On the 24th June, I wrote a piece from the Extraordinary Animals series from the UK’s Channel Five TV station. In particular, the article focussed on Scamp’s ability to detect when people in care were dying.
Scamp is a little Schnauzer who resides at The Pine nursing home in Canton, Ohio. Like many live-in pets at nursing homes, Scamp brings companionship to the residents but he also does more than that. Scamp seems to have a gift that tells him when the end is near for one of the residents and he loyally stays with them during their final hours.
Jim & Diane Walker
The first of the three YouTube videos, some ten minutes long, examined how Scamp knew that a patient was dying and how scientists Jim and Diane Walker believed it was due to the incredible sense of smell that dogs possess. From The Examiner of June 1st, 2009,
An amazing scientist, Dr. James Walker of the Sensory Research Institute at Florida State University, documented the power of a dog’s nose in 2002. Using n-amyl acetate (nAA), Dr. Walker documented that a dog can detect chemicals at one ten-thousandth to one hundred-thousandth the concentrations that humans can. In other words, at a minimum, dogs can smell 10,000 times better than a human.
OK, back to that YouTube video.
If you didn’t watch it on the 24th, do watch it again. Watch it this time to pick up just what Scamp is doing. At minute 6:30 hear how Dr. Bob Andrysco describes how the sense of smell of a dog is 100,000 times more powerful than that of a human.
Then stay with the video until minute 9:20 when Jim & Diane Walker show how a dog can detect a substance as diluted as 2 parts in a trillion. That is so diluted as to be beyond comprehension; well to a non-scientist like me!
As the presenter describes, “That’s the equivalent of a teaspoonful of sugar in ten billion cups of tea!” To me that is utterly mind-boggling. Let me try and demonstrate the power of 2 parts per trillion, which is the equivalent of 1 part per half-trillion (500,000 million). Half-a-trillion fluid ounces is 522,189,675.651 ft³ – just over 522 million cubic feet. What does that volume look like?
Here’s the picture of twelve fluid ounces – you’ll just have to imagine what one fluid ounce would look like!
Standard Coke can = 12 fluid ounces
Here’s a picture of ninety million cubic feet – you’ll just have to imagine what five hundred and twenty-two million look like!
Great Pyramid of Giza = 90 million cubic feet
OK, last one from me to allow us all to really, really appreciate the magical ability of that dog’s nose.
Two parts per trillion is the equivalent of smelling that can of Coke (12 fluid ounces) in a volume the equivalent of seventy, yes seventy, Great Pyramids (6,264,000,000 cubic feet).
Think I need to lie down in a darkened room for a while!
So just a day after the 2011 Summer Solstice, the sun is again a topic on this Blog.
Last Saturday’s issue of The Economist had amongst it’s leaders, a piece with the headline of Several lines of evidence suggest that the sun is about to go quiet.
Coincidentally I had seen, just a few hours previously, a similar story on the UK website The Register. Let me quote a little from that item.
Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade
Physicists say sunspot cycle is ‘going into hibernation’
What may be the science story of the century is breaking this evening, as heavyweight US solar physicists announce that the Sun appears to be headed into a lengthy spell of low activity, which could mean that the Earth – far from facing a global warming problem – is actually headed into a mini Ice Age.
The announcement made on 14 June (18:00 UK time) comes from scientists at the US National Solar Observatory (NSO) and US Air Force Research Laboratory. Three different analyses of the Sun’s recent behaviour all indicate that a period of unusually low solar activity may be about to begin.
It was a moment’s effort to go to the US National Solar Observatory website (great website, by the way) and read that recent press release. The press release link is here and it really is a ‘must read’ item. Here’s just a flavour of what was written,
WHAT’S DOWN WITH THE SUN?
MAJOR DROP IN SOLAR ACTIVITY PREDICTED
A missing jet stream, fading spots, and slower activity near the poles say that our Sun is heading for a rest period even as it is acting up for the first time in years, according to scientists at the National Solar Observatory (NSO) and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL).
As the current sunspot cycle, Cycle 24, begins to ramp up toward maximum, independent studies of the solar interior, visible surface, and the corona indicate that the next 11-year solar sunspot cycle, Cycle 25, will be greatly reduced or may not happen at all.
“This is highly unusual and unexpected,” Dr. Frank Hill, associate director of the NSO’s Solar Synoptic Network, said of the results. “But the fact that three completely different views of the Sun point in the same direction is a powerful indicator that the sunspot cycle may be going into hibernation.”
