BBC vs. NPR and PBS

I remember staying awake to listen to the BBC radio program BBC World Service. I heard the intro trumpets blaring, and I was transported from my bed in dark and rainy and cold Washington State to far-off Africa, India, Malaysia. The accents were thick, the jungles steamy, and the news, well, completely new. I had never heard, let alone imaged, the wars and disasters that crackled from the tiny speakers. As far as I know, I was privy to information that wasn't fit to print in the New York Times, too messy for the local paper, and too polysyllabic for the nightly news.

...although Democracy Now is a worthy bearer of the American torch of journalism, and its surprising how many things are reported here that don't make the so-called 'liberal' NPR. What gives NPR?

I am actively looking for a conservative "balance" to Democracy Now, a show that combines intellectual honesty, in-depth reporting, and a conservative emphasis. Please let me know if you find something like this.

BBC is just better than American radio. (e.g. the Material World)

BBC is better than American [Reality] TV (e.g. Rough Science)

Airline Reservations -- an Information Arms Race

Some of the first supercomputers purchased by the private sector were used to calculate airline schedules and fares. Today, the customer is fighting back, first through search engines like Orbitz and Travelocity, then through meta search engines, and finally through some sweet AI.

Here's the website I'd always wanted to make, in beta of course: farecast.com

Once flyspace.com works for more cities it could be even better. Who knows? maybe the economists' models will someday be vindicated and the customer really will have access to "perfect information".

On the flip side, some airlines are giving up on the substantial overhead of algorithmic airfares and are offering unvarying flat rates.

Scientific Images

Art is science, and science art...that is all I know, and all I need to know.

Nikon and Olympus screen savers
http://www.microscopyu.com/software/screensavers/smallworld2006.html
http://www.mic-d.com/software/index.html
Scientific Image Contests



http://www.olympusbioscapes.com/
http://www.visions-of-science.co.uk/f-winners.htm
http://whyfiles.org/coolimages/archives.html%3Fcat=1.html

Please feel free to post your own favorite galleries.

Update: Math
http://myweb.cwpost.liu.edu/aburns/bridges06/bridges06.html

We're way up there, towards the top...

This is stolen from Tolweb. Try clicking up and down the tree to get an idea of the scale just of the butterfly family

Why study a particular model organism? Fruit Fly, Mouse, Rat, Chimp, Chinese Hamster, Barn Owls... most animals are chosen for convenience, rarely for the question being asked. Rather, the tool determines the sorts of questions the lab can ask. A bad example of this is a lab
studying olfaction in a species that is not known to use smell for any ecologically-relevant behavior. A good example of this was when Konishi used barn owls to study auditory processing.

Many jokes are made about whether scientists are studying mice or vice versa, but the truth is that learning the techniques, terminology, and temperament of an organism has a steep learning curve, and often the survival of the postdoc and his mice are yoked together.

My Home: Tucson

The Tucson Valley as seen from the Rincon Mountains in Saguaro National Park East. Also visible are the Tucson Mountains to the left and the Santa Catalina Mountains to the Right. Tucson hugs the desert at the intersection of the Rillito and Santa Cruz Rivers. Photocredit: Annika Silvernoinen.

At work today...

At work today I sectioned the thorasic ganglia and cervical connective of the moth Manduca sexta.

Netflix Offers One Million Dollars for Better Suggestion System

There are basically two approaches that I have seen, which I'll label AMAZON and PANDORA for ease of use. In the first you collect user data and suggest what other people with similar "profiles" selected. This is problematic in Amazon where you might be buying gifts that don't reflect your taste, but in Netflix it should be fairly robust. The other is much more labor-intense, and involves semantic coding of the artwork. In the case of Pandora, they invested hundreds of thousands of man hours listening to music and creating a 'genome' for each work, which allowed them to objectively correlate the songs in n-dimensional factor analysis.

