Hope someone is listening

by -bast-
Another Sign of Dawning Realization:
[Via Only in it for the gold]

Dot Earth is running “Eleven Questions for Obama’s Science Team” and I would like to especially recommend they (and all of us) think long and hard on question eight, which is a nice statement of one of our themes here:

My request to the Obama transition team is to introduce the economy team to the science team. Economists like Daniel Tarullo would benefit from discussing the laws of thermodynamics with Steven Chu. I’m also sure that the science community would benefit from learning something of the complexity of economics theory and practice. New ideas might evolve!

I’m certain that physics has laws that must be obeyed at our peril, but I’m not convinced that economics has shown their ‘laws’ to be inviolate. In fact, just now to the contrary those principles are looking quite tarnished. And, I’d like to see a science-cum-economics dialogue continue and evolve throughout Obama’s tenure in the White House. It would greatly benefit our transition to a sustainable economy based on alternative energy, resource conservation, green jobs and creative partipation by all sectors of our society.

Thanks to the questioner, Wayne Hamilton of Springdale, Utah.

Nice question. It would be a great idea to also include the energy team in the discussion. Science, economics and energy use will all have overlapping urgencies that may be more easily solved by overlapping conversations.

Technorati Tags: Economy, Environment

Seeing colors in low light

Nightmare? That’s a Horse Seeing Different Colors!:
[Via Guadalupe Storm-Petrel]

Most of us are aware that cats, dogs, and many different wild mammals, birds, and reptiles have better night vision than we humans do. However, we might forget to include domestic horses, cattle, and sheep in this group of animals that possess eyes adapted for sensitivity and acuity in low-light conditions. The large eye of the domestic horse, Equus caballus, has a mobile pupil that can dilate extensively at night to increase sensitivity to photons. In addition, the choroidal, or vascular, layer of the equine eye has a reflective modification called the tapetum lucidum, which bounces photons back for a second chance at capture by the photoreceptors of the retina (reviewed by Ollivier et al., 2004).

Photographs representing the trichromatic appearance for a human (above), and modified to represent the appearance to a dichromat, such as the horse (below). From Carroll et al. (2001)

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Interesting discussion of how well horses see in low light. Turns out humans can do almost as well and we can see more colors with out trichomat system. I wonder when someone will try to create a fourth receptor that extends vision into other wavelengths. Seeing in UV might have some interesting uses.)

Technorati Tags: Environment, Science

Not good

by Joe Attardi
Every 30GB Zune In The World Froze At 2am This Morning [Microsoft]:
[Via Consumerist]

If you’re Steve Jobs, you probably dream of stories like this: Zunes all over the world foze up at around 2am this morning and won’t reboot, and nobody knows why.

ArsTechnica says it seems to have affected all owners of the 30 gig model, and hit no matter what you were doing at the moment:

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This is an epic fail. Not only does something screw up, but it causes the player to crash and just became a brick. And all MS has said is:

Customers with 30gb Zune devices may experience issues when booting their Zune hardware. We’re aware of the problem and are working to correct it. The Zune Social might be slow or inaccessible. Sorry for the inconvenience, and thanks for your patience!

I figure to be zuned will appearon the Urban Dictionary soon.

Technorati Tags: General