After one year, Amazon’s Kindle Fire has 31,000 apps:
March 15, 2012 – Amazon Appstore for Android, which helped lay the foundation for a big Kindle Fire launch, is celebrating its one-year anniversary and has now eclipsed 31,000 apps, up from 4,000 at launch. That’s a strong first year for an app store that began as an alternative to the Android Market and then became the primary channel for Kindle Fire users to get their apps.
And, after one year, Apple’s iPad had 75,000 apps:
April 3, 2011 – One year exactly after its 2010 release, the iPad app store held 75,000 apps. Three months later, another 25,000 have been added for a total surpassing 100,000, according to MacStories. Can that pace continue? It’s hard to believe that it will, but the number of apps added to the App Store for the iPhone hasn’t slowed at all, recently surpassing the 500,000 mark.
MIT researchers have shown, for the first time ever, that memories are stored in specific brain cells. By triggering a small cluster of neurons, the researchers were able to force the subject to recall a specific memory. By removing these neurons, the subject would lose that memory.
As you can imagine, the trick here is activating individual neurons, which are incredibly small and not really the kind of thing you can attach electrodes to. To do this, the researchers used optogenetics, a bleeding edge sphere of science that involves the genetic manipulation of cells so that they’re sensitive to light. These modified cells are then triggered using lasers; you drill a hole through the subject’s skull and point the laser at a small cluster of neurons.
…we should note that MIT’s subjects in this case are mice…
The main significance here is that we finally have proof that memories are physical rather than conceptual.
The good news is that she, or more specifically her art, is coming into town (Los Angeles) for the Dream Date Auction benefitting the Chris4Life Colon Cancer Foundation. At the event the painting below will be auctioned off.
I’ve got a little trip coming up for Amy’s birthday and was browsing around on airbnb. We’re hoping to find a nice little cottage in Santa Barbara for a few days.
Doubtless, the dour Victorian author would have wanted us to celebrate the day exploring the city he loved and hated, London.
Dickens’ London was a magnificent and horrendous place. At the height of the British Empire, London was the envy of the world, by far the most majestic city anywhere. Unimaginable wealth passed through its gates every day.
Charles Dickens Museum
The Charles Dickens Museum is in Bloomsbury, right in central London, and is housed in an actual Dickens residence. Visiting it gives you a sense of exactly what it was like to live in Dickens’ house – if that house were stuffed with hundreds of thousands of artifacts, manuscripts, and other historical objects.
Cheshire Cheese
With roots going back to the Middle Ages, this pub is tucked away from Fleet Street up a narrow alley. Fans of the pub tout its mention in A Tale of Two Cities, although Dickens never mentions the pub by name. Apparently, though, it’s a great place to grab a pint or two after you’ve been acquitted of treason.
Southwark Cathedral
You won’t find this cathedral mentioned anywhere in Dickens’ works. That’s because in his time, it was just a plain ol’ church (named “St Saviour’s”).
The cathedral – one of the oldest churches in London – appears in a classically Dickensian sentence from Oliver Twist: “The tower of old Saint Saviour’s Church, and the spire of Saint Magnus, so long the giant-warders of the ancient bridge, were visible in the gloom.”
The map above shows Toronto’s walkability, with the lighter portions indicating greater walkability (‘utilitarian walkability” being how easy it is to walk to do utilitarian things — get to work, shop — as opposed to for pure recreation).
It’s striking how much high walkability follows the boundaries of the old City of Toronto. There are a couple of additional areas of high walkability in two of the areas designated by the official plan as “centres”, in North York and Etobicoke, which reinforces the finding of a recent study that the “centres” concept is working to some extent.
“People who live in highly walkable areas walk more and are less likely to be in danger of obesity than those in car-oriented areas.”
“There is a strong latent demand among Toronto residents for more walkable features in their neighbourhoods.”
The report finds that even people who are car-oriented will walk more if they live in a walkable neighbourhood — and people who are walking-oriented will walk less if they live in a car-oriented neighbourhood. So urban design does play a role in shaping people’s behaviours, whatever their preferences are.
The beautiful circle surrounding the moon in this image is caused by ice crystals suspended in the air. Known as a paraselenic circle, this rare phenomenon comes from moonlight reflecting in complex ways off the crystals. While the circle is commonly only seen in sections, in some cases, such as this one, it can stretch around the entire sky.
Water Strider
Water Strider
Those dark spots sitting underneath this water strider aren’t exactly shadows. They’re patches of darkness created from distorted light as the little insect walks on the water’s surface.
A shallow pond’s surface acts somewhat like a stretched elastic skin. Water striders (of the family Gerridae) are able to “walk” on top of this skin because the surface tension produces a small upward thrust that holds their tiny weight.
The insect’s feet depress the water’s surface, producing a dip that bends light rays away from it. This creates a zone where no light can reach. Reflected rays all get pulled together, creating an intensely bright rim around each darkened patch.
Septuple Rainbow
Septuple Rainbow
This image, taken in Strasbourg, France, features grey clouds framing an astounding rainbow with seven fainter rainbows trailing below it.
This infrequent effect, called a supernumerary rainbow, comes about when the raindrops generating a rainbow are particularly uniform in size. As the different light waves spread out, they interfere with one another and form areas of darkness or brightness. These appear as pastel fringes below a regular rainbow.
