CSHEL: February 2011

Gorgeously geeky and detailed how-to on homodyne measurement of the Earth's rotation using an old turntable (remember those?) and a PS Move motion sensor:

In this project we follow in the footsteps of Léon Foucault who in 1851 produced the first convincing experimental evidence of Earth's diurnal rotation, thus confirming a crucial element of the heliocentric model of the solar system. For lack of a 28 kg pendulum and a 70-meter-high ceiling to suspend it from, we use a table-top apparatus whose main components are a PlayStation Move motion-sensing videogame controller and a 33/45 RPM record player.

With an acquisition time of several hours, our device has little practical use, but this is an enlightening physics experiment that anyone can easily replicate. Technical details and source code are provided.

[Thanks to Jon Johns over on the O'Reilly mothership for this link.]

Homodyne measurement of Earth's rotation with a motion-sensing videogame controller and a record player

DIY Projects Science

Art Trembanis

CSHEL

Department of Geological Sciences

University of Delaware

http://cshel.geology.udel.edu

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Unmanned Subs Making Waves In Undersea Warfare

http://news.seadiscovery.com/post/2011/02/22/Unmanned-Subs-Making-Waves-In-Undersea-Warfare.aspx

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Macworld Scientists calculate total data stored to date: 295+ exabytes | Storage & Backup

Holy 1.21 jigawatts batman that's a lot of data!

http://www.macworld.com/article/157908/2011/02/295eb.html?lsrc=rss_main

Art Trembanis
CSHEL
Department of Geological Sciences
University of Delaware
http://cshel.geology.udel.edu

Monday, February 14, 2011

BBC News - Sophisticated drug submarine seized in Colombia

Wonder what they use for navigation underwater?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-12461089

Art Trembanis
CSHEL
Department of Geological Sciences
University of Delaware
http://cshel.geology.udel.edu

This Giant Touchscreen is World's Largest Touchscreen

Me likey!

http://www.ispyce.com/2011/02/this-giant-touchscreen-is-worlds.html

Art Trembanis
CSHEL
Department of Geological Sciences
University of Delaware
http://cshel.geology.udel.edu

Obama’s 2012 Budget Proposal: How It’s Spent - NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/newsgraphics/2011/0119-budget/index.html

Art Trembanis
CSHEL
Department of Geological Sciences
University of Delaware
http://cshel.geology.udel.edu

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Kinect Tangible Table Prototype | Kinect Hacks

Cool concept using Kinect.
http://www.kinect-hacks.com/kinect-hacks/2011/02/13/kinect-tangible-table-prototype

Art Trembanis
CSHEL
Department of Geological Sciences
University of Delaware
http://cshel.geology.udel.edu

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Icelandic volcano 'set to erupt' - Telegraph

With a pending trip to Iceland next week let's hope things keep calm on the volcano front for team CSHEL and all the inhabitants of Iceland.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/iceland/8311924/Icelandic-volcano-set-to-erupt.html

Art Trembanis
CSHEL
Department of Geological Sciences
University of Delaware
http://cshel.geology.udel.edu

Friday, February 11, 2011

NOAA - Lost Whaling Shipwreck with Link to Melville's Moby-Dick Discovered in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2011/20110211_pmnmshipwreck.html

Art Trembanis
CSHEL
Department of Geological Sciences
University of Delaware
http://cshel.geology.udel.edu

NOAA - Administrator's Remarks to the Ocean and Coastal Science Community

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2011/20110211_coastalremarks.html

Art Trembanis
CSHEL
Department of Geological Sciences
University of Delaware
http://cshel.geology.udel.edu

Book Review: The Elements of MATLAB Style

Valuable code lessons here...code as i say not as I doe

Loren on the Art of MATLAB
February 10, 2011 2:56 PM
by Loren

Book Review: The Elements of MATLAB Style

I've recently been offered the opportunity to review a new book, The Elements of MATLAB Style by contributor to the FEX, Richard K. Johnson. It's a great opportunity for me to see what's important in the eyes of one particular prolific MATLAB user. And it's a book worth you investigating for questions of style, especially if you work in a group or organization where there is lots of shared code and lots of people looking at and using the code.

The first thing I like about Richard's book is the intent, to make it a reference in the venerable tradition of The Elements of Style, by Strunk and White. If you write in English, I highly recommend this book. Neither book is comprehensive but rather attempts to boil ideas down to the ones with the largest pay-off and the ones where mistakes are often made. So you get some essentials & pitfalls, and conventions (some, but not all, particular to MATLAB).

