Author Archives: curiouscat

Snow Leopard Playing in the Snow in Ohio

Photo by Karen Schiely/Akron Beacon Journal

While many people were getting tired of the massive snowfall over the last week others are having fun, including some animals having Snow fun at the Akron Zoo

Shanti, a 1-year-old snow leopard that took up residence at the Akron Zoo last fall, thinks the snowfall and subfreezing temperatures are great fun, said David Barnhardt, director of marketing and guest services.

”It may be one of her first snowfalls,” Barnhardt said of the youngster that came to the zoo from The Binder Park Zoo in Battle Creek, Mich. ”She’s literally doing back flips,” he said.
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Also taking advantage of the snow and a respite from zoo visitors were red pandas, who thoroughly enjoyed playing outside, Barnhardt said.

My furnace chose the start of this snowfall, to break so I am surviving a few days without central heating. Doing so reminds me of the conveniences I take for granted – like being warm in the winter. It also makes me think that it would be nice to have fur like a snow leopard for a few days.
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$100,000 Lemelson-MIT Award for Sustainability

[Sadly the video was made private so I removed it. It is disappointing how often people fail to follow decade old usability advice to make internet urls permanent]

According to the United Nations, more than 40 percent of Africans live in poverty, subsisting on less than US$1 a day. As co-founder and CEO of the nonprofit social enterprise KickStart, Fisher develops and markets moneymaking tools such as low-cost, human-powered irrigation pumps that improve the lives of small-scale rural farmers – the majority of the poor in sub-Saharan Africa.

“These poor rural farmers have one asset: a small plot of land; and one basic skill: farming. The best business they can pursue is irrigated farming,” Fisher explained. “Once they employ irrigation, the farmers can grow and sell high-value crops, like fruits and vegetables. They can grow year-round and reap four or five harvests, instead of waiting for the rain to grow a staple crop once or twice a year.”

Engineering Majors Hold 8 of Top 10 Highest Paid Majors

In August, employers responding to a NACE survey reported plans to trim their college hiring, hiring 7% for 2010 graduates from 2009. In addition, just 29% of those employers said they would increase their starting salary offers for the Class of 2010.

Most, but not all majors, experienced salary decreases. In fact, as a group, graduates with computer-related degrees (computer programming, computer science, computer systems analysis, and information sciences/systems) posted a 6.1% increase – the highest increase reported, which pushed their average up from $56,128 to $59,570. Among those earning a computer science degree, the average rose 4.8% to $61,205.

As a whole, engineering graduates also fared well. Their average salary offer as a group is up by 1.2% to $59,245. Although that increase is modest, engineering majors account for eight of 10 top-paid bachelor’s degrees in the Winter 2010 Salary Survey.

Major	Average Salary Offer
Petroleum Engineering	$86,220
Chemical Engineering	$65,142
Mining & Minteral Engineering (incl. geological)	$64,552
Computer Science	$61,205
Computer Engineering	$60,879
Electrical/Electronics & Communications Engineering	$59,074
Mechanical Engineering	$58,392
Industrial/Manufacturing Engineering	$57,734
Aerospace/Aeronautical/Astronautical Engineering	$57,231
Information Sciences & Systems	$54,038

Crow Using a Sequence of Three Tools

This crow was the first animal observed using 3 tools in the correct sequence, without explicit training.

Slime Mold and Engineers Design Similar Solution

Slime Mold Grows Network Just Like Tokyo Rail System

Talented and dedicated engineers spent countless hours designing Japan’s rail system to be one of the world’s most efficient. Could have just asked a slime mold.

When presented with oat flakes arranged in the pattern of Japanese cities around Tokyo, brainless, single-celled slime molds construct networks of nutrient-channeling tubes that are strikingly similar to the layout of the Japanese rail system, researchers from Japan and England report Jan. 22 in Science. A new model based on the simple rules of the slime mold’s behavior may lead to the design of more efficient, adaptable networks, the team contends.
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The yellow slime mold Physarum polycephalum grows as a single cell that is big enough to be seen with the naked eye. When it encounters numerous food sources separated in space, the slime mold cell surrounds the food and creates tunnels to distribute the nutrients. In the experiment, researchers led by Toshiyuki Nakagaki, of Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan, placed oat flakes (a slime mold delicacy) in a pattern that mimicked the way cities are scattered around Tokyo, then set the slime mold loose.
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Initially, the slime mold dispersed evenly around the oat flakes, exploring its new territory. But within hours, the slime mold began to refine its pattern, strengthening the tunnels between oat flakes while the other links gradually disappeared. After about a day, the slime mold had constructed a network of interconnected nutrient-ferrying tubes. Its design looked almost identical to that of the rail system surrounding Tokyo, with a larger number of strong, resilient tunnels connecting centrally located oats. “There is a remarkable degree of overlap between the two systems,” Fricker says.

