Connected World ~ International Collaborations

Nature shares Connected World infographic spotlighting patterns of international collaborations from 1 February 2018 to 30 January 2019 as captured by the Nature Index...

Hurricane Prediction ~ Forecast Quality Progress

Richard B. Alley, Kerry A. Emanuel, Fuqing Zhang write in Science about Advances in weather prediction...

"In recent decades, advances in forecasting have been rapid, arising from improved observations and models, and better integration of these through data assimilation and related techniques. Investment in weather forecasting pays large dividends, ranging from 3 to 10 times the costs.  [But] the developing world is especially vulnerable to weather disasters yet is underserved by forecasting."

Sugi Circles ~ Japanese Tree Spacing Test

Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in 1973 engaged in...

“experimental forestry” and one of the experiments was to try and measure the effect of tree spacing on growth. The experiment was carried out by planting sugi (Japanese cedar) trees in 10 degree radial increments forming 10 concentric circles of varying diameters."

Enlightenment Now ~ Pinker on Progress...

Professor Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress summarizes proof that health, wealth, and happiness are improving worldwide due to enlightenment values of reason, science, and humanism. He discusses this in his TED talk Is the world getting better or worse? A look at the numbers...

"We will never have a perfect world, and it would be dangerous to seek one," he says. "But there's no limit to the betterments we can attain if we continue to apply knowledge to enhance human flourishing."

How Big is Science? ~ Contrasting Infographic

A few years ago SciAm put out a compelling infographic asking How Big is Science?

Beetle Farts ~ Pulse-Jet Explosive Defense Mech!

MIT Material Science grad student Eric Arndt describes and shows how explosive pulse-jet Bombardier Beetle defensive "farts" result from internal organ reaction chamber transmorphing!

Scientific Evidence ~ Stronger vs Weaker Types...

Compound Interest spotlights Types of Scientific Evidence... 

Expansion Microscopy ~ Physical Magnification!

MIT Professor Ed Boyden and colleagues Fei Chen and Paul Tillberg publish their work on Expansion Microscopy in Science!

"By synthesizing a swellable polymer network within a specimen, it can be physically expanded, resulting in physical magnification. By covalently anchoring specific labels located within the specimen directly to the polymer network, labels spaced closer than the optical diffraction limit can be isotropically separated and optically resolved, a process we call expansion microscopy"

Brief video explanation & demo by the co-authors... And here's flythrough of mouse hippocampus...

Blue Flaming Java Lava ~ Ijen's Sulfurous Spew!

Lisa Marcus at Neatorama spots Blue Flaming Java Lava!

Effective Lessons ~ J-PAL on Edu Investments...

From last year's Science special issue on Grand Challenges in Science Education here's MIT J-PAL Executive Director Rachel Glennerster speaking about her teams piece on The Challenge of Education and Learning in the Developing World summarizing lessons from randomized control trials (RCTs) of programs that aim to improve the learning outcomes of school-age children...

Top Urban Themes ~ CityLab on New Science...

The Atlantic CityLab posts Michael Mehaffy's 5 Key Themes Emerging From the 'New Science of Cities' ~ In the most innovative incubators of urban research, the lessons of Jane Jacobs are more vital than ever...

"Researchers at cutting-edge hubs of urban theory like the University College London and the Santa Fe Institute have been homing in on some key properties of urban systems -- and contradicting much of today's orthodoxy. [...] In one sense, these lessons are not so new. Legendary urbanist Jane Jacobs was famous for her prescient insights about the emerging sciences of “organized complexity” and what they offered for a more effective approach to urban planning -- insights she published all the way back in 1961. [...] Jacobs was also famous for excoriating the backward-looking “pseudo-science” of that era's planning and architecture, which she said seemed “almost neurotic in its determination to imitate empiric failure and ignore empiric success.” She urged city-makers to understand the real “kind of problem a city is” -- not a conventional problem of top-down mechanical or visual order, but a complex problem of interacting factors that are “interrelated into an organic whole.” She urged planners and architects to show greater respect for the intrinsic order of cities, and to apply the best insights of the new sciences, coupled with the most pragmatic methods. [...] The new findings confirm and extend Jacobs' original insights. Here are five of the most significant:

1. Cities generate economic growth through networks of proximity, casual encounters and “economic spillovers."
2. Cities generate a remarkably large “green dividend."
3. Cities perform best economically and environmentally when they feature pervasive human-scale connectivity.
4. Cities perform best when they adapt to human psychological dynamics and patterns of activity.
5. Cities perform best when they offer some control of spatial structure to residents.

