Importance in Life for Happiness (OECD Life Index survey)

Picture: What is Important in life (OECD Life Index survey)?

There is more to life than the cold numbers of GDP and economic statistics – This Index allows you to compare well-being across countries, based on 11 topics the OECD has identified as essential, in the areas of material living conditions and quality of life.

How to measure happiness and why it matters

On the International Day of Happiness, 20 March 2013 the OECD released a detailed set of Guidelines on Measuring Subjective Well-being. This is essentially a handbook for statisticians involved in collecting and publishing information on subjective well-being (measures of life satisfaction, happiness, and similar concepts).

The vision comes from Bhutan
Leading the movement to remake what we measure has been the tiny, mountainous Asian nation of Bhutan, population of 740,000. Its goal is "Gross National Happiness.

Source: OECD, Huffington Post, 

Triple-dip - Worst recession since 1920 in UK

Source: link

Unpublished today: Recycle socks (Nice Laundry), Color code charts, 3D print your own records

Water “Freeze” In Mid-Air

Source: link

Programming life? Look for Low complexity

Good to find others with a similar sense, but a different aim.
"Both art and science are by-products of the desire to create / discover more data that is compressible in hitherto unknown ways!" 

"Add two successive Fibonacci numbers such as 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, ... and you'll get the next. The corresponding ratios 1/1, 1/2, 2/3, 3/5, 5/8, 8/13, 13/21, 21/34, ... converge to the harmonic proportion: 1/2 (square root of 5) - 1/2 = 0.618034... This so-called golden ratio divides the unit interval into segments of lengths a and b such that a/b=b. So the inverse of 0.618034... is 1.618034... whose square is 2.618034... etc. Many artists claim the human eye prefers the golden ratio over others.". link
--> successive improvements, can felt/know by a simple KPI.
Beauty is a stage, interesting is a move in the right direction.

"The algorithmic information or Kolmogorov complexity of a bitstring x is the length of the shortest program that computes x and halts. This is one of the fundamental concepts of theoretical computer science.". link
--> computers use dual digit language; bits. Life (most likely) use a different algorithm, built on a multi-digit language - from x-number of atoms. Recursive learning; learn to read, test write, evaluate.

It comes in all senses; visual, auditory, ... etc (incl. balance).

Future predictions:  "A flat minimum is a large connected region in weight-space where the error remains approximately constant.": link, pareto from the normative

And more, more, and much more...

Language development

What we need is a new genre, a metaphorical language that is coherent to both the scientist and the metaphysician.

Memo

The theoretical perspective involves a brief survey of the general concept of principle as well as an analysis of different flavors of principles. A key distinction is made between scientific principles and normative principles. Scientific principles are laws or facts of nature and form the fundamental truths that one can build upon. Normative principles are rules of conduct that guide/restrict behavior. While scientific principles hold “naturally”, normative principles need explicit “enforcement”.

Definitions

ARCHITECTURE: Those properties of an artifact that are necessary and sufficient to meet its essential requirements.

POLICY: A purposive course of action followed by a set of actor(s) to guide and determine present and future decisions, with an aim of realizing goals.

SCIENTIFIC PRINCIPLE: A law or fact of nature underlying the working of an artifact.

NORMATIVE PRINCIPLE: A declarative statement that normatively prescribes a property of something.

ARTIFACT: Something created by humans usually for a practical purpose.

Normative principles in this phase can best be referred to as being a credo.
CREDO: A normative-principle expressing a fundamental belief.

Once credos have been (re)formulated such that they are specific enough, we can start to refer to them as a norm. 

NORM: A normative principle in the form of a specific and measurable statement.

It should be noted that the distinction between architecture and design is orthogonal to the distinction between requirement (what),normative principle(declarative how) and instruction(operational how).

