// Thx to Liza Sperling, Stephen Wildish

Venture capitalists invested $5.8 billion in 758 deals in the first quarter of 2012.

The report shows that after a strong fourth quarter 2011, VC investment activity for the quarter fell 19 percent in terms of dollars and 15 percent in the number of deals compared to the fourth quarter of 2011 when $7.1 billion was invested in 889 deals.

• Life Sciences and Clean Technology sectors saw decreases
• Double-digit percentage increases in the Consumer Products and Services, and Telecommunications industries.
• The Software industry received the highest level of funding for all industries

 

Read the full report – Leena Rao, TechCrunch

Earth Day is this Sunday, April 22, 2012, and here is the ultimate round-up of events:
 
National Park Week - Free entrance to all U.S. National Parks

Looking for something fun, free, and fantastic to do with family and friends?

Head out to America’s national parks where millions of stars light up the dark night sky, deer and antelope (and a few other critters!) play on the wide open range, and history is an unbelievable experience, not an exam.

And the best news? During National Park Week, April 21-29, All 397 of your national parks offer free admission, all week long!

 
The Nature Conservancy – Picnic for the Planet

Feel like breaking a world record? Join the Nature Conservancy in their giant Picnic for the Planet sandwich-munching extravaganza. The goal is to set a record for the largest picnic celebration ever. The picnic sites are dotted across the country.

 
Wyland Foundation – Pledge to Conserve Water

To mark the Clean Water Act’s 40th anniversary, the Wyland Foundation has invited cities across the nation — broken into groups by population — to compete at collecting pledges by individuals to cut down on water and energy use in the month of April.

 
World Wildlife Federation – Create a webpage about an Endangered Species

The World Wildlife Fund is inviting people to create their own Web pages to spotlight a favorite endangered species or cause by using W.W.F.’s easy-to-navigate software.

 
Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E)

A slideshow showcasing potentially transformative energy technologies from the 3rd annual ARPA-E summit.

 
Scientific American – 10 Surprising Recycling Efforts (from bras to crayons)

A slideshow, in observance of Earth Day 2012, that helps consumers move well beyond the throw-it-out mentality.

 
2 free iPhone apps about our National Parks

Two apps that feature national parks have arrived just in time for Earth Day. And they’re free, which goes nicely with the Saturday start of fee-free National Park Week. So download the app, pick a park to visit and go.

• Fotopedia National Parks
• National Parks by National Geographic

 
Earth Day in Photographs

April 22 will mark Earth Day worldwide, an event now in its 42nd year and observed in 175 countries. The original grass-roots environmental action helped spur the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act in the United States. Gathered here are images of our planet’s environment, efforts to utilize renewable alternative sources of energy, and the effects of different forms of pollution.

Elephants forage on March 20, 2012 in the Tsavo-east National Park.

The holiday is Earth Day — the 43rd to be held since Gaylord Nelson, then a Democratic senator from Wisconsin, proposed that a “national teach-in” on the environment be held on April 22, 1970.

So, how best to celebrate, honor, reflect on or brood about the planet? Here are a few ideas:

Continue Reading

The peak of the Lyrid meteor shower will be viewable all over the world this Saturday night. With the best rates seen just before dawn. The Lyrids can offer a shower of activity, with peak meteor rates between 10-100 per hour. This year Dr. Cooke estimates that the rate will be around 15 per hour, though he is hoping for a surprise increase above this!

The Lyrids are pieces of debris from the periodic Comet C/1861 G1 Thatcher and have been observed for more than 2,600 years. In mid-April of each year, Earth runs into the stream of debris from the comet, which causes the Lyrid meteor shower.

Also, NASA plans to have an expert chat during the event, where you can ask questions to meteor experts and view live feeds:

If you’re looking for a fun way to spend an early spring weekend, make plans to stay “up all night” with NASA experts to watch the Lyrids brighten the skies. On Saturday, April 21, from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. EDT, meteor experts Dr. Bill Cooke, Danielle Moser and Rhiannon Blaauw from NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center will answer your questions about the Lyrids via a live Web chat.