Oops, two more approaches: There is also the flickr / del.icio.us use of tags, a FOLKSONOMY, and I think currently Netflix is using a fourth hybrid system which I'll call GOOGLE because they seem to use some database (say, IMDB) that lists directors and they just harvest the relevant links. Hell, maybe Netflix even uses Google to find the top 100 pages that come up for "Kill Bill" and then they just compare all the words in all those pages with all the titles of movies in their database, assuming that movies that are mentioned on the same page are in some way relevant to one another.

But these three options assume that "better" is already defined. Is that an objective property of a suggestion? Its hard to imagine what that would mean. Instead, is it most user-friendly? Which opens the whole FORM-FUNCTION debate. I mean, maybe just a better GUI ("better" would be defined as "more user selections"=more clicks) would satisfy that requirement.

And then there is the question of why they'd really want a better suggester. Their profits are not linked to the number of movies someone rents. So is the million just self-promotion? Or philanthropy to the unemployed programmers of the world?

Now that Google has Youtube, everyone is wondering what they're going to do with it. How do you make money off of indexing a huge database of free movies? Two ways, either LEECH (ie targetted advertizements) or CHARGE (micropayments for content). Micropayments haven't caught on yet, but with the continuing expansion of Google content (ie one login for calendar, email, personalized google search, etc) similar to Yahoo, it shouldn't be too hard to set up micropayment accounts.

Paying for content isn't all bad; according to economic theory, value equals money, and vice versa. If you pay money for something you create valuable information. If it cost a small fee to link another website from your site, the average quality of links would go way up. Similarly, if the post office raised the bulk (junk) mailing rate from 13 cents closer to first class (39 cents) the average amount of bulk would decline, but both because of decreased information overload and because of the recognition of the cost inherent in the medium, people would pay alto more attention to the bulk mail (currently 50% is thrown away unopened). So this would not necessarily be bad for the advertisers. Perhaps the same logical structure could entail for micropayments on media content, although I can't quite see how right now. http://econ.arizona.edu/downloads/Seminars/AndersonF06.pdf

Anyway, information markets are still the best way to self-organize information. More later.

Electrochemistry of the Neuron

Best book/blog in the neurosphere: http://nine-radical.blogspot.com/



Also, I have been trying to get a handle on the electrochemistry of the neuron, and to that end have been studying the nearest-known system in physics, since physicists try to understand things and biologists are content to just use whatever instruments the chemists and physicists make. And what is this nearest-neighbor? The P-N semiconductor of course, that eponymous minimal substrate for the most common metaphor in neuroscience, "the brain is a computer". And it turns out there is some weird sh*t going down. Positive charges are just the spaces created by the removal of negative charges, but they can be modeled as if they have a physical extension, can move, and have mass. There is a 'band-gap' (in "potential-space") that separates the electron-filled quantal energy levels and the unfilled, and the size of this gap and its relation to the place-below-which-half-the-energy-levels-are-filled (AKA Fermi Level) determines whether the material is a Conductor, a Resistor, or, if the Fermi Level falls in the band gap, a P-N semiconductor.



What does this have to do with nerves? Well, I realized I don't understand the whole ion channel thingy. Partial pressures...apparently the charge of the ions doesn't matter, in that an overabundance of Ca+ can't influence the action of, say, K+ or Cl- in anyway. Weird, if you think that every drug we put into the body must have its own partial pressure to. And different parts of the body are under different pressures. You've heard about 'the bends' (thanks, Radiohead) of nitrogen 'coming out of solution'. It seems that these affects most be omnipresent in the body where these pressure differentials crop up (and don't forget the microscale of vesicles literally 'popping' out of terminals in the synapse). My uncle is studying something to do with this and the pressure that tumors build up trying to grow against the luminal matrix of the body.

That isn't directly related to my P-N semiconductor ponderous ponderings, but it gives a flavor of the kind of questions I want to ask but don't know enough about yet to. Meanwhile, I am reading about harvesting monoclonal vs. polyclonal antibodies.

Top Ten Things To Do To Make Tucson Sustainable

(1) Harvest and conserve water

Step One:  Enjoy sponge baths or basin baths rather than showers.

Note:  A person can bathe in less than a quart of water this way!