The term principle is said to originate from the Latin word of principium (Meriam-Webster 2003), which means ‘origin’, ‘beginning’ or ‘first cause’. As summarized in Paauwe (2010), Vitruvius, an architect in ancient Rome, already used the concept of principles to explain what is true and indisputable, and should apply to everyone. Vitruvius considered principles as the elements, the laws of nature that produce specific results. For instance, he observed how certain principles of the human body, such as symmetry and proportion, ensure ‘perfection’. 

Source: link, Scribd

Society model

The American philosopher John Rawls wrote a theory of justice. In his work he described what he called the Original Position. This is the fictive starting point where humanity was free to develop core principles for society from a greenfield point of view. To achieve that greenfield status, they had to sign a veil of ignorance contract . This contract was to make sure they wouldn’t get influenced or biased. They determined two core principles: liberty and equality. It was then also determined that stakeholders would prefer justice as fairness above utilitarianism. So they in fact preferred a balanced fairness above a maximized utilizing of happiness. Now if we map that to our world with all it’s crises, what would happen if we all followed the justice as fairness principle? Could this stop the endless utilitarianism strategies? Could it make us accept that endless growth is not sustainable? And that maximizing happiness could in fact just be an illusion? Could this be the key?

Source: link

Another reinforcement for the General model; with stakeholders and values.

Precision Grammar for Programming Cells

An unprecedented collaboration among academia, industry, government and civil society has resulted in the launch of a professional-grade collection of public domain DNA parts that greatly increases the reliability and precision by which biology can be engineered.

They have, in effect, established rules for the first language for engineering gene expression, the layer between the genome and all the dynamic processes of life. The feat is all the more remarkable considering that just a few years ago several prominent scientists claimed that it would be impossible to develop frameworks enabling reliably reusable standard biological parts. 
The DNA sequences that encode all parts and the data about them are free and available online.

Source: link

3-D face from your DNA

Stranger Visions is an art project which tries to determine what we look like based on a single strand of hair.

Source: link

Self healing circuits + 4-D printing

Imagine that the chips in your smart phone or computer could repair and defend themselves on the fly, recovering in microseconds from problems ranging from less-than-ideal battery power to total transistor failure. It might sound like the stuff of science fiction, but a team of engineers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), for the first time ever, has developed just such self-healing integrated chips.

Source: link


4D printing
A new project out of MIT is working to create materials that are so smart they can put themselves together.
Tibbits’s research focus is materials that assemble themselves. In the past, he’s built toys and furniture based on principles from microbiology (like self-folding proteins), where embedded magnets, combined with shaking or adding water, can make certain materials snap into a predetermined shape. Now he’s working with a research material, so new it lacks a name, that he’s wrangled into auto-transforming into the letters MIT when a strand of it is dunked in water.
Source: link

Biohackers - How to Build Your Own BioPrinter

Last month, a group of biohackers from the community lab BioCurious in Sunnyvale, California released a nine-step guide to creating your own bioprinter by using bits of old electronics that many people would have lying around the house.

Now, the TED talk of Wake Forest University researcher Anthony Atala 3-D-printing a dummy, human kidney on stage is the stuff of nerd mythology.

Source: link

DNA predict their life expectancy in patients with heart disease

Telomere length could be used in the future as a way to measure the effectiveness of heart care treatment.

Source: link

16-Year-Old Created A Cheap, Accurate Cancer Sensor

Developed a nearly 100 percent accurate paper sensor that detects pancreatic cancer better than anything else out there--it’s over 400 times more sensitive, 168 times faster, and 26,000 times less expensive than today’s methods.
There are no Ph.D.-clad scientists helping with the project. "It’s all just us, the kids developing the technologies.

Source: Link

The Argumentative Theory

"Reasoning was not designed to pursue the truth. Reasoning was designed by evolution to help us win arguments. Reasoning can lead to poor outcomes, not because humans are bad at it, but because they systematically strive for arguments that justify their own beliefs or their actions"

"Science works very well as a social process, when we can come together and find flaws in each other's reasoning. We can't find the problems in our own reasoning very well. But, that's what other people are for, is to criticize us. And together, we hope the truth comes out", says  Jonathan Haidt about a paper written by Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber.