Joining the chat is easy. Simply visit this page a few minutes before 11 p.m. EDT on Saturday, April 21. The chat module will appear at the bottom of this page. After you log in, wait for the chat module to be activated, then ask your questions!

A live video feed of the Lyrid meteor shower will be embedded on the page on the night of the Web chat, and there will be alternate allsky views being streamed from the allsky camera network.

learn more - NASA

// Thx to Chris Kim A

BRICKED FINALE: LEGO SUPER STAR DESTROYER VS. LEGO DEATH STAR

After more than 20 episodes, Will and Norm compare their completed Lego builds. Norm pits his Super Star Destroyer against will’s Death Star.

Photos of both below and, Norm is right, they are expensive. Here are links for the $400 Super Star Destroyer with 3,152 pieces, and the $400 Death Star with 3,803 pieces.

As the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration prepares to let civilian unmanned aircraft operate in domestic airspace, universities including Embry-Riddle have created majors in flying and building drones. Enrollment is accelerating as students look for new opportunities in an aviation job market pummeled by airline bankruptcies.

The drone industry, estimated worldwide at $5.9 billion annually, will expand to $11.3 billion by 2021.

During the past 10 years, drones have become a vital military tool in Iraq and Afghanistan, creating a platform to attack terrorists without risking pilots’ lives and giving ground troops a chance to see their opponents from the air.

Congress passed bills in December and February that ordered the FAA to create six test sites for flying unmanned aircraft alongside regular planes. The agency must also complete a plan for integrating unmanned flights into the aviation system by Sept. 30, 2015.

Unmanned aircraft could be used for photography, police surveillance and monitoring pipelines and power lines. U.S. Customs and Border Protection has special permission to use drones.

more at - Bloomberg

Here are a selection of drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), used by the military. I suspect the first to be employed privately will be the helicopters for police surveillance.

A BQM-74E aerial drone is launched from the guided-missile frigate USS Thach (FFG 43) during a live-fire exercise.

Global Hawk Drone.

First flown in 2002, the Boeing X-45A was the first modern UAV designed specifically for combat strike missions. The stealthy, swept-wing jet has fully retractable landing gear and a composite, fiber-reinforced epoxy skin. Its fuselage houses two internal weapons bays.

The U.S. Navy's Fire Scout Vertical Takeoff and Landing Tactical Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (VTUAV) launches into its flight test program.

A Shadow Unmanned Aerial Vehicle is being attended to by three soldiers at Forward Operating Base Fenty, Jalalabad Airfield, Afghanistan.

A Northrop Grumman RQ-8B Fire Scout Vertical Take-Off and Landing Tactical Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (VTUAV) System.

// Photos – An Honorable German, Rennett Stowe, Cliff1066, Marion Doss, US Army Africa, & Marion Doss

// Thx to Kosso K

I'd love to be an Astrophysicist or specifically a Theoretical Cosmologist.

The Space Lab competition from YouTube invited young scientists to submit an experiment for the chance to have it performed by NASA aboard the International Space Station.

From among thousands of entrants, six regional winners have been chosen. In North America, Emerald Bresnahan of Plainville, Massachusetts, was chosen for her Snowflakes in Space experiment.

Emerald suggests that galaxies might form in a similar way to snowflakes. She wants to test how snowflakes form in the absence of gravity to better understand the link between them and other complex shapes like galaxies. Will these tiny structures give us the answers to some of our biggest questions about the Universe?

You can also view her entry video on YouTube.

If you’re free this weekend, April 21-22, 2012, you might want to attend the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. The largest book festival in the country with more than 140,000 attendees, 400 authors, 300 exhibitors, 100 panels, cooking demonstrations, and poetry readings.

The festival is a free public event held on the campus of University of Southern California (USC).