At full sustainability Tucsonans will have cisterns, composting toilets, neighborhood water harvesting, and comprehensive water education.    

(2) Use the sun's energy

Step One:  Hang your laundry to dry in the sun.  

Note:  Some communities have restrictions against hanging out laundry.

At full sustainability Tucson will derive all its electricity and transportation from the sun's energy.

   

(3) Eat local and native foods

Step One:  Visit a farmers market.

Note:  Farmers Markets are listed in Tucson Weekly.

At full sustainability Tucson will have a City Food Policy to ensure access to healthy food for all Tucsonans.   Large daily farmers markets with bioregional products will supplement neighborhood food production and neighborhood desert food harvesting.  

(4) Work outdoors with neighbors

Step One:  Organize a neighborhood walk/doorknocking to discover neighborhood assets and what projects interest your neighbors.  

Note:  For tips on organizing neighborhood doorknockings, contact Pro Neighborhoods, (520) 882-5885.

At full sustainability every neighborhood will be safe for pedestrians and bicyclists, have a workable plan for emergencies which cares for all dependents, and engage in sustainable urban food production.

                 

(5) Ride bicycle or walk to your eco-village hub

Step One:  Identify your local commercial hub and do errands there without using fossil fuel; take public transit if your destination is further or you are physically challenged.

Note:  As you walk and bike your neighborhood you may notice places which need   shade trees.  These locations can become urban agriforestry projects.

At full sustainability Tucson will be organized into 60 to 80 complete eco-villages to which people can walk or bike.   These eco-villages will be connected by a safe comprehensive system of bike paths which do not mingle with auto traffic.

(6) Plant A Food Bearing Tree

Step One:  Dig a hole and bust through the caliche.  

Note:  This is more fun if you dig with friends and throw a party when the tree is planted.  Get hold of a caliche bar.  Contact Tucson Botanical Gardens or Tucson Organic Gardeners for best species of trees to plant in your location.

At full sustainability Tucson will be an edible urban forest.

(7) Save food scraps and compost with worms

Step One:  Build a simple home made "worm farm."  Many websites teach how, e.g.: www.earth911.org/master.asp?s=lib&a=organics/composting/wormcompost.asp

Note:  Worms create worm castings and worm juice which are rich plant food.

At full sustainability Tucson's home kitchens, restaurants and cafeteries will be connected by a comprehensive composting program.

(8) Grow food in home garden or community garden

Step One:  Contact Tucson's Community Food Bank or Tucson Organic Gardeners for information on how to grow food.

Note:  We can garden year round in Tucson.   Water is our limiting factor; therefore, water harvesting for gardening is crucial.   Sustainable Tucson highly recommends Brad Lancaster's book Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands, available at Antigone Books, Silverbell Trading, and through Sustainable Tucson in case quantities.

At full sustainability, Tucson and its bioregion will be mostly food self-sufficient.  

(9) Educate yourself and Tucson's representatives about sustainability. 

Step One:  Read the voter's guide for the upcoming election.   Who takes sustainable positions on solar and wind energy, mass transit, bike paths, water conservation?

Note:  Sustainability education is enjoyable in a group.  Our eco-zone potlucks are a wonderful way to share books, DVD's, videos, and ideaswith each other.  Why not start a group in your neighborhood?  Then invite a person running for office.

At full sustainability any school child will be able to tell a visitor to Tucson how our sustainable city works.

(10) Become an entrepreneur in the growing sustainable economy

Step One:  Identify your own art/passion/potential product or service.

Note:  Many entrepreneurs (self-employed people) market products and services. 

At full sustainability, Tucson (including its bioregion) will be mostly self-sufficient for water,

food, energy, and transportation.  Tucson's sustainable infrastructure will need to be planned, installed, and maintained by local businesses attuned to our city's terrain and culture.   Tucson will have a local credit clearing house which keeps our region's financial resources circulating locally.  

Written by Lindianne Sarno with Nicole Christine, Bob Cook, Tom Greco, and Joanie Sawyer.  

©Sustainable Tucson 2006.

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