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Help the new PBS web series – A Moment of Science – go viral!

I’m excited for the new PBS web series, A Moment of Science. It will feature short video clips on YouTube discussing basic science concepts. I love the idea of skipping television and going straight for the web audience. But I think it all depends on the videos going viral.

They are off to a decent start with 300 Facebook likes, 70 plusses on Google+, and 10 retweets in 24 hours. But I think they need our help. Show your support for science by clicking one – or all – of the links to like, retweet, or share.

Here is the first video, enjoy!

Research: cheaper food means less nutrients

A few weeks ago, I shared a study that found nutrients in the U.S. food supply are declining. Which could explain why millions of Americans, who prefer to be thin, are overeating to get more nutrients.

Another study found that industrial farming techniques – including the use of petroleum-based fertilizer – reduces nutrient levels in food, while dramatically increasing yields. This means we have abundant cheap food with lowered nutrient levels:

This article summarizes three kinds of evidence pointing toward declines during the last 50 to 100 years in the concentration of some nutrients in vegetables and perhaps also in fruits. It has been noted since the 1940s that yield increases produced by fertilization, irrigation, and other environmental means tend to decrease the concentrations of minerals in plants.

Jarrell and Beverly (1981) reviewed the evidence for this well-known “dilution effect.” Although their review has been cited over 180 times (60 times from 2000 on), few mentions of the dilution effect contain a reference, suggesting that the effect is widely regarded as common knowledge.

Common among scientists perhaps, but the public is unaware. When I share this among friends and readers there is a strong disbelief, with the most common response being – food is cheaper. Yes it is, because it has been hollowed out like a pumpkin and there’s nothing left on the inside.

And that makes it a struggle to get the message out. How do I explain the dilution effect to a public obsessed with everything but this – from diet programs to food labels to coupon cutting that encourages cheaper food?

Continue reading “Research: cheaper food means less nutrients”

Forget critic reviews – enjoy the beautifully written narrations of AllMusic, AllMovies, & AllGames

One of the joys a Pandora listener experiences is hearing a song for the first time. That moment when the music genome offers up his ideal genetic match from an artist he’s never heard before. And when he clicks the bio to learn more, the AllMusic database loads up a charming piece of prose:

Undeniably ambitious, melodically exquisite, and flush with enough perfectly rendered fantasy metal clichés to feed an army of bards, druids, monks, paladins, and rangers as they set forth on a great cola-and-pizza/20-sided-die-fueled adventure, Iron Maiden’s seventh studio album is the sh$t.

Even Iron Maiden deserves charming prose. And this beautiful literature is found all across Pandora with even more on the AllMusic website. Where the curious fan can browse through any genre, mood, or theme that delights him. It’s such a rewarding experience that I recommend clearing up a few hours and diving in.

This experience is not limited to music, for there is also AllMovie and AllGame. And both provide endearing compositions:

The story in Chimpanzee centers on Oscar, a young simian born into a large family of 35 others, and eager to learn the ways of life in the jungle. As Oscar’s mother Isha teaches her newborn how to find food and avoid dangerous predators, the leader of their family, Freddy, vigilantly defends their territory from his rival Scar.

Atari’s dominance in the game industry was challenged by a company originally founded to sell leather supplies. Promising to “Bring the Arcade Experience Home,” Coleco released its much-anticipated ColecoVision in 1982, making history by firing the first shot in the inaugural console wars.

All three sites are a delight for any fan, and worth remembering for any purchase or move rental. I leave you with one more review for Ravi Coltrane’s newest album, to inspire you to go turn on some music:

Despite the metaphysical suggestion in Spirit Fiction’s title, this is Ravi Coltrane’s most cerebral, process-oriented recording to date. There is an abundance of emotion and sensual detail, most of it expressed gently, with the confidence — and authority — of a veteran bandleader.

Continue reading “Forget critic reviews – enjoy the beautifully written narrations of AllMusic, AllMovies, & AllGames”

Google Maps vs. Apple Maps

In one corner you have the heavyweight, Google Maps, with a seven-year head start and a vast amount of data. In the other corner you have the underdog with a very big bank account, Apple Maps.

Round one begins with the iPhone 5 – loaded with iOS 6 – removing all traces of Google Maps and replacing it with Apple Maps. So how do they compare?

From Mel Martin of TUAW:

Make no mistake. Maps for iOS 6 is a great achievement for Apple. Starting from basically a blank slate and making some strategic acquisitions and partnerships (TomTom, Placebase, C3, Poly9, Waze) in map data, POI information and 3D fly-over images, Maps is amazing for what it does. On the other hand, comparing it to Google Maps, which has been around since 2004 and leverages the company’s experience and expertise in mapping, is going to leave Apple coming up short.

Another reviewer, Brian Proffitt of ReadWriteWeb:

There are many new features getting introduced in the iOS 6 version of the Maps app, such as turn-by-turn navigation and a new “flyover” mode. But already many reviewers are missing the one thing that the new Maps doesn’t have: Google Maps data.

Instead, Apple’s mapping data is coming from vendors TomTom and Waze, with search data tied in to the Yelp location-based review service. And the new dataset may not just be lacking a little – there could be big gaps.

Which makes this a feature and data war. Who will have the best turn-by-turn navigation and the most useful innovation. And how will Apple complete their data set without using Google’s, which they have sworn to never use.

Of course, Google is firing back with their own update, on the same day Apple Maps is released. From the N.Y. Times Bits Blog:

The Google Maps for Android app (update) will make it easier to search for places on Android phones and personalize searches on maps. (It will also) sync across devices. Say you are making lunch plans and you search for a restaurant on your computer. Later, you pull out your phone to look up its location on Google Maps. If you were logged in to Google on your desktop computer earlier it will suggest the restaurant.