One note is that the panels require $1 reservations, not sold the day-of. These will be some of the most interesting events, including movie screenings, celebrity authors, and special releases, so it is worth it to get them now before they sell out.

Out of the 120+ panels, here are the ones that tickled our fancy:

• DIY Revolution
• Future Books: Media in the Digital Age
• Disposable Nation: Trash & Consequences
• Anne Rice in Conversation with Scott Timberg
• The Nerds Shall Inherit the Earth

We will be there all-day Sunday and hope to see you!

 
To learn more about the festival, here is an article from the LA Times:

What do Sugar Ray Leonard, Judy Blume, Betty White, T.C. Boyle, Rodney King, Joseph Wambaugh and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar have in common? They’re just a few of the high-profile personalities appearing this weekend at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.

This year’s festival blends familiar features with newer events reflecting what’s hot today in the literary marketplace. While festival goers can…listen to novelist Anne Rice discuss her latest supernatural fiction (Sunday) and Ben Fong-Torres’ memories of his Rolling Stone days (Saturday), actor John Cusack will discuss not a book but his latest book-related project, the film “The Raven,” in which he portrays Edgar Allan Poe, on Saturday.”

The U.S. Postal Service will conduct its opening ceremony for the stamp series “Twentieth-Century poets” Saturday at the Poetry stage; though graphic novels receive their fair share of panel attention, thanks to USC’s School for Cinematic Arts there will also be screenings of a director’s cut of the movie”Watchmen”and the documentary “With Great Power: The Stan Lee Story.”

In a new twist for HBO, they have posted episode 1 of their new series, Girls, on YouTube. The show, which will only be available until May 14, is about four college graduates struggling to get by in New York City.

A sort-of Sex in the City, the early years. The bio from HBO:

Created by and starring Lena Dunham (“Tiny Furniture”), the show is a comic look at the assorted humiliations and rare triumphs of a group of girls in their early 20s. Dunham wrote and directed the pilot of the series, which she executive produces along with Judd Apatow and Jenni Konner.  The cast also includes Jemima Kirke, Allison Williams, Adam Driver and Zosia Mamet.  Episodes were shot in New York. The ten-episode season debuts in 2012.

Watch the full pilot episode – Girls

Clip – “you know that part about special skills on your resume…”

An interactive Flash animation titled “Scale Of The Universe 2“, covering everything in the universe from the fabric of space-time to the estimated size of the universe, was posted earlier this year, and it is awesome. A month or so later, it went viral, but why…so popular?

First, the actual scale of the universe is mind blowing as it spans 62 orders of magnitude (that’s multiplying 62 10′s together).

Second, the animation is very well produced and packed with information.

Third, it was created by a 14-year-old, Cary Huang, and his twin brother, Michael, who worked on it for a year and a half as a fun project…

via The Singularity Hub

It’s true, it is really fun to play with, especially with all the weird objects they use for comparisons. I snapped a few screenshots below to show you some of them.

The first one is where the animation starts and the second is after scrolling out a bit. In both, you can see the size of a human in comparison to many objects (in the second one, there is a tiny human in the center).

In the last screenshot, you can see how California, Texas, and Italy are about the size of many moons and Pluto!

The Scale of the Universe 2

A new study from Carnegie Mellon University found that in 2010, video games wasted about 1% of America’s electrical energy.

They found that up to 75% of energy consumed by video game consoles is during idle use, because the machines don’t have an auto-power-down feature (like every computer does).

The authors of the study say the cost of implementing this feature is marginal and would save more than $1 billion in utility costs.

More details:

- By the end of 2010, over 75 million current generation video game consoles (Microsoft Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, and Sony PlayStation 3) had been sold, meaning that many homes have two or more current generation game consoles

- We estimate that the total electricity consumption of video game consoles in the US was around 11 TWh in 2007 and 16 TWh in 2010 (approximately 1 % of US residential electricity consumption), an increase of almost 50 % in 3 years.

