Saturday, October 12, 2013

12/10/2013: WLASze Part 1: Weekend Links on Arts, Sciences and zero economics

This is the first WLASze: Weekend Links on Arts, Sciences and zero economics for this weekend. The first instalment is on sciences, so a bit heavy on some topics. Enjoy.


Starting with a very very old stuff: according to the Russian researchers, the meteorite that exploded above a Russian city of Chelyabinsk (and on youtube screens) in February was about 4.56 billion years old, or as old as the Solar System itself.
http://en.ria.ru/science/20131004/183951992/Russian-Meteorite-as-Old-as-Solar-System--Scientist.html
Infographic with some details on meteorite impact is available here: http://en.ria.ru/infographics/20130215/179495177/Meteorite-Fragments-Hit-Russia.html


A cool, quick (and simple) list of top 5 most important physics discoveries of the last 25 years via BusinessInsider… oh and they throw in 5 future discoveries that are likely to change the world too:
http://www.businessinsider.com/top-5-modern-physics-discoveries-2013-10
My personal favourites: measuring the neutrino mass using Japan's Super-Kamiokande neutrino detector… archi-cool… and from the futures list - quantum computing…

While on physics and sciences - Nobel Prizes this year:
Chemistry: http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2013/oct/09/chemistry-nobel-honours-trio-who-combined-classical-and-quantum-physics
Physics: http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2013/oct/08/englert-and-higgs-bag-2013-nobel-prize-for-physics
Physiology or Medicine: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/oct/07/nobel-prize-medicine-cell-transport-vesicles
All worthy, in my view, unlike this year's Nobel Peace Prize. Peace Prize 2013 is a bit of a dodo, to be honest, just like some previous ones: http://www.businessinsider.com/12-worst-nobel-peace-prize-winners-2013-10. In this category in general, the Nobels are often given for uninspiring, bizarre reasons.
Literature Prize: also too often given for political reasons or for the reasons of obscure complexity and academism - was given this year to seemingly a worthy recipient: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/11/books/alice-munro-wins-nobel-prize-in-literature.html?_r=0

We are obviously holding our breath for Economics 'Nobel' - to be announced comes Monday. My best are in with a number of news outlets, but I'd rather keep them off the blog, as I generally prefer to avoid making predictions...


On a lighter (only slightly) scale of things: for aspiring physics fans: Physics World at 25 puzzle page: http://blog.physicsworld.com/category/physics-world-at-25-puzzle/


In continuation of the links I posted last week on the merger of materials sciences, human-tech interfaces and new tech development, here's an article about the latest discoveries in the metal composition are, showing shape-changing properties of metal crystal: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24400101
And while on it: an article on 'smart' fabrics: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20799344
And wearable tech: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7241040.stm
See my original links on the topic of 4D printing here: http://trueeconomics.blogspot.ie/2013/10/4102013-wlasze-part-1-weekend-links-on.html
These have now been incorporated into my talk about Human Capital-centric world and technological enablement which I will be delivering next comes early Monday at the Economic Forum / The Gathering-linked event in Ireland, hosted by the Irish-American biotech company, Alltech.


Talking of Irish researchers, we had some brilliant news out of TCD recently: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/republic-of-ireland/irish-scientists-in-solar-storms-breakthrough-29641467.html#sthash.p2oewCS2.BzoMB1YE.uxfs Basically, Trinity College researchers "have shown -- for the first time -- a direct link between solar storms, caused by explosions on the sun, and solar radio bursts, which cause the potentially dangerous communications disruptions on Earth."


The complex inter-relationship between observations, data collection and data analytics exemplified by TCD research mentioned above is, however, much more manageable than the data conundrums presented by ever-growing social data flows. Here is an excellent exposition of the problem http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/10/topology-data-sets/
The problem is not the size of the data we are getting, but the "the sheer complexity and lack of formal structure". Put differently, and in comparative to physics: "“In physics, you typically have one kind of data and you know the system really well,” said DeDeo. “Now we have this new multimodal data [gleaned] from biological systems and human social systems, and the data is gathered before we even have a hypothesis.” The data is there in all its messy, multi-dimensional glory, waiting to be queried, but how does one know which questions to ask when the scientific method has been turned on its head?"

And a related article: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/10/big-data-science/

Stay tuned for arts posting later today.


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