The battle begins with Google far ahead in terms of features and data, but Apple always has a strategy for winning and it usually involves a liberal arts twist. We can expect Google to continue its rapid improvement of Google Maps, like a car accelerating downhill. While Apple goes slowly uphill, working out the bugs in release one, then updating twice a year at their hardware and software Keynotes in September and January.

Continue reading “Google Maps vs. Apple Maps”

Amazon restarts the serial novel genre – with Charles Dickens and a Yoga murder mystery

I love that Amazon is rekindling the newspaper subscription through the e-reader. It invokes an image of reading the newspaper in the morning, with my coffee and family at the table. But replace the newspaper with a Kindle and does it still work?

If you’re a digital geek of course. And the beauty of online subscriptions is you have the world at your fingertips. I’ve subscribed to newspapers from Spain, Argentina, Houston, San Francisco, and more using the free 14-day trial.

Amazon sees a profit in this as they continue to push the subscription model, this time with Kindle Serials. From c|net:

A new service for Kindle owners, called Kindle Serials, lets customers subscribe to a serial novel. Buyers purchase the content up front, then have it delivered to their device automatically as new installments are published. Along the way, readers can provide feedback about the series, something Amazon hopes will bring a modern approach to the genre.

The first releases are a few Charles Dickens novels in their original serialized form. A true delight for literature nuts, especially because they are free:

Eight more serial novels will be released, each with a tantalizing plot to draw you in. These will cost $1.99 for all the installments.

Continue reading “Amazon restarts the serial novel genre – with Charles Dickens and a Yoga murder mystery”

ESPN launches first hackathon app – SportsCenter Feed Beta

For the past two years ESPN has held internal hackathons. And while they keep saying that these hacker creations “have been incorporated across the ESPN ecosystem, SC Feed is the first to emerge largely unchanged from the concept stage.”

And it looks perfect. Modeled after the Twitter apps on iPhone and iPad – and using the new ESPN API – SportsCenter Feed Beta allows you to view all ESPN stories in an RSS-like feed. Which offers a better viewing experience than the cluttered ESPN homepage. The killer feature allows you to filter for your favorite teams, sports, and players.

I entered my favorite college football team (UCLA Bruins), NFL team (Chargers), and baseball team (Angels). The result is one clean list of stories that would normally be scattered across ESPN.com. And it is a web app, meaning that it works on any device – as long as you log-in.

I think it’s home run for ESPN.

Continue reading “ESPN launches first hackathon app – SportsCenter Feed Beta”

3rd warmest summer for United States and the planet – nearly 2 degrees warmer worldwide

If you thought this summer was warm, so did everybody else, from USA Today:

While the USA sweated through one of its warmest summers on record, so, too, did the rest of the globe.

“Considering global land surfaces only, June – Aug. 2012 was record warm, at 1.85 degrees above average.”

Only the summers of 1998 and 2010 were warmer. Records go back to 1880.

The report also states the United States is in a drought, as is eastern Russia and India. There is a possibility the record heat is due to the transition from the cold water of La Niña to the warm water of El Niño, but we are in our 330th month of higher than average temperatures.

Continue reading “3rd warmest summer for United States and the planet – nearly 2 degrees warmer worldwide”

11 more billionaires agree to give money away – read their pledge letters

From The Wall Street Journal:

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have persuaded 11 more of their billionaire peers to promise to give away half of their wealth, including tech luminaries Gordon Moore (co-founder Intel) and Reed Hastings (co-founder Netflix).

The new 11 will join the Giving Pledge, a campaign Gates and Buffett launched in 2010 to try to kick-start a new era of American philanthropy.

From The Giving Pledge website:

The Giving Pledge is an effort to invite the wealthiest individuals and families in America to commit to giving the majority of their wealth to the philanthropic causes and charitable organizations.

Each person who chooses to pledge will make this statement publicly, along with a letter explaining their decision to pledge.

Read the pledge letters of the existing 81 members (pdf) and the new 11 (pdf). Among the names on the list: George Lucas, Ted Turner, Diane Von Furstenberg, Elon Musk, Steve Case, Dustin Moskovitz, Michael Milken, and Michael Bloomberg.

Video: North Pole shrinks to record levels, could be gone in 4 years

This animation shows the 2012 time-series of ice extent. The black area represents the daily average (median) sea ice from 1979-2000. Layered over are the daily satellite measurements from January 1 — September 14, 2012. A rapid melt begins in July, whereby the 2012 ice extents fall far below the historical average.

This melting has caused many to reconsider their predictions. A Cambridge scientist in the Arctic believes we could be only 4 years from a North Pole without ice.

From Yale’s Environment 360:

Peter Wadhams, who heads the Polar Ocean Physics Group at the University of Cambridge and who has measured Arctic Ocean ice thickness from British Navy submarines, says that earlier calculations about Arctic sea ice loss have grossly underestimated how rapidly the ice is disappearing. He believes that the Arctic is likely to become ice-free before 2020 and possibly as early as 2015 or 2016 — decades ahead of projections made just a few years ago.

// Thx – DB

Europe – much that could have gone wrong, suddenly seems to be going right

From The Economist:

Pinch yourself. Much that could have gone wrong in the euro zone suddenly seems to be going right. Germany’s constitutional court in Karlsruhe has given the go-ahead for a new rescue fund. A banking union is taking shape…this builds on a recent pledge from the European Central Bank (ECB) to act to stop the break-up of the currency. Even angry talk of expelling the Greeks from the euro has died down.

And Europe is moving to becoming a federalist nation, at least for monetary purposes. With many more leaders calling for political federalism too.

Should we break out the Federalist Papers from John Jay, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton in 1787?

Continue reading “Europe – much that could have gone wrong, suddenly seems to be going right”