- The most effective energy-saving modification is incorporation of a default auto power down feature, which could reduce electricity consumption of game consoles by 75 % (10 TWh reduction of electricity in 2010).

- A simple improvement that could be implemented now via firmware updates to power the console down after 1 hour of inactivity. Though two of the three current generation consoles have this capability, it is not enabled by default, a modification that would be trivial for console manufacturers.

- Saving consumers over $1 billion annually in electricity bills.

Scott Lowe at The Verge points out that in May 2011, Microsoft did update Xbox 360′s firmware to enable auto-power-down by default. Now it’s up to the rest of industry to catch-up.

Full study available – Electricity consumption and energy savings potential of video game consoles in the United States

// Photo – Jami3.org

On Wednesday, celebrations took place across the UK to mark 100 days to go until the London 2012 Olympic Games.

260 Guardsmen from Guard mark 100 days to go to the London 2012 Olympic Games. Shown are Horse Guards Parade in central London – venue for the Beach Volleyball competition.

Giant Olympic Rings in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. The Rings, 15.5 metres each in circumference, are made up of a total of 20,000 plants and are visible from the Heathrow flight path.

Weymouth and Portland – location for the London 2012 Sailing competitions – have marked 100 days to go to the Olympic Games by building a giant sandcastle featuring the Olympic Rings on Weymouth beach.

A recent article in the Economist used a complex, but somewhat small in scope, survey to study wisdom. They found that Americans definitely get smarter with age. They scored 45 points at age 25, and 55 by age 75.

In comparison, the Japanese learn wisdom much quicker, scoring 51 in both age groups.

This led to the byline – Americans get wiser with age. Japanese are wise from the start.

Very interesting and thoughtful, but I found it more inspiring to look at how they judged wisdom.

The assessors scored participants’ responses on a scale of one to three. This attempted to capture the degree to which they discussed what psychologists consider five crucial aspects of wise reasoning:

• Willingness to seek opportunities to resolve conflict;
• Willingness to search for compromise;
• Recognition of the limits of personal knowledge;
• Awareness that more than one perspective on a problem can exist;
• Appreciation of the fact that things may get worse before they get better.

Basically, how good of a – diplomat/negotiator/self-aware/empathetic/realist – are you?

// Thx to Kirby Plessas

A couple of years ago bike sharing came to Washington D.C. when I was living there. At first the concept confused me until someone explained that it’s like a taxi, designed to get you from one point to another. With enough stations it can be a convenient, healthy, and cheaper method to get around town.

I ended up using them everyday for about a month and loving it. Now, that same service is coming to Los Angeles:

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will unveil a $16-million bike-share program Sunday that aims to put thousands of bicycles at hundreds of rental kiosks across the city.

Initial plans are to add 400 stations and 4,000 bicycles over the next 18 to 24 months in areas around downtown Los Angeles, Hollywood, Playa del Rey, Westwood and Venice Beach.

The private investment from Bike Nation will not need any city money, according to the mayor’s office and the company. Bike Nation has agreed to a minimum contract of 10 years.

“This is exactly what L.A. needs,” CicLAvia organizer Aaron Paley said. “If you take the bus, or you take the train, or you’re walking out of your house and you need to get somewhere, how do you accomplish that short trip in between? Bike share is definitely the way to do it.”

more at - LA Times Local

The service becomes one more crucial link for those living a car-free life.

The rates are much cheaper than a taxi at $1.50/hour or $6/day, with trips shorter than 30 minutes being free. But you can expect most folks to one-year pass for $75 (students/seniors, $60).

Bike Nation also has plans to create a smaller program in Anaheim in June.

“The same wind that used to pump water for cattle is now turning giant wind turbines to power cities and homes.”

“The blades only turn about 18 RPM, not nearly fast enough to create electricity, so the rotor shaft spins a series of gears that increase the rotation up to 1800 RPM. At that speed the generator can produce a lot of electricity.”

Historical photos of UCLA and Westwood village from the late-1920s to late-1930s, just as the school and campus was being built.

