Hidden Life Radio livestreams music generated from trees (their biodata, that is). Kristin Toussaint in her August 3, 2021 article for Fast Company describes the ‘radio station’, Note: Links have been removed, Outside of a library in Cambridge, Massachusetts, an over-80-year-old copper beech tree is making music.As the tree photosynthesizes and absorbs and evaporates water, a solar-powered sensor attached to a leaf measures the micro voltage of all that invisible activity. Sound designer and musician…

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Fro anyone who needs a shot of happiness, this is a very happy scientist, Caption: Assistant Professor (Steve) Cuong Dang, from NTU’s School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, who led the study, displaying pieces of tamarind shell, which were integral to the study. Credit to NTU Singapore A July 14, 2021 news item on ScienceDaily describes the source of assistant professor (Steve) Cuong Dang’s happiness, Shells of tamarind, a tropical fruit consumed worldwide, are discarded…

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Being able to analyze Twitter messages (tweets) in real-time is amazing given what I wrote in this January 16, 2013 posting titled: “Researching tweets (the Twitter kind)” about the US Library of Congress and its attempts to access tweets for scholars,” At least one of the reasons no one has received access to the tweets is that a single search of the archived (2006- 2010) tweets alone would take 24 hours, [emphases mine] … So,…

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Edith Hammer, lecturer (Biology) at Lund University (Sweden) has written a July 22, 2021 essay for The Conversation (h/t July 23, 2021 news item on phys.org) that has everything.: mystery, cyborgs, unexpected denizens, and a phenomenon explored for the first time (Note: Links have been removed), Dig a teaspoon into your nearest clump of soil, and what you’ll emerge with will contain more microorganisms than there are people on Earth. We know this from lab…

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There seems to have been an update to the script for the voiceover. You’ll find it at the 1 min. 30 secs. mark ( spoken: “with up to 93% accuracy at 18 words per minute`’ vs. written “with median 74% accuracy at 15 words per minute)". A July 14, 2021 news item on ScienceDaily announces the latest work on a a neuroprosthetic from the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF), Researchers at UC San…

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This July 21, 2021 news item on Nanowerk is all about laser pulses and tiny timescales. Cornell researchers have developed nanostructures that enable record-breaking conversion of laser pulses into high-harmonic generation, paving the way for new scientific tools for high-resolution imaging and studying physical processes that occur at the scale of an attosecond – one quintillionth of a second [emphasis mine].High-harmonic generation has long been used to merge photons from a pulsing laser into one,…

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Simon Fraser University’s (SFU) Metacreation Lab for Creative AI (artificial intelligence) in Vancouver, Canada, has just sent me (via email) a January 2022 newsletter, which you can find here. There are a two items I found of special interest. Max Planck Centre for Humans and Machines Seminars From the January 2022 newsletter, Max Planck Institute Seminar – The rise of Creative AI & its ethicsJanuary 11, 2022 at 15:00 pm [sic] CET | 6:00 am…

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Adam Dhalla in a January 5, 2022 posting on the Nature Conservancy Canada blog announced a new location for a ‘Find the Birds’ game, Since its launch six months ago …, with an initial Arizona simulated birding location, Find the Birds (a free educational mobile game about birds and conservation) now has over 7,000 players in 46 countries on six continents. In the game, players explore realistic habitats, find and take virtual photos of accurately…

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It was a mysterious retweet from the Canadian Light Source (synchrotron) which led me to CAP_SAC (CAP being the Canadian Association of Physicists and SAC being Student Advisory Council) and their Science Policy 101 Panel, The CAP Student Advisory Council is hosting a science policy 101 panel Thursday, January 13th at 15h00 EST [3 pm EST].  The (free) registration link can be found here.What is science policy and how does it interact with the frontiers…

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So far this year all I’ve been posting about are events and contests. Continuing on that theme, I have an event and, something new, a course. Massey Dialogues on January 5, 2022, 1 – 2 pm PST “The Art of Science-Telling: How Science Education Can Shape Society” is scheduled for today (Wednesday, January 5, 5022 at 1 pm PST or 4 pm EST), You can find the livestream here on YouTube, Massey CollegeJoin us for…

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