THE ARGUMENTATIVE THEORY

Dan Sperber came up with the argumentative theory because he was taking stock of what was happening in the world of psychology at large. A lot of people in psychology were accumulating evidence that the mind, and reasoning in particular, doesn't work so well. Reasoning produces a lot of mistakes. We are not very good in statistics, and we can't understand very basic logical problems.

We do all these irrational things, and despite mounting results, people are not really changing their basic assumption. They are not challenging the basic idea that reasoning is for individual purposes. The premise is that reasoning should help us make better decisions, get at better beliefs. And if you start from this premise, then it follows that reasoning should help us deal with logical problems and it should help us understand statistics. But reasoning doesn't do all these things, or it does all these things very, very poorly.

Source: link, 2, 3

If this theory is the starting point, what is our desired state, and the way to get there?

Mesmerizing Art

Source: link

Source: link

Lake Vostok - New bacterial species found

Seven samples of the same species of bacteria were found in water frozen on the head of the drill that was used in 2012 to reach the lake, covered by a 3.5-kilometer-thick ice sheet, but the match between its DNA and any known organisms never exceeded 86 percent, while a match of under 90 percent is already enough to indicate a new species.

Source: link

Increase potential to find life on Europa

After investigating the surface ice composition the salty brown minerals comes from the interior --> it is possible detect other chemicals (signatures for life).

Source: link (via)

Interspecies Internet

"Interactions with other animals will teach us, ultimately, how we might interact with an alien from another world".
From Intra Terrestrial Communication (ITC) to Extra Terrestrial Communication (ETC). Waiting for the video...

Read more: link

Peak oil projection

Shale oil forecasted to generate a 2nd wave, and Methane Hydrate may generate a 3rd wave.
From global warning, to global heating?

Source: link

Human purpose (RSA.org)

The laws of behavioural physics should be rewritten.
Example: classical incentives models are wrong - unless for the most rudimentary cognitive skills.
Researched by: MIT, Carnegie Mellon, University of Chicago (funded by the Federal reserve bank).

Source: RSA Animate (theRSA.org)

Other videos: the secret power of time, freedom from difficult choices, where does good ideas come from, the secret of language, Who controls the world, A fair society, Laws of persuasion, Need for new Socity Model with a balanced Vision

Physics, Mathematics and philosophy

Mathematics & philosopy (mainly in Swedish)

3 videos (utbildningsradion + BBC)
* Förutsägelser (preditions) - intelligence as a critical mass of judgements
* Mönster (patterns) - the most energy efficient solution
* Tal (numbers) -

Filosofiska rummet (sverigesradio)
Mathematics is the properties of everything. It is the physical laws independent of us, but is described as a universal descriptive language by us to communicate/interact with everything in nature.


Updated:
* I read an interesting essay by Patrik Lindenfors in SANS magazine by fri.tanke.förlag (in swedish)
   This book sounds interesting (samarbete), sample
* Another interesting essay from Sam Harries book Moralities landscape
* A new path

Boston Dynamics Big Dog 2.0

Fear the day of awareness.
Source: link

DNA Molecules Found near Milky Way centre

Finding these molecules - the chemical precursors for life - in an interstellar gas cloud means that important building blocks for DNA and amino acids can 'seed' newly-formed planets.  It could be that some of the first key steps toward biological chemicals occurred on tiny ice grains.

Source: link

+ Married couple sought for millionaire's Mars mission, 2018.

World migration pattern

Explore the world migration pattern; immigration/emigration and corridors.
Source: link

Political leaders background

Miss prosperity correlation, like HDI.
Source: link

Quantum computing - current status

Still not there but, "a new method that better preserves the units necessary to power lightning-fast electronics, known as qubits (pronounced CUE-bits). Hole spins, rather than electron spins, can keep quantum bits in the same physical state up to 10 times longer than before, the report finds. The holes within hole spins are literally empty spaces left when electrons are taken out."

