BBC News – Colombia’s long task to identify conflict victims
- Why Irene Was More Dangerous Than It Should Have Been
- So far Hurricane Irene’s estimated damage isn’t as bad as had been feared, but the storm was actually much more destructive than it had any right to be, experts say.
- > natural_disaster
- Bad riot neuroscience: cite the power « Mind Hacks
- The Guardian Notes and Theories blog has a fantastic article on media science distortion by brain researchers whose study got falsely reported as showing a link between rioting and ‘low levels of a brain chemical’.
- > skience
- Reporters make it easier to access Census data | FlowingData • by Nathan Yau
- Easily download data in bulk as CSV or shapefiles or build it into your applications with the API.
- Epiphenom: How 9/11 grief affected the religious convictions of the victim’s families
- Grief has a complicated relationship with Western religion. On the on hand, loss of a loved one can reinforce beliefs. On the other hand, arbitrary or meaningless deaths could feasibly undermine belief.
- There hasn’t been much investigation into this topic, which is why a new study of the families of 9/11 victims is particularly interesting. …
- Probiotic Bacteria May Help Treat Depression | Gut-Brain Link | Mental Health
- “Now, that would not be an everyday yogurt — I’m not saying you should go out to the supermarket and try doing this,” he cautioned. “The effect depends on the strain of probiotic you use. The hope would be, though, that this could have less side effects than drugs.”
- Pre-Cog Is Real – New Software Stops Crime Before It Happens | Singularity Hub • by Peter Murray
- The current, real world test of the software involves generating a map of the city areas most likely to be burglarized, the time of day they are most likely to get hit, and deploying personnel accordingly. The software is recalibrated every day when burglaries from the previous day are added to the dataset. They don’t actually expect to catch people in the act, but to deter more crimes with more effective patrolling. The test that is underway will be evaluated at six months, but already the data is encouraging.
- August 26, 2011 – Anglo-Egyptian Treaty is Formalized | About.com African History
- …established Egypt as a sovereign state and required Britain to remove all troops except for those deemed necessary to protect the Suez Canal…
- The move was partially inspired by the Second Italo-Abyssinian War that had started in the previous year …
- It was intended that the treaty should last for 20 years, but Wafd government eventually requested a full British withdrawal, and when this did not happen they unilaterally abrogated the treaty in 1951.
- Leaf : A Social Network for Leaves – SocialTimes.com
- The Leaf project was conceived by an artist interested in identifying leaves in the field and to add geo-tagged information about them for other people. A person takes a photo of a leaf with a phone and has it match the pattern to leaves in its database. If has been previously indentified, information about the leaf is presented. If not, the user can add information, including location, about the leaf. This information will be available to the next person who uses the app to identify the leaf.
- [Do it for science! -L]
- Names Around The World | languagehat.com
- This [w3.org link] is a nice roundup of answers to the question “How do people’s names differ around the world, and what are the implications of those differences on the design of forms, databases, ontologies, etc. for the Web?”
- [Google+ I'm looking at you. -L]
- The Ghost Map: Hard Lessons in Epidemiology from Victorian London | Brain Pickings • by Maria Popova
- …Steven Johnson, easily my favorite nonfiction writer working today, unleashes his signature cross-disciplinary thinking to explore the intricate interconnections between the spread of the disease, the rise of cities, the mysteries of medicine, and the very nature of scientific inquiry.
- Video Portraits of Resilience from Sri Lanka | Brain Pickings • by Maria Popova
- Three beautiful short films about ingenuity in the face of scarcity and hardship.
[My bookmarks live at delicious.com/camryl. In case it needs to be said: I don't agree with every word of everything I link to. Also, signal boosts are awesome! --L.]
The Of interest (Mon, Aug 29th, 3pm to 10pm) by Lee Salazar, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Terms and conditions beyond the scope of this license may be available at leesalazar.com.