The first day of classes in Westwood were in 1929 with 5,500 students and was also the first year the UCLA football team played the USC football team.

Thx to KS Bruin

Royce Hall on the first day of classes, 1929. The building was ready...the grounds not so much. 

Aerial view of campus, 1929. The original four buildings are (mostly) done, as is the bridge, but Janss Steps aren't yet, nor is there much of anything surrounding campus.

The bridge (famous, secret, hidden, mythology) between Schoenberg and Perloff. Now completely underground with all the area around it filled in to make it look a road, except for those secret tunnels...that all Freshman are told about.

Another aerial shot showing Moore Hall and Janss Steps under construction.

Pulled from Quora, here is one of the best, and most popular, answers to a question. Written by Mark Eichenlaub, a graduate student in physics.

How close does an object have to be to earth to be pulled by gravity?

This question doesn’t have a direct answer because, for lack of a less-direct way of saying it, that’s not the way it works. If there were no atmosphere, you could have the ISS be just above the surface of the Earth, high enough only to clear the mountains. On the other hand, you could have something as far out as the moon, and if it weren’t going fast enough and in the right direction, it would still fall back down. The ISS doesn’t stay up because of how high it is, but because of a combination of that and how fast it’s going.

One of the most difficult things to learn about physics is the concept of force. A force in a given direction does not make things go straight in that direction. Instead, it influences the motion to be a bit more in the direction of the force than it was before.

For example, if you roll a bowling ball straight down a lane, then run up beside it and kick it towards the gutter, you apply a force towards the gutter, but the ball doesn’t go straight into the gutter. Instead it keeps going down the lane, but picks up a little bit of diagonal motion as well.

Now we can talk about an very early thought experiment in physics. Imagine you’re standing at the edge of a cliff 100m tall. If you drop a rock off, it will fall straight down. If you throw the rock out horizontally, it will fall down, but it will keep moving out horizontally as it does so, and falls at an angle. (The angle isn’t constant – the shape is a curve called a parabola, but that’s relatively unimportant here.)

The the force is straight down, but that force doesn’t stop the rock from moving horizontally. If you throw the rock horizontally harder, it goes further, and falls at a shallower angle. The force on it is the same, but the original velocity was much bigger and so the deflection is less.

Now imagine throwing the rock so hard it travels one kilometer horizontally before it hits the ground. If you do that, something slightly new happens. The rock still falls, but it has to fall more than just 100m before it hits the ground. The reason is that the Earth is curved, and so as the rock traveled out that kilometer, the Earth was actually curving away underneath of it. In one kilometer, it turns out the Earth curves away by about 10 centimeters – a small difference, but a real one.

As you throw the rock even harder than that, the curving away of the Earth underneath becomes more significant. If you could throw the rock 10 kilometers, the Earth would now curve away by 10 meters, and for a 100 km throw the Earth curves away by an entire kilometer. Now the stone has to fall a very long way down compared to the 100m cliff it was dropped from. Continue Reading

Despite its reputation as a female-dominated social network — or perhaps because of that? — every team in Major League Baseball is now actively using Pinterest.

All 30 MLB teams also have official pages on Google+ and officials blogs on Tumblr. And the league itself also has an official presence on all three social networks.

The league and all of its teams have already been active on Facebook and Twitter for some time now, but only recently expanded its collective social media footprint to Pinterest, Google+ and Tumblr.

Some teams are already doing well for themselves on Pinterest. As I type this, the Milwaukee Brewers have attracted the biggest audience with its 906 followers. The team also has a substantial profile that currently counts 18 different boards.

via Marketing Land

 
And, my team, the Angels, has a not-too-shabby 131 followers with some great photos:

My Country – by tUnE-yArDs

Tune-Yards (stylized as tUnE-yArDs) is the music project of New England native Merrill Garbus. When performing live, Garbus creates drum loops on the spot, and layers these with ukulele, voice, and electric bass (played by Nate Brenner).