Source: link

The Big Mac index

Source: link, GDP/Capita, Cities

Ingenious Idea, Dragging Files Between Computer & Phone

This concept is so simple and clever that you wounder why it doesent exist already.
Source: link

Charge Batteries from Electromagnetic Fields

Dennis Siegel, a digital media student at the University of the Arts in Bremen, Germany made an Electromagnetic Harvesters. It's a small device that wirelessly leech off electromagnetic fields to charge AA batteries in 24hrs.
Source: link

Origami Expert Invents Shoes For Nike

As one of the founding members of Nike’s Innovation Kitchen, Friton is known for minimalistic designs.
Source: link

State of the Union Speach 2013 - Chart Enhanced Version

On February 12, 2013, President Obama gave his annual State of the Union speech, but this year it was “enhanced” with charts, data visualizations and additional information in a sidebar of the display (full video above). 
Read more: link

3Doodler

First a toy, and then a utility for food, metals, strings and wires, etc

Comandante (2003) Oliver Stone Documentary: Fidel Castro

Hear both sides of the story, before making a judgement. +
Link IMDB

Island disputes in Asia

There is yet a need to find a code of conduct resolve these disputes.
Additional: TheEconomist2012-08, USChinaInstitute2010

Online education portal - Coursera

Compelling video, but I have yet to find an useful course.

Links: www.coursera.org, www.edx.org, www.udacity.com, www.futurelearn.com
Old post: link

Can you trust your brain?

Which colour is lighter?

Scratch 2.0 - programming for kids

Scratch is programming for kids - with LEGO-like building blocks. Program your own Story, make a Game. 

There are millions of projects to try, and investigate. 

Links: 1min tutorial, TED-talk, Related-LittleBits

Biohacking (from IT to BT)

Soon your kids will know things and start things you couldn't even imagine.
The personal biotech communities have started to sprout, everywhere. And your kids might already be there, instead of in school. 

Source: link,


Temporary link:
Goats making spider silk. Forward to 17:30
Biohacking a biomachine on a café. Forward to 27:00
1million litre bacterial Biodiesel in production. Forward to 34:00
Year 2012 people do things in garages that gave the Nobel prize 2008 (6years ago). Forward to 44:00

Update:
* Enhancing root systems

The Evolutionary Origins of Modularity

By simulating 25,000 generations of evolution within computers, Cornell University engineering and robotics researchers have discovered why biological networks tend to be organized as modules -- a finding that will lead to a deeper understanding of the evolution of complexity.

The team discovered that evolution produces modules not because they produce more adaptable designs, but because modular designs have fewer and shorter network connections, which are costly to build and maintain. As it turned out, it was enough to include a "cost of wiring" to make evolution favor modular architectures.

To test the theory, the researchers simulated the evolution of networks with and without a cost for network connections.

"Once you add a cost for network connections, modules immediately appear. Without a cost, modules never form. The effect is quite dramatic," says Clune.

The results may help explain the near-universal presence of modularity in biological networks as diverse as neural networks -- such as animal brains -- and vascular networks, gene regulatory networks, protein-protein interaction networks, metabolic networks and even human-constructed networks such as the Internet.

"Being able to evolve modularity will let us create more complex, sophisticated computational brains," says Clune.

Says Lipson: "We've had various attempts to try to crack the modularity question in lots of different ways. This one by far is the simplest and most elegant."

Source: link

How Organisms Evolve New Functions (Theory and Research)

"Evolution in Four Dimensions", trace four 'dimensions' in evolution: 
* Genetic
* Epigenetic (or non-DNA cellular transmission of traits)
* Behavioral 
* Symbolic (transmission through language and other forms of symbolic communication). 

Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb argue that there is more to heredity than genes. These systems, they argue, can all provide variations on which natural selection can act. Evolution in Four Dimensions offers a richer, more complex view of evolution than the gene-based, one-dimensional view held by many today. The new synthesis advanced by Jablonka and Lamb makes clear that induced and acquired changes also play a role in evolution.

Source: Lecture (bloggpost)

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A team of researchers has documented the step-by-step process in which an organisms evolve new functions. The research decodes how E. colibacteria supplement a traditional diet of glucose with an extra course of citrate.

The 1st stage was potentiation, when the E. coli accumulated at least two mutations that set the stage for later events. The 2nd step, actualization, is when the bacteria first began eating citrate, but only just barely nibbling at it. The 3rd final stage, refinement, involved mutations that greatly improved the initially weak function. This allowed the citrate eaters to wolf down their new food source and to become dominant in the population.


Source: link1, link2

House price indicators

I think it's just a matter of time before 'static tables' is a thing of the past.

Source: link

Updated

Source: link

New World Record for Solar Cell Efficiency

Jan. 18, 2013 — In a remarkable feat, scientists at Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, have developed thin film solar cells on flexible polymer foils with a new record efficiency of 20.4% for converting sunlight into electricity. The cells are based on CIGS semiconducting material (copper indium gallium (di)selenide) known for its potential to provide cost-effective solar electricity. The technology is currently awaiting scale-up for industrial applications.

Over the years the laboratory has boosted the photovoltaic conversion efficiency of flexible CIGS solar cells time and again, from 12.8% in 1999 – the group’s first world record – to 14.1% in 2005, 17.6% in 2010 and 18.7% in 2011.
What’s more, Empa’s new record efficiency for flexible solar cells now even exceeds the record value of 20.3% for CIGS solar cells on glass substrates – and equals the highest efficiencies for polycrystalline silicon wafer-based solar cells. 

Thin film, lightweight and flexible high-performance solar modules are attractive for numerous applications such as solar farms, roofs and facades of buildings, automobiles and portable electronics and can be produced using continuous roll-to-roll manufacturing processes that offer further cost reductions compared to standard silicon technologies. In other words, they have the potential to enable low-cost solar electricity in the near future. 

Now it is time for the next step, the scale-up of the technology to cover large areas in a cost-efficient roll-to-roll manufacturing process with an industrial partner”, says Gian-Luca Bona the Director of Empa. For this purpose, Empa is collaborating with Flisom, a start-up company involved in industrialization of flexible CIGS solar cells.

Source: link

Teleportation, Quantumportation or Spinportation

Mathematical Breakthrough Sets out Rules for More Effective Teleportation

Jan. 16, 2013 — For the last ten years, theoretical physicists have shown that the intense connections generated between particles as established in the quantum law of 'entanglement' may hold the key to eventual teleportation of quantum information.

Read more: link

Unpublished: Quantum computing 39min in room temperature

Radio stations

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Human DNA browser (free)

The Genome Browser and Blat software are free for academic, nonprofit, and personal use.
Link: UCSC Genome browser on Human

Volcano's and earthquakes - live updates

Web cameras with live updates from all major sites. Including visiting trips, professional pictures etc.

Link: http://www.volcanodiscovery.com/
Example: http://webcams.volcanodiscovery.com/Kilauea#VW_mCont

The likelihood of life

Interesting movie the likelihood of life.
On earth we see numerous forms of Convergent biology, how likely is it on other places in the universe.



Part 2, Part 3.
Link: Axess, Top Documentary Films

Harvard - Most popular course

Video interview: Using positive psychology
Full interview [9 minutes, 15 seconds]




Link: Most popular course at Harvard
Link: Report, YouTube uploads

View Now! NASA Live Streams Mars 'Curiosity' Landing

           

Click here for NASA Curiosity Mission Live Stream

Live Birds eye view. Nasa count down --> GMT: 05:31