New groundwater and soil moisture drought indicator maps produced by NASA are available on the National Drought Mitigation Center’s website. They currently show unusually low groundwater storage levels in Texas. The maps use an 11-division scale, with blues showing wetter-than-normal conditions and a yellow-to-red spectrum showing drier-than-normal conditions. (Credit: NASA/National Drought Mitigation Center) The map […]
There have been some interesting posts recently demonstrating and discussing control of devices beyond the keyboard. First, every casual gamer’s dream has now come true: you can play Angry Birds using your brain as a controller. The implications for reaching an even higher vegetative state state of flow are simply staggering. Second, one story that […]
A team of astronomers led by scientists at the California Institute of Technology have found 18 planets orbiting stars more massive than our Sun. Finding planets is becoming more and more routine with the Kepler telescope, but these planetary discoveries help to answer questions about planetary formation–and raise other questions about planetary orbits. The scientists […]
We put the last clock radio in our house in the Goodwill pile last week. Seeing it sitting on the pile to go downstairs was a surprising revelation for me. Somehow it felt wrong for a reason I couldn’t place. Then it hit me: a clock radio was my first real gadget purchase. For those […]
What caused the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM)? About 56 million years ago, Earth’s temperature was a lot warmer than it is today–as much as 21°F higher than today (see the graph). Earth’s temperature is rising today, likely because of human emissions of greenhouse gases. But 56 million years ago, there were no human emissions; there […]
I recently fawned over Joi Ito’s NY Times story about how openness and the Internet change the way we approach innovation and daily life. However, the unabridged version he posted to his blog is actually much better. It’s interesting to think for a moment about this episode. First, the simple fact that this had to […]
I just finished reading Joi Ito’s great New York Times essay about the Internet and openness. This is clearly a piece that resonates with many of us at the Concord Consortium as well as in the creative technology community at large. Joi does an excellent job explaining and characterizing what it is about the Internet’s birth […]
In science, less isn’t more; more is more. That basic premise is supported by a recent report from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory: Separating signal and noise in climate warming. Earth’s overall temperature is affected by natural processes, such as La Niña and El Niño, as well as by human factors. From 1999 to 2008, Earth’s […]
That’s the title of an editorial by Daniel Botkin, president of the Center for the Study of the Environment and professor emeritus at the University of California, in today’s Wall Street Journal. With the ongoing polarization of science in today’s political environment, it’s more important than ever to remember that science is filled with uncertainty. […]
Developers at the Concord Consortium work on a wide variety of grants, and in the process we create reusable pieces of code. With a little work some of these reusable bits of code can be turned into spin-off projects that have a life of their own. In my opinion these spin-off projects have the best […]