Spot numbers and other solar activity rise and fall about every 11 years, which is half of the Sun’s 22-year magnetic interval since the Sun’s magnetic poles reverse with each cycle. An immediate question is whether this slowdown presages a second Maunder Minimum, a 70-year period with virtually no sunspots during 1645-1715.
Hill is the lead author on one of three papers on these results being presented this week. Using data from the Global Oscillation Network Group (GONG) of six observing stations around the world, the team translates surface pulsations caused by sound reverberating through the Sun into models of the internal structure. One of their discoveries is an east-west zonal wind flow inside the Sun, called the torsional oscillation, which starts at mid-latitudes and migrates towards the equator. The latitude of this wind stream matches the new spot formation in each cycle, and successfully predicted the late onset of the current Cycle 24.
“We expected to see the start of the zonal flow for Cycle 25 by now,” Hill explained, “but we see no sign of it. This indicates that the start of Cycle 25 may be delayed to 2021 or 2022, or may not happen at all.”
As I said, the item is essential reading and the full release may be read here. Another benefit of going to that NSO press release is that you will find another link to the full text and pictures. The pictures are just stunning. Here’s one of them.
The Sun viewed in visible light, at minimum phase (2006) and maximum phase (2001)
Seriously, if you are interested in learning more about our Sun and the nature of solar cycles, this strikes me as an excellent place to start.
However, let me close this article by returning to the final paragraphs of that NSO Press Release. Here they are,
All three of these lines of research to point to the familiar sunspot cycle shutting down for a while.
“If we are right,” Hill concluded, “this could be the last solar maximum we’ll see for a few decades. That would affect everything from space exploration to Earth’s climate.”
In response to news inquiries and stories, Dr. Frank Hill issued a follow-up statement:
“We are NOT predicting a mini-ice age. We are predicting the behavior of the solar cycle. In my opinion, it is a huge leap from that to an abrupt global cooling, since the connections between solar activity and climate are still very poorly understood. My understanding is that current calculations suggest only a 0.3 degree C decrease from a Maunder-like minimum, too small for an ice age. It is unfortunate that the global warming/cooling studies have become so politically polarizing.”
Just take that last quotation from Dr. Frank Hill and ponder, “It is unfortunate that the global warming/cooling studies have become so politically polarizing.” [my italics].
That statement from Dr. Hill combined with my friend Dan’s posting of the 16th are food for thought. More about this on Learning from Dogs soon.
It was back in March, the 8th to be precise, when I first wrote about Peter Russell. Well just over a week ago, I came across another article by Russell from the Huffington Post. It was then a moment’s work to find it on Peter Russell’s own website. (This links to various essays on the topic.)
Science has had remarkable success in explaining the structure and functioning of the material world, but when it comes to the inner world of the mind science falls curiously silent. There is nothing in physics, chemistry, biology, or any other science that can account for our having an interior world. In a strange way, scientists would be much happier if there were no such thing as consciousness.
David Chalmers, professor of philosophy at the University of Arizona, calls this the “hard problem” of consciousness. The so-called “easy problems” are those concerned with brain function and its correlation with mental phenomena: how, for example, we discriminate, categorize, and react to stimuli; how incoming sensory data are integrated with past experience; how we focus our attention; and what distinguishes wakefulness from sleep.
It would be wrong to publish anything more so if you are interested in more, then go here and pick away or better still buy the book!
If you have a quiet 30 minutes, settle down and watch these videos
I am indebted to my life-long friend, Dan Gomez, for this piece.
Background (Personal nostalgia warning!!!)
Dan and I go back too many years; I mean way too many! He and I met in Spring 1979 when I was addressing a national conference of US Commodore PC dealers in Boston, USA. I was there to promote a British Word Processing program called Wordcraft, written by Peter Dowson, that I had exclusive rights to. I was also a Commodore PC dealer in Colchester, Essex, England; indeed I was the 8th dealer appointed in the UK. The luck in finding Wordcraft is underlined by the fact that between 1970 and 1978 I was a salesman with IBM UK Office Products division and ended up as a word-processing specialist salesman for IBM.
Anyway, in my sales pitch to these US dealers, I used the word ‘fortnight’, a common term in England. From somewhere out in the audience, this Californian voice shouted out, “Hey Handover, what’s a fortnight?” Many readers will be aware that Americans don’t use that term. That Californian voice was Dan!
