Fighting Disaster with Crowdsourcing

From Technology Review published by MIT...

"David Kobia, the 2010 TR35 Humanitarian of the Year, explains how Ushahidi grew from a single blog post to a sophisticated online platform that can manage crises around the world."

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"The Ushahidi project brings crowd­sourcing to bear on some of the most desperate situations people face around the world. Its downloadable software allows users to submit eyewitness reports during a conflict or disaster; the collected reports are displayed on a map. At times when ordinary sources of news and public information are unavailable, Ushahidi gives users a way to share information and shape political opinion, guide rescuers, or pool resources. Ushahidi has been used to monitor elections in Sudan, document violence in Gaza, track the BP oil slick, and assist earthquake recovery efforts in Haiti."

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Scholars Test Web Alternative to Peer Review

From the New York Times...

"For professors, publishing in elite journals is an unavoidable part of university life. The grueling process of subjecting work to the up-or-down judgment of credentialed scholarly peers has been a cornerstone of academic culture since at least the mid-20th century.

Now some humanities scholars have begun to challenge the monopoly that peer review has on admission to career-making journals and, as a consequence, to the charmed circle of tenured academe. They argue that in an era of digital media there is a better way to assess the quality of work. Instead of relying on a few experts selected by leading publications, they advocate using the Internet to expose scholarly thinking to the swift collective judgment of a much broader interested audience."

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Why Physics and Not Biomechanics Determines Human Throwing Accuracy

From Technology Review published by MIT...

"Here's a straightforward question. Imagine you are throwing a ball into a bin. Are you better off using an overarm or an underarm throw?

It turns out that this question has been surprisingly hard to get to grips with for physicists and biomechanicists alike. Today, however, Madhusudhan Venkadesany and Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan at Harvard University's Applied Math Lab, throw some additional light on the problem.

The difficulty is in the complexity of the problem. The arm, shoulder and wrist make up a many-jointed system that allows a large number of variations in throwing style. In addition, the parameters involved in throwing are difficult to compare. For example, a 5 per cent error in throwing angle does not easily stack up against a 5 per cent error in throwing speed because these quantities have different dimensions. It's like comparing apples and bananas.

Venkadesany and Mahadevan have a neat way round this conundrum. First, they consider only the simplest type of throwing model: an arm consisting of a lever pivoted at the "shoulder" which can throw either underarm or overarm. These throws can be described by two parameters: the angular velocity of the swing and the angle of the arm at release. Second, they introduce a natural length scale, called the arm length, and use this to make their analysis of launch angle and velocity dimensionless."

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TED Cube Building in Taiwan/ BIG Architects

From evolo.us...

"TED is a public building in Taiwan that uses a form and highly mixed program to encourage a large cross section of users. Designed by BIG Architects, the 57 meter cubed building has an open section, or ‘street’ to allow full public access through the building. The access rises and dilates near the top of the building and opens onto a rooftop garden. The roof is to be a public park and informal performance area. Radiating from the street will be hotel, retail, office, restaurants, etc, with no particular formal arrangement. The building is an expression of a city bock packed into a more vertical system. The ribs, evocative of the underside of a mushroom form stairs through the structure and is repeated on the walls and ceiling thus creating a visually continuous facade. The access through the building allows for ventilation, shade, and increased fenestration for the occupants. The building site is not yet disclosed."

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Stone House in Portugal

From Toxel.com...

"Inspired by the Flintstones cartoons, this stunning house was constructed between two giant stones on the hillside of Fafe mountains in Portugal. Because of its unusual design, the house attracts many tourists from all over the world."

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Abstract of the Dissertation Defense for Kyle Butler

Abstract 1

Aircraft engineers turn to biomimicry for greener designs

From Flightglobal.com...

"Birds do it. Bees do it. And now, increasingly, aircraft engineers are falling in love with the idea of studying the natural world to find solutions that can be adapted and applied to the design of more fuel-efficient airliners.

The science of biomimicry is taken seriously by aircraft manufacturers, and there is the potential for some quite mind-boggling tricks of nature to be emulated and used in aviation to reduce drag and better enable aircraft to adapt to changing conditions during flight."

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AP Enterprise: Scientists think Gulf can recover

From the Associated Press on Google News...

"Want to know the future of the oil-stained Gulf of Mexico ecosystem? Look first to its muddy, polluted past.

The recent ecological history of the Gulf gives scientists reason for hope. In an extensive survey of Gulf of Mexico researchers by The Associated Press, at least 10 of them separately volunteered the same word to describe the body of water: "resilient."

This is buttressed by a government report that claims that all but 53 million gallons of the leaked oil from BP's Deepwater Horizon well are gone. The report issued Wednesday says the cleanup extracted a lot of it, but the natural processes that break up, evaporate and dissolve oil took care of 84 million gallons — more than twice the amount human efforts removed.

At the same time, more progress was made in sealing the well for good as BP finished pumping cement into it on Thursday."

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NASA Mind Training Tackles Motion Sickness

From Discovery News...

"Is quelling motion sickness a question of mind over matter? Possibly so, given the proper training, say researchers who are testing a NASA biofeedback system developed to try to help astronauts adjust to microgravity.

The disorientating effects of spaceflight will sound familiar to anyone who has ever grown dizzy, nauseous or faint riding in a car, flying in an airplane or sailing on a ship."

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The Strata: World’s First Skyscraper with Built-in Wind Turbines

From Planetsave.com...

"It rises 143 meters above central London, making it the district’s tallest residential structure. Its nickname is ‘The Razor” owing to its sharp angular design. It’s also the first skyscraper to have electricity-generating wind turbines built into its core design “fabric”.

In a city not as suited for solar power, as say Phoenix , AZ, London is now starting to take advantage of one of its more plentiful, renewable resources: wind.

While there are other, much taller buildings with turbines added on following the finish of their primary construction, the Strata has included them in the architectural plan from the get-go. The threesome of integrated wind turbines, at full capacity, will generate 8% of the buildings energy needs. This may not seem like very much, but it amounts to several dozen mega (million) watt hours annually–saving the owners and residents a great deal of money (and freeing up extra capacity from traditional utilities)."

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