Category: Science

Education History Life Politics Science Technology Travel

0° 0′ 00″

Post author By srungta
Post date October 21, 2009

The imaginary line now known as the Greenwich Prime Meridian not only allows us to navigate the globe but also keeps the world ticking to the same symbolic 24-hour clock. But it has not always been so. Until the 19th Century, many countries and even individual towns kept their own local time based on the sun’s passage across the sky and there were no international rules governing when the day would start or finish.

How did Britain get to be the centre of all time and space? The real reason the meridian is at Greenwich is that the Astronomer Royal at Greenwich was the first – indeed, really the only – person to have done the research required to calculate navigational tables. He naturally took his own telescope as the baseline, and once the nautical almanacs which resulted were published no-one could be bothered to do the research all over again merely to establish a different base. It’s important to note that the meridian is at Greenwich, not Charing Cross: so it honours a great scientist rather than Britain. And who was that scientist? None other than Nevil Maskelyne, the villain of Dava Sobel’s popular book Longitude, but arguably the real solver of the longitude problem.

Read the article: At the centre of time

Education History Science

New work by Archimedes discovered

Post author By srungta
Post date October 11, 2009

A long-lost text by the ancient Greek mathematician shows that he had begun to discover the principles of calculus. The top layer of writing in this 700-year-old book describes Christian prayers. But underneath, almost obliterated, are the only surviving copies of many of the works of the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes. Two of the texts hiding in the prayer book have not appeared in any other copy of Archimedes’s work; one of them, titled The Method, has special historical significance. It could be considered the earliest known work on calculus. Archimedes wrote The Method almost two thousand years before Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz developed calculus in the 1700s.

Read the article: A Prayer For Archimedes

Business China Education Finance India Life Science Social Technology

Skilled Immigrants on Why They’re Leaving the U.S.

Post author By srungta
Post date July 27, 2009

A long wait for a green card, coupled with the soft U.S. economy, is prompting an exodus of some of the best and brightest — Lured by the prospect of climbing to the top of his field, New Delhi native Swaroop Ganguly came to the U.S. 10 years ago and earned a PhD in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 2005. He became an expert in an emerging technology called spintronics, used to power semiconductors, and worked at several chip companies, including Freescale Semiconductor. But Ganguly, now 32, is moving back to India this summer. Although he has been doing postdoctoral work at the University of Texas, he figures his prospects for research and professional development are probably better in his home country. “I feel quite excited about going back,” he says.

Read the article: Skilled Immigrants on Why They’re Leaving the U.S. – BusinessWeek

Education Innovation Life Productivity Science

The Cone of Learning

Something very interesting, slightly questionable, but beautifully summarises how different ways of learning can affect retention of information. Taken from Robert Kiyosaki‘s book ‘Financial IQ’, the diagram is inspired by but a highly convoluted version of the second graph below known as the ‘Cone of Experience’ originally conceived by Edgar Dale in 1969 (notice that it did not have any numbers).

‘Cone of Experience’ originally conceived by Edgar Dale:

Verbal Symbols < Visual Symbols < Recordings Radio Still Pictures < Motion Pictures < Educational Television < Exhibits < Study Trips < Demonstrations < Dramatized Experiences < Contrived Experiences < Direct Purposeful Experiences.

Tags Edgar Dale, Experience, Learning, Robert Kiyosaki

Education History Politics Science Technology

Moon landing tapes got erased, not lost

Post author By goelp
Post date July 17, 2009

The original recordings of the first humans landing on the moon 40 years ago were erased and re-used, but newly restored copies of the original broadcast look even better, NASA officials said on Thursday.

“The good news is he found where they went. The bad news is they were part of a batch of 200,000 tapes that were degaussed — magnetically erased — and re-used to save money.”

Read the article: NewsDaily: Moon landing tapes got erased, NASA admits

Business Innovation Science Technology

Breakthrough Can Put 100 DVDs on a Disc

Post author By srungta
Post date April 27, 2009

A disc that can store 500 gigabytes (GB) of data, equivalent to 100 DVDs, has been unveiled by General Electric. The micro-holographic disc, which is the same size as existing DVD discs, is aimed at the archive industry. But the company believes it can eventually be used in the consumer market place and home players. More here.

Read the article: Optical disc offers 500GB storage

Business Education Innovation Life Productivity Science Technology

Revolutionary Espresso Book Machine

Post author By srungta
Post date April 26, 2009

It’s not elegant and it’s not sexy — it looks like a large photocopier — but the Espresso Book Machine is being billed as the biggest change for the literary world since Gutenberg invented the printing press more than 500 years ago and made the mass production of books possible. Launching today at Blackwell’s Charing Cross Road branch in London, the machine prints and binds books on demand in five minutes, while customers wait.

The Espresso Book Machine — which actually is a self-contained 150 pages-per-minute printing and binding machine — can produce a full book in five minutes from a catalog of 400,000 references. It only takes one button. High-speed all-in-one printing-and-binding machines are not new, but this idea is. Using the Espresso Book Machine, any customer can walk in, pick any book from a touchscreen (or bring its own in CD or USB stick,) and walk away with a “real book” in five minutes. The price? Around $43 for a 300-page out-of-copyright book. Some photos here.

Read the article: Revolutionary Espresso Book Machine launches in London