From that cheeky start came a great relationship including Dan being my West Coast distributor for Wordcraft. It was Dan’s sister, whom I have also known for countless years, who invited me to her Winter home in San Carlos, Mexico, to spend Christmas 2007 with her and her husband and which was the catalyst of me meeting Jean, who is now by most beautiful wife!
Dan, my Best Man, at the wedding of Jean and me, November 20th 2010
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OK, to the theme of this article.
Shortly after the Newsweek ‘Weather Panic‘ article on the 10th, Dan sent me this email,
Paul – Saw your blog vis a vis Newsweek’s recent cover.
Don’t forget to publish the other side of this perennial story without all the sensationalism of selling newspapers and proselytizing to the unwashed masses or you could end up drinking your own cool-aid. The science of weather cycles, sun activity, ocean currents, high-altitude jet streams, colliding warm/cool fronts have been at work long before any creature walked the earth, let alone man. The facts demonstrate this time and time again. Good science is skeptical science and needs to be viewed carefully by way of verifiable and constant testing of hypotheses.
The below article, although not at all sexy, has a different view, in general, as to the vagaries of weather extremes. There are many like this and represent unbiased, and to some, unpopular scientific reasoning at work.
Just food for thought.
–DG
He then included this.
Recent Weather Extremes: Global Warming Fingerprint Not
by Chip Knappenberger
March 21, 2011
On occasion, I have the opportunity to assist Dr. Patrick J. Michaels (Senior Fellow in Environmental Studies at the Cato Institute) in reviewing the latest scientific research on climate change. When we happen upon findings in the peer-reviewed scientific literature that may not have received the media attention that they deserved, or have been misinterpreted in the popular press, Pat sometimes covers them over at the “Current Wisdom” section of the Cato@Liberty blog site.
His latest posting there highlights research findings that show that extreme weather events during last summer and the previous two winters can be fully explained by natural climate variability—and that “global warming” need not (and should not) be invoked.
This topic—whether or not weather extremes (or at least some portion of them) can be attributed to anthropogenic global warming (or, as Dr. Pielke Sr., prefers, anthropogenic climate change)—has been garnering a lot of attention as of late. It was a major reason for holding the House Subcommittee hearing last week, is a hot topic of discussion in the press, and is the subject of an in-progress major report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
A new paper by Randall Dole and colleagues from the Physical Sciences Division (PSD) of the Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) examined the events leading up to and causing the big heat wave in Russia last summer (which was also part of an atmospheric pattern that was connected to the floods in Pakistan). Here is what they found:
“Our analysis points to a primarily natural cause for the Russian heat wave. This event appears to be mainly due to internal atmospheric dynamical processes that produced and maintained an intense and long-lived blocking event. Results from prior studies suggest that it is likely that the intensity of the heat wave was further increased by regional land surface feedbacks. The absence of long-term trends in regional mean temperatures and variability together with the [climate] model results indicate that it is very unlikely that warming attributable to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations contributed substantially to the magnitude of this heat wave.”
As Pat commented, “Can’t be much clearer than that.”
Recent Winter Severity
From Pat’s article:
Another soon-to-be released paper to appear in Geophysical Research Lettersdescribes the results of using the seasonal weather prediction model from the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) to help untangle the causes of the unusual atmospheric circulation patterns that gave rise to the harsh winter of 2009-2010 on both sides of the Atlantic. A team of ECMWF scientists led by Thomas Jung went back and did experiments changing initial conditions that were fed into the ECMWF model and then assessed how well the model simulated the known weather patterns of the winter of 2009-2010. The different set of initial conditions was selected so as to test all the pet theories behind the origins of the harsh winter. Jung et al. describe their investigations this way: “Here, the origin and predictability of the unusual winter of 2009/10 are explored through numerical experimentation with the ECMWF Monthly forecasting system. More specifically, the role of anomalies in sea surface temperature (SST) and sea ice, the tropical atmospheric circulation, the stratospheric polar vortex, solar insolation and near surface temperature (proxy for snow cover) are examined.”
In a nutshell, here is what Jung et al. found:
“The results of this study, therefore, increase the likelihood that both the development and persistence of negative NAO phase [an atmospheric circulation pattern that was largely behind the harsh winter conditions] resulted from internal atmospheric dynamical processes.”
Or, as Pat put it “Translation: Random variability.”
