature would probably have measured 7 - 8 m.Mark Dery’s essay about the video is a great followup.
By the way, Discovery, I would gladly pay for the opportunity to download the unedited 23 minutes from the main camera in HD.
The new science of impact: How to ask the right questions →
Who is the target population for a microcredit intervention? Your answer will depend largely on where you sit: Academics and microfinance institutions will be interested in different groups of people.
Join Cartoonist Lynda Barry for a University-Level Course on Doodling and Neuroscience
Can I just stop you for a minute and note how fucking amazing it is that one of our greatest living cartoonists is not only teaching this class, but she’s letting us all follow along? Incredible.
Love it. Exploring complex ideas visually is why Peter Durand draws during PopTech talks.
A real life science fiction movie exploring a world creeping right beneath our feet, where time and space are magnified and intelligence redefined.
The Creeping Garden is a feature length creative documentary exploring the work of fringe scientists, mycologists and artists, from the UK to Japan, and their relationship with the extraordinary plasmodial slime mould.
The slime mould is being used to explore biological-inspired design, emergence theory, unconventional computing and robot controllers, much of which borders on the world of science fiction.
This reminds us of Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, a designer, artist and writer, who explores the social, ethical and cultural implications of emerging technologies, especially synthetic biology. At PopTech 2010 she shared how her projects open up a creative space to imagine the potential scientific triumphs and disasters on the horizon.
It is perhaps no coincidence that the development community’s biggest successes — eradication initiatives like polio and smallpox — are precisely the ones that made monitoring central to their work.
Read: Ned Breslin’s (PopTech 2010) piece on Measuring impact over time from our most recent Edition - Made to Measure: The new science of impact.
Each PopTech Edition explores an emerging theme at the edge of change from the perspective of some of the remarkable innovators shaping it. In this Edition, we examine evolving techniques to accurately gauge the real impact of initiatives and programs designed to do social good.
Photo: Michael Taylor/Landsat/NASA
Pale sediments are carried out to sea by the rivers of the Mergui Archipelago of Myanmar. Dark blue ocean waters mix with the sediment, creating turbulent swirls in this natural color satellite image. With the sediment comes valuable nutrients for plant life in the ocean, which can prompt the formation of phytoplankton blooms.
(via fyeahfluiddynamics)
The New Science of Measuring Impact
A dirty little secret of the NGO world is that funders and grant recipients sometimes silently conspire to agree on statistics that show a program “works,” without rigorous measurement, since both the funders and the recipients want to show results.
Organizations everywhere dedicated to solving some of the world’s most pressing challenges have launched a variety of new efforts to meticulously measure the intended impact of their work. This is nothing less than a revolution in social innovation that is bringing new, scientific rigor to gauging results. These organizations are now eschewing the top-down problem solving that has been the standard in their relative fields for decades.
Consider the clinical trial. Most people probably associate so-called randomized controlled trials with the testing of new drugs. One group of people take a new pill while another group gets a placebo. The participants are monitored to see who is better off.
But in recent years the use of randomized controlled trials has migrated from measuring the effectiveness of drugs to rigorously evaluating policies and programs designed to do social good. Rather than just assuming that a bright idea is changing the world because something is happening, scientists compare how much desired outcomes are evident among people exposed to a program as opposed to people who were not. The results can be remarkably instructive.
Cooking stoves are a good example. At a September 2010 meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton unveiled a public-private partnership led by the United Nations Foundation to put new, efficient, clean, cheap cooking stoves in 100 million homes by 2020. “We can finally envision a future in which open fires and dirty stoves are replaced by clean, efficient and affordable stoves and fuels all over the world,” she said.
As mundane as they may seem, cooking stoves are a very big deal. By the State Department’s count, 3 billion people around the world cook their food above open fires or on old, inefficient stoves in poorly ventilated homes. The smoke and toxins cause pneumonia and respiratory disease in women and their families, and the inefficient stoves contribute to climate change.
But simply handing out new cooking stoves, it turns out, doesn’t work as intended.
Image: Member of Sewa cook food on tradional cookstove (R) as well as on clean cookstove (L) at the SEWA Centre in Ganeshpura Village in district Mehsena of Indian State of Gujarat. (via Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves)
