27 JUL 2018 by ideonexus
Redundancy of English language is a Goldilocks zone for C...
In Shannon’s terms, the feature of messages that makes codecracking possible is redundancy. A historian of cryptography, David Kahn, explained it like this: “Roughly, redundancy means that more symbols are transmitted in a message than are actually needed to bear the information.” Information resolves our uncertainty; redundancy is every part of a message that tells us nothing new. Whenever we can guess what comes next, we’re in the presence of redundancy. Letters can be redundant: because Q ... 1 
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notes02 SEP 2016 by ideonexus
Gamification: Ability-Based Challenge
In a study of what makes video games so captivating, the key element was found to be variable ability-based challenge for players. Th e most popular games took players through increasingly challenging levels as they became more and more skillful. As skill improved, the next challenge motivated new mastery to just the right extent such that the player could reach the next goal with practice and persistence. Th e most motivating video games are ones in which players make the correct move about ...Folksonomies: gamification
Folksonomies: gamification
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notes09 APR 2015 by ideonexus
Humans are Like Deer in the Anthropocene
I asked Rooney about the remarkable ability of deer to thrive in their home range—most of the U.S.—while producing ecosystem simplification and a biodiversity crash. In his own studies of deer habitats in Wisconsin, Rooney found that only a few types of grass thrive under a deer-dominant regime. The rest, amounting to around 80 percent of native Wisconsin plant species, had been eradicated. “The 80 percent represent the disappearance of 300 million years of evolutionary history,” he said. He ... 1 notes
notes24 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
Microbes Rule the World
Microbes make up 80 percent of all biomass, says microbiologist Carl Woese. In one-fifth of a teaspoon of seawater, there are a million bacteria (and 10 million viruses), Craig Venter says, adding, “If you don’t like bacteria, you’re on the wrong planet. This is the planet of the bacteria.” That means that most of the planet’s living metabolism is microbial. When James Lovelock was trying to figure out where the gases come from that make the Earth’s atmosphere such an artifact of life (the Ga...
1 Stewart Brand describes the state of our world, engineered by microbes and ourselves as the vehicles for their propagation in many cases.
24 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
Predictability and the Base Rate
Whenever a statistician wants to predict the likelihood of some event based on the available evidence, there are two main sources of information that have to be taken into account: (1) the evidence itself, for which a reliability figure has to be calculated; and (2) the likelihood of the event calculated purely in terms of relative incidence. The second figure here is the base rate. Since it is just a number, obtained by the seemingly dull process of counting, it frequently gets overlooked wh...Folksonomies: predictability
Folksonomies: predictability
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notesKeith Devlin explains why the accuracy of tests and measurments must take into account the base rate for the phenomenon.
27 NOV 2013 by ideonexus
Okinawa Culture as a Blue Zone
We found our second Blue Zone on the other side of the planet, about 800 miles south of Tokyo, on the archipelago of Okinawa. Okinawa is actually 161 small islands. And in the northern part of the main island, this is ground zero for world longevity. This is a place where the oldest living female population is found. It's a place where people have the longest disability-free life expectancy in the world. They have what we want. They live a long time, and tend to die in their sleep, very quick...Habits and culture of the people with the longest life-expectancy on the planet.
23 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Problems Encountered While Walking Along the Street
If you walk along the street you will encounter a number of scientific problems. Of these, about 80 per cent are insoluble, while 191/2 per cent are trivial. There is then perhaps half a per cent where skill, persistence, courage, creativity and originality can make a difference. It is always the task of the academic to swim in that half a per cent, asking the questions through which some progress can be made. 1 notes
notes80 percent are insoluble, 19.5 percent are trivial, and 0.5 percent require hard work to solve and that is the realm of the academic.
16 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
Dolphins have Genes for Smelling
Another curious tale of dead genes involves our sense of smell, or
rather our poor sense of smell, for humans are truly bad sniffers among
land mammals. Nevertheless, we can still recognize over 10,000 different
odors. How can we accomplish such a feat? Until recently, this was a
completely mystery. The answer lies in our DNA—in our many olfactory
receptor (OR) genes.
[...]
Our own sense of smell comes nowhere close to that of mice. One
reason is that we express fewer OR genes—only about 40... 1 notes
notesYet, as aquatic mammals, they have no need to smell anything.
09 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
The Uselessness of Nitrogen in the Atmosphere
My 165-pound body consists of about 110 pounds of oxygen, 30 pounds of carbon, 16 pounds of hydrogen, 6 pounds of nitrogen, and 3 pounds of everything else. Basic stuff, mostly, the stuff of water and air. You'd think we could get almost everything we need to build our bodies by taking deep breaths and gulps of water. But it's not quite that simple. Consider those 6 pounds of nitrogen in my body. Our cells build proteins by stringing together chemical units called amino acids, and every amino... 1 notes
notesRaymo describes how many pounds of each element there are in his body, and why, despite them mostly all existing in the air we breath, they are bound up in molecules so that we cannot access them.
28 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
80 Percent of Americans Can't Read the NYT Science Section
One prominent researcher on the public understanding of science has even found that due to their failure to understand basic scientific terms or the nature of the scientific process, 80 percent of Americans can't read the New York Times science section.Folksonomies: science education journalism
Folksonomies: science education journalism
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notesDue to scientific ignorance.