Pat also examined a third study by Roseanne D’Arrigo and colleagues who found an historical analog of the conditions responsible for the harsh winter of 2009-2010 way back in 1783-1784. The winter of 1783-1784 was a historically extreme one on both sides of the Atlantic and has long been associated with a large volcanic eruption that occurred in Iceland during the summer of 1783. Even Benjamin Franklin connected the winter conditions to the volcano. But D’Arrigo and colleagues now suggest a different mechanism. According to Pat:
But in their new study, Roseanne D’Arrigo and colleagues conclude that the harshness of that winter primarily was the result of anomalous atmospheric circulation patterns that closely resembled those observed during the winter of 2009-10, and that the previous summer’s volcanic eruption played a far less prominent role:
“Our results suggest that Franklin and others may have been mistaken in attributing winter conditions in 1783-4 mainly to Laki or another eruption, rather than unforced variability.
“Similarly, conditions during the 2009-10 winter likely resulted from natural [atmospheric] variability, not tied to greenhouse gas forcing… Evidence thus suggests that these winters were linked to the rare but natural occurrence of negative NAO and El Niño events.”
Bottom Line
The take home message of Pat’s post is worth repeating:
The point is that natural variability can and does produce extreme events on every time scale, from days (e.g., individual storms), weeks (e.g., the Russian heat wave), months (e.g., the winter of 2009-10), decades (e.g., the lack of global warming since 1998), centuries (e.g., the Little Ice Age), millennia (e.g., the cycle of major Ice Ages), and eons (e.g., snowball earth).
Folks would do well to keep this in mind next time global warming is being posited for the weather disaster du jour. Almost assuredly, it is all hype and little might.
Be sure to check out Pat’s full article which includes much more in depth coverage of these three soon-to-be-released scientific studies.
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I need to mull over this when I am back home with more time. In the meantime, comments from readers most welcomed.
It is a stunning image and one that is bound to be reproduced over and over again whenever they recall the history of the US space shuttle.
The picture was taken by Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli as he left the International Space Station in May in a Soyuz capsule to return to Earth.
Safety procedures mean the Russian vehicle would never normally be in transit when a shuttle is present.
It makes this the first-ever image of an American orbiter docked to the ISS.
Endeavour sits firmly on the bow of the station, which is moving across the surface of the Earth at a speed of 27,000km/h (17,000mph) and at an altitude of approximately 355km (220 miles).
Nespoli’s camera is looking along the ISS’s truss, or backbone, which carries the four sets of giant solar wings. The stern is occupied by Europe’s robotic freighter – the Johannes Kepler ship.
The pictures were acquired on 23 May but were only released by the US space agency (Nasa) on Tuesday [7th June, PH]. They had been eagerly awaited by space fans.
Nespoli had spent a lot of time during his 159-day stay at the station taking pictures of Earth and life aboard the international outpost. Many of these images were posted on his mission Flickr account. It was widely expected therefore that the European Space Agency astronaut would get some excellent shots during the unique departure.
Enthusiasts on the ground with telescopes routinely try to snap a shuttle attached to the ISS, and some of the results have been very impressive. But none of these pictures compares to the majestic portrait acquired by Nespoli so close to the orbiting complex.
The timing and subject are also perfect. Endeavour is seen here making her final sortie into orbit, making the last big US assembly item delivery – a $2bn particle physics experiment known as the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer. The seven-tonne machine now sits on top of the platform.
Endeavour was also the orbiter chosen to take up the first American segment of the platform when the project had just got started in the late 1990s.
The youngest of Nasa’s shuttles returned to Earth on 1 June and will now be prepared for public display at a science museum in California. Sister ship Atlantis stands ready on the launch pad in Florida for a swansong of her own in July. Once her mission is done, no orbiter will ever fly again.
Nespoli’s crewmates in the Soyuz were Russian cosmonaut and Expedition 27 commander Dmitry Kondratyev; and Nasa astronaut Cady Coleman. Apart from the photo opportunity, their departure was a standard ISS crew rotation flight.
Their replacements blasted off from Kazakhstan on Tuesday in another Soyuz vehicle. Nasa astronaut Mike Fossum, Russian cosmonaut Sergei Volkov and Japanese astronaut Satoshi Furukawa are scheduled to arrive at the ISS on Thursday, raising its complement once again to six individuals.
The venerable Soyuz will be the only way for astronauts and cosmonauts to reach the platform in the years following the retirement of the shuttle fleet.
Nasa hopes some US commercial carriers will become available in the middle of the decade.