New Funding for arXiv Online Scientific Repository

The Cornell University Library is broadening the funding base for the arVix online scientific repository. Nearly 600,000 e-prints – research articles published online in physics, mathematics, statistics, computer science and related disciplines – now reside in arXiv, which is an open information source for hundreds of thousands of scientific researchers.

arXiv will remain free for readers and submitters, but the Library has established a voluntary, collaborative business model to engage institutions that benefit most from arXiv. “Keeping an open-access resource like arXiv sustainable means not only covering its costs, but also continuing to enhance its value, and that kind of financial commitment is beyond a single institution’s resources,” said Oya Rieger, Associate University Librarian for Information Technologies. “If a case can be made for any repository being community-supported, arXiv has to be at the top of the list.”

The 200 institutions that use arXiv most heavily account for more than 75 percent of institutional downloads. Cornell is asking these institutions for financial support in the form of annual contributions, and most of the top 25 have already committed to helping arXiv.

arXiv’s original dissemination model represented the first significant means to provide expedited access to scientific research well ahead of formal publication. Researchers upload their own articles to arXiv, and they are usually made available to the public the next day. arXiv, founded by physics professor Paul Ginsparg, has about 400,000 users and serves more than 2.5 million article downloads per month. Its 101,000 registered submitters live in nearly 200 countries.

arXiv is interconnected with many other scholarly information resources. These include the INSPIRE system being developed by supporting high-energy physics laboratories CERN, DESY, Fermilab and SLAC, as well as the Astrophysics Data System at Harvard University, another supporting institution. Read details about the operating principles of the new structure.

Bewick’s Swan Divorce

photo of Sarindi and Sarind (by Colin Butters)

Experts stunned by swan ‘divorce’ at Slimbridge wetland

It is only the second time in more than 40 years that a “separation” has been recorded at the centre. Staff have described the new couplings as “bizarre”. It is not unheard of for the birds, which usually mate for life, to find a new mate but it tends to be because one of the pair has died, they said.

During the past four decades 4,000 pairs of Bewick’s swans have been studied at Slimbridge, with only one previous couple moving on to find new partners.
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First suspicions of the rare event were raised when male swan Sarindi turned up in the annual migration from Arctic Russia without his partner of two years Saruni and with a new female – newly-named Sarind – in tow.

The pair’s arrival led conservationists to fear the worst for Saruni. But shortly afterwards Saruni arrived at the wetlands site – also with a new mate, Surune.
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As for why they may have split, she said: “Failure to breed could be a possible reason, as they had been together for a couple of years but had never brought back a cygnet, but it is difficult to say for sure.”

Bewick’s swans are the smallest and rarest of the three species found in the UK and each individual can be identified by their unique bill pattern.

Apple’s iPad

Steve Jobs introduces the Apple iPad. A touch screen tablet with wireless internet connectivity and a touch screen keyboard (when desired).

Infinity Project: Engineering Education for Today’s Classroom

The Infinity Project is a national middle school, high school, and early college engineering curricula. The math and science-based engineering and technology education initiative helps educators deliver a maximum of engineering exposure with a minimum of training, expense and time. Created to help students see the real value of math and science and its varied applications to high tech engineering – The Infinity Project is working with schools all across the country to bring the best of engineering to their students.

The Infinity Project curriculum is a complete, year-long course designed to complement the existing mix of math and science classes. Experience in classrooms all across the United States shows that Infinity keeps students challenged, learning and exploring from start to finish. Using The Infinity Project curriculum in the classroom, students learn firsthand how to use math and science to create and design a wide variety of new and exciting technologies that focus on topics of interest to students – the Internet and cell phones, digital video and movie special effects, and electronic music.

Engineering Our Digital Future is designed for early college students or high school students who have completed Algebra II and at least one science course. The course focuses on the fundamentals of modern engineering and technology in the information and communications age.

Unique Dolphin Strategy for Hunting Fish

A pod of bottle-nose dolphins off the coast of Florida have developed a hunting technique unknown in other dolphins. One swims in a circle stirring up mud and then the dolphins wait to catch fish that jump out of the water to escape the contracting circle of muddy water.