Taking a look at the table of contents, we see first some high level principles, followed by a small number of main topics:

Formatting
Naming
Documentation
Programming
Files and Organization
Development

with a few helpful lists bringing up the rear (e.g., keywords).

Each of these chapters ends with a summary section which pulls together the main themes of each section. These summaries serve as a helpful review when you want to go back to look for more information. If it's listed there, you can be sure there will be some items in the chapter to guide you.

I don't happen to agree with every choice Richard has made in terms of conventions, e.g., for layout or formatting. Nor does MathWorks follow all of these (or all of any convention, in some cases). I do agree that he has identified relevant topics worthy of any group embarking on a project to discuss and standardize on.

I'd now like to take a little time mentioning a few of many points from the book that resonate for me. These are only a sampling, so don't read anything into ones that I have not listed here!

#7 Split Long Code Lines at Graceful Points - I find this one useful as it is a total pain having to trail far off to the right in any editor, even though it is possible.
# 10 Do Not Use Hard Tabs - This helps keep sanity when working among a group with possibly different editing environments.
# 43 Use Meaningful Names for Variables with a Large Scope - This makes code much easier to read, understand, and debug, if necessary.
# 69 Name Functions for What They Do - Since functions perform an action, the name should include information about the action.
# 86 Use Sortable Numbering in Data Filesnames - If you have many similar files of data, having a rational numbering scheme can only help you out.
# 97 Be Sure That Comments Agree with the Code - I will never forget the time that my thesis advisor called me because he was really irritated. I had left him a copy of a Fortran program that had copious comments, the final one being "Ignore all the comments above; they were for a previous version."
# 135 Avoid Cryptic Code - I have found that generally, writing cryptic code buys less than I expect in terms of good things, and more headaches than it warrants. On occasion, I have used cryptic code for performance in something time-critical. When I do, I try to comment it fully, including a straight-forward implementation in the comments which I have tested. That way, when the performance trade-offs change, I understand what the code is supposed to do and have two starting options for doing a code update.
# 150, 151 Minimize the Use of Global Variables and Minimize the Use of Global Constants -- I would say this even more strongly myself. There are superior techniques for dealing with information you want to share, whether they be function handles, classes and their properties, or some other methods. These techniques are much safer to use for many reasons - e.g., more easily controlled side effects, should any be desired, and code becomes more suitable for parallelism potentially.
# 172 Use Parenthese - Clarity of meaning is paramount, especially if others need to understand, modify, or translate the code.
# 176 Avoid Use of eval When Possible - I'm sure it doesn't seem so to some MATLAB users, but eval is avoidable most of the time.
# 185-188 The first of these is Avoid Complicated Conditional Expressions - These entries contain some useful thoughts on dealing with conditional constructs, the ordering of the cases, etc.
# 271-275 The first of these is Write Small Tests - I love that Richard has made testing a central tenet of this style guide. I don't see how programmers function well without a robust test suite.

Congratulations to Richard for writing "The Elements of MATLAB Style." It's a book that I recommend you read. I encourage you to adapt the guidelines in a way suitable for your programming environment.

Get the MATLAB code (requires JavaScript)

Published with MATLAB® 7.11

Best Practice news

Art Trembanis

CSHEL

Department of Geological Sciences

University of Delaware

http://cshel.geology.udel.edu

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

SeaTalk - Tree Stumps in Surf Zone

Check out this video on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gNgkoZyOeA&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Art Trembanis
CSHEL
Department of Geological Sciences
University of Delaware
http://cshel.geology.udel.edu

Monday, February 7, 2011

US To Fire Up Big Offshore Wind Energy Projects

Blow winds blow...

Slashdot
February 7, 2011 8:18 PM
by Soulskill

US To Fire Up Big Offshore Wind Energy Projects

coondoggie writes "The US government today took a bold step toward perhaps finally getting some offshore wind energy development going with $50 million in investment money and the promise of renewed effort to develop the energy source. The plan focuses on overcoming three key challenges (PDF) that have made offshore wind energy practically non-existent in the US: the relatively high cost of offshore wind energy; technical challenges surrounding installation, operations, and grid interconnection; and the lack of site data and experience with project permitting processes."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

power

Art Trembanis

CSHEL

Department of Geological Sciences

University of Delaware

http://cshel.geology.udel.edu

Sunday, February 6, 2011

NFL Teams Considering IPads To Replace Playbooks

I can see this. In fact what I want is an app to do my mission logging for field work.