The NASA weblink attributed above is here, from which can be read,
This image of the International Space Station and the docked space shuttle Endeavour, flying at an altitude of approximately 220 miles, was taken by Expedition 27 crew member Paolo Nespoli from the Soyuz TMA-20 following its undocking on May 23, 2011 (USA time). The pictures taken by Nespoli are the first taken of a shuttle docked to the International Space Station from the perspective of a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Onboard the Soyuz were Russian cosmonaut and Expedition 27 commander Dmitry Kondratyev; Nespoli, a European Space Agency astronaut; and NASA astronaut Cady Coleman. Coleman and Nespoli were both flight engineers. The three landed in Kazakhstan later that day, completing 159 days in space.
Do go to the NASA website here as there are a total of 40 stunning images.
Having now been living in Arizona for 18 months, I can say with some degree of certainty that there are few British things that I miss. One of them is draft English beer, of course, but another one is the BBC. Luckily modern internet technology means that quite a few of the great BBC television programmes ‘leak’ outside the UK.
The BBC Horizon science series has been one such example of a really well-produced programme.
Recently, a BBC Horizon programme about genetically modified (GM) foods aired by the BBC found its way onto YouTube and thence to the website Top Documentary Films. Not only is it an interesting programme but it also reveals how the facts of new advances in science are often difficult to understand by us; the general public.
The link to the film on the TDF website is here but if you want to watch it directly from YouTube then here it is.
Linking yesterday’s amazing story with Dr. Sheldrake’s work.
Many of you will have read the account published yesterday about little Mason, the pet dog that was picked up by the recent tornado in North Smithfield, Alabama. Here’s a recap of what happened.
Mason, a terrier mix, now rests inside the Vulcan Park Animal Care Clinic where he’s waiting to find out what kind of surgery he will need to repair 2 badly broken legs. This is only the 2nd night he’s spent under any kind of roof in the last 2 weeks and the story of how he got there is almost too amazing to believe.
On April 27th, Mason was hiding in his garage in North Smithfield when the storm picked him up and blew him away. His owners couldn’t find him and had about given up when they came back Monday to sift through the debris, and found Mason waiting for them on the porch.
In that book, there are several references to both incredible journeys undertaken by pet dogs and the science believed to be involved. The book is much recommended.
Chapter 13 of Sheldrake’s book is called Pets Finding Their People Far Away. Here’s how it starts,
In 1582, Leonhard Zollikofer left his native St. Gall, Switzerland, to go to Paris as ambassador to the court of the French King Henri III. He left behind his faithful dog, aptly named Fidelis. Two weeks later the dog disappeared from St. Gall. Three weeks after that he rejoined his master at the court in Paris, exactly at the time when the Swiss ambassadors were being led in to an audience with the king. The dog had never been to Paris before. How did he find his master so far away from home?
There are other ‘mind-blowing’ examples in the book. In Chapter 10, Incredible Journeys, Dr. Sheldrake explores many aspects of this wondrous ability of many animals.
Animals bond not only to members of their social group but also to particular places. Many kinds of animals, both wild and domesticated, can find their way home from unfamiliar locations. This attachment to places depends on morphic fields, which underlie the sense of direction that enables animals to find their way home over unfamiliar terrain.
The sense of direction also plays a vital role in migration. Some species, like swallows, salmon, and sea turtles, migrate from breeding grounds to feeding grounds and back again over thousands of miles. Their ability to navigate is one of the great unsolved mysteries of biology, as I discuss in the next chapter. Here too I think that morphic fields, and the ancestral memory inherent in them, could provide an explanation.
If you have read this and are curious, then these videos will give you a little more to mull over. The first is a little ‘alternate’.
We really may be on the verge of a new geological period.
Just a couple of weeks ago, on the 16th May, I wrote an article called The Anthropocene period. It was based on both a BBC radio programme and a conference called “The Anthropocene: A New Epoch of Geological Time?”
So imagine my surprise when I collected this week’s copy of The Economist from my mail-box last Saturday. The cover page boldly illustrated a lead article within, as this picture shows.
US edition, May 28th
The leader is headlined, ‘Humans have changed the way the world works. Now they have to change the way they think about it, too.’ The first two paragraphs of that leader explain,
THE Earth is a big thing; if you divided it up evenly among its 7 billion inhabitants, they would get almost 1 trillion tonnes each. To think that the workings of so vast an entity could be lastingly changed by a species that has been scampering across its surface for less than 1% of 1% of its history seems, on the face of it, absurd. But it is not. Humans have become a force of nature reshaping the planet on a geological scale—but at a far-faster-than-geological speed.