These examples illustrate that cities are complex, adaptive systems with their own characteristic dynamics, and -- if they are going to perform well from a human point of view -- they need to be dealt with as such. In that light we must re-assess our current systems of planning, building and managing cities -- the laws, codes, standards, models, incentives, and disincentives that effectively make up the “operating system” for urban growth. To make better cities, we need to shift to an evidence-based approach, able to draw on the best lessons of science and history about the making of good cities, from a human point of view. But this is far from conventional urban practice, which too often features an art-dominated approach to architecture that values novel visual imagery over enduring human city-making."

Here CityLab spots Physicists Geoffrey West and Luis Bettencourt of the Santa Fe Institute describing What Is A City?

Moments of Science 2014 ~ Our IgNobel Acts!

Harvard Chemistry lecture demogod Daniel Rosenberg of In Demo Veritas fame and I performed our latest Moments of Science at the 2014 IgNobel Prize Ceremony yesterday! First, Alginate Gelatenous Snakes at 19:32... And then Comparing Apple and Oranges at 01:11:40... P.S. Here's one of my favorite of our Moments, Big Bang Trash Can!

Fireworks ~ Icons of Celebrations Worldwide!

Here in Boston it's a very wet Fourth of July so most people are inside dreaming of fireworks. Here's a bit of the history of this great icon of celebrations... The science of fireworks... The Secret World of Fireworks by NatGeo... How they're made... MissC spots a quapter view from inside the 'works! And finally, thanks to Paul @ GeekPress for spotting the Big One...

Pyro Board ~ 2D Rubens' Tube Burner Array!

Steph at WebUrbanist spotlights Beats on Fire: Music Visualized with Movement of Flames, a 2D Rubens' Tube array with 2,500 holes which makes a pyromaniacal MIDI synthesizer!

Escherian Leidenfrost ~ Stairclimbing Waterdrops!

io9's Robert Gonzalez writes There's something strangely satisfying about watching water roll uphill...

"Researchers at the University of Bath recently demonstrated that water dropped on a very hot ridged surface would cause the droplet to not only float, but climb along an inclined surface, as though ascending a flight of stairs. [The video below] produced by the folks at Science Friday, features some really beautiful closeup shots of the [Leidenfrost] effect."

In Science We Trust ~ Al-Ghaili's Homage!

Masdar Prof Hector Hernandez shares In Science We Trust compiled by Hashem Al-Ghaili...

Seeding Labs ~ Nina Dudnik @ IDEAS Boston

Seeding Labs founder Nina Dudnik @ IDEAS Boston 2013!

Leidenfrost FX ~ Water Goes Wiggly thru Maze!

MissC spots the Leidenfrost Maze!

Moments of Science ~ DRo & JBo @ IgNobels '13!

This past week Daniel Rosenberg and I again donned the clothe of Momentous Scientists at the IgNobel prize ceremony and demo'd both the sparky Wimshurst influence machine (at 0:18:25) and Plasma Glow Bars (at 1:00:26)! Plus here's Daniel doing promo for the IgNobels with plasma accoutrement... And here's PBS's take on things...

Gearlegs ~ Jumping Juvenile Issus Coleoptratus!

Sindya Bhanoo in the NYTimes Observatory column spots the study by Bristol researchers Malcolm Burrows and Gregory Sutton of the gear mechanism in the hind legs of the juvenile Issus Coleoptratus...

"...a champion jumper found in gardens throughout Europe. Its coglike joints were first described in the 1950s, but it was only with advanced high-speed video that the scientists were able to prove how the joints worked. Before the insect leaps forward, it hooks its gear teeth on one leg to the gear teeth on the other. That way, Dr. Burrows said, “the power is delivered to both legs at the same time, so no leg is twisted.” The legs are synchronized within 30 millionths of a second."