A single engineering project, the Syncrude mine in the Athabasca tar sands, involves moving 30 billion tonnes of earth—twice the amount of sediment that flows down all the rivers in the world in a year. That sediment flow itself, meanwhile, is shrinking; almost 50,000 large dams have over the past half- century cut the flow by nearly a fifth. That is one reason why the Earth’s deltas, home to hundreds of millions of people, are eroding away faster than they can be replenished.
There’s also a video on The Economist website of an interview with Dr. Erle Ellis, associate professor of geography and environmental systems at the University of Maryland. That video link is here.
That Economist lead article concludes,
Recycling the planet
How frightened should people be about this? It would be odd not to be worried. The planet’s history contains many less stable and clement eras than the Holocene. Who is to say that human action might not tip the planet into new instability?
Some will want simply to put the clock back. But returning to the way things were is neither realistic nor morally tenable. A planet that could soon be supporting as many as 10 billion human beings has to work differently from the one that held 1 billion people, mostly peasants, 200 years ago. The challenge of the Anthropocene is to use human ingenuity to set things up so that the planet can accomplish its 21st-century task.
Increasing the planet’s resilience will probably involve a few dramatic changes and a lot of fiddling. An example of the former could be geoengineering. Today the copious carbon dioxide emitted to the atmosphere is left for nature to pick up, which it cannot do fast enough. Although the technologies are still nascent, the idea that humans might help remove carbon from the skies as well as put it there is a reasonable Anthropocene expectation; it wouldn’t stop climate change any time soon, but it might shorten its lease, and reduce the changes in ocean chemistry that excess carbon brings about.
More often the answer will be fiddling—finding ways to apply human muscle with the grain of nature, rather than against it, and help it in its inbuilt tendency to recycle things. Human interference in the nitrogen cycle has made far more nitrogen available to plants and animals; it has done much less to help the planet deal with all that nitrogen when they have finished with it. Instead we suffer ever more coastal “dead zones” overrun by nitrogen-fed algal blooms. Quite small things, such as smarter farming and better sewage treatment, could help a lot.
For humans to be intimately involved in many interconnected processes at a planetary scale carries huge risks. But it is possible to add to the planet’s resilience, often through simple and piecemeal actions, if they are well thought through. And one of the messages of the Anthropocene is that piecemeal actions can quickly add up to planetary change.
We are living in interesting times!
Finally, more of Dr. Ellis may be watched on the following YouTube video.
President John F. Kennedy's May 25, 1961 Speech before a Joint Session of Congress
On the 25th May, 1961, President John Kennedy summoned a joint session of Congress and asked America to commit itself to a goal – that of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth before the decade was out.
There’s a good link on the NASA site to the speech.
MY print column this week notes that it is half a century next week since John Kennedy called for sending a man to the moon and returning him safely to Earth. The bottom line, I think:
If we can send a man to the moon, people ask, why can’t we [fill in the blank]? Lyndon Johnson tried to build a “great society”, but America is better at aeronautical engineering than social engineering. Mr Obama, pointing to competition from China, invokes a new “Sputnik moment” to justify bigger public investment in technology and infrastructure. It should not be a surprise that his appeals have gone unheeded. Putting a man on the moon was a brilliant achievement. But in some ways it was peculiarly un-American—almost, you might say, an aberration born out of the unique circumstances of the cold war. It is a reason to look back with pride, but not a pointer to the future.
Concluding article on the great Benoit Mandelbrot.
Yesterday, I wrote about Benoit Mandelbrot but wanted to save some additional information for today.
There’s a very comprehensive review of Benoit’s life on a website called NNDB. In that review, it mentions his association with the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center where he worked for 32 years. It was while working for IBM that he published the paper that established his credentials world-wide. Taken from the IBM website is this extract,
The father of fractals, Dr. Benoit Mandelbrot, passed away from pancreatic cancer on October 16, 2010. He was 85.
Benoit, IBM Fellow Emeritus, joined the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in 1958 where he worked for 32 years. His 1967 article published in Science, How Long Is the Coast of Britain? Statistical Self-Similarity and Fractional Dimension, introduced the concept that a geometric shape can be split into pieces that are smaller copies of the whole. It wasn’t until 1975 that he defined the mathematical shapes as fractals.
Here is another website that has fractal images taken from the Mandelbrot set. An example.
Just stunningly beautiful!
Finally, if you go to this website there is a slideshow of stunning images of fractals in honour of the great man.
Learning from Dogs 