Slashdot
February 6, 2011 9:48 AM
by samzenpus

NFL Teams Considering IPads To Replace Playbooks

bonch writes "Pete Walsh, technology head for the Dallas Cowboys, says he and other teams are considering iPads and other tablets as a replacement for paper playbooks, saving about 5,000 pages of printouts per game. Not only is it a huge savings in paper, but a lost iPad might also be remotely wiped to prevent a team's plays falling into the wrong hands. One concern is security and whether or not a tablet could be wirelessly hacked."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

apple

Art Trembanis

CSHEL

Department of Geological Sciences

University of Delaware

http://cshel.geology.udel.edu

GEOIN: Shoreline position

Good geoindicator reference

http://www.lgt.lt/geoin/doc.php?did=cl_shoreline

Art Trembanis
CSHEL
Department of Geological Sciences
University of Delaware
http://cshel.geology.udel.edu

Tethered, Water-Powered Jetpack Provides Two Hours of Flight Time

Slashdot
February 6, 2011 5:10 AM
by Soulskill

Tethered, Water-Powered Jetpack Provides Two Hours of Flight Time

arshadk writes "Unlike 'ordinary' jetpacks, the JetLev is actually two vehicles, tethered by a hose the thickness of your thigh. On the water is a small speedboat-like unit which contains a 250 horsepower motor and a pump. This is connected to the pack — into which you strap your frail body — by a 10-meter hose. The water is pumped from the sea or lake below up to the nozzles on the jetpack, providing a 1,900-Newton thrust, enough to lift a human weighing up to 150 kilos."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

transportation

Art Trembanis

CSHEL

Department of Geological Sciences

University of Delaware

http://cshel.geology.udel.edu

Saturday, February 5, 2011

Russia poised to breach mysterious Antarctic lake | Science Headlines | Comcast.net

Getting closer...

http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-science/20110204/SCIENCE-US-RUSSIA-ANTARCTICA-LAKE/

Art Trembanis
CSHEL
Department of Geological Sciences
University of Delaware
http://cshel.geology.udel.edu

Why Are Fewer Students in Science Fairs?

This is a real shame and a detriment to the future competitiveness of our nation on the world stage of s&t

Make: Online
February 5, 2011 5:18 PM
by Dale Dougherty

Why Are Fewer Students in Science Fairs?

According to the New York Times article, "It May Be a Sputnik Moment, but Science Fairs Are Lagging", fewer students may be participating in science fairs because there's not enough time in school to do science. An education policy that aims to produce greater interest in science and technology is increasingly at odds with a standardized model of instruction that relies too heavily on testing. The article says:

Yet as science fair season kicks into high gear, participation among high school students appears to be declining. And many science teachers say the problem is not a lack of celebration, but the Obama administration's own education policy, which holds schools accountable for math and reading scores at the expense of the kind of creative, independent exploration that science fair projects require.

The overemphasis on standardized testing is establishing the wrong incentives for both teachers and students. Testing has become a national obsession. A good education is wrongly equated with a "standardized" education. If there's no room in the school day for "learning by doing," then I think we can saying that students won't be doing much learning. Too many schools teach "science by the book," which is not only dull -- it's not science. (You can teach religion by the book all day long.) Such reliance on standards and testing only makes school more and more irrelevant and means that children will have to do real learning outside of school. Check out this article, "The Children Must Play" about education in Finland. Finnish schools encourage play, arts and crafts, and hands-on learning. The Finnish system relies very little on testing. It's hard to imagine educational leaders in America backing away from its own system of testing. Instead, we will double-down with technology to increase the level of standardization and testing. The kind of learning, described in the article as "creative, independent exploration" will be marginalized more and more. (Of course, this kind of exploration is at the heart of making.) There are also other reasons why participation in science fairs is in decline. Each year a few elite students are lauded for their achievement in producing a science-fair exhibit that wins a national award, and that's a good thing. But what's the experience like for the rest of the participants? And what about those who never think of participating? Are local science fairs doing enough to encourage broad participation by all students to explore and discover science? Have science fairs themselves become overly structured and bureacratic? I also wonder if they've come to offer a fairly narrow view of science? One question to ask is how can science fairs be more open and fun? How would you re-invent the science fair? What could we learn from Maker Faire?

Education Science

Art Trembanis

CSHEL

Department of Geological Sciences

University of Delaware

http://cshel.geology.udel.edu

Dudeism - Ordination by the Religion of The Big Lebowski

The dude abides!

http://dudeism.com/

Giant Archaeological Trove Found Via Google Earth

Alas if only this were possible for marine archaeological applications... We are so supremely undersampled in the marine environment.

Slashdot
February 4, 2011 4:03 PM
by Soulskill

Giant Archaeological Trove Found Via Google Earth

An anonymous reader writes "Using detailed satellite imagery available through Google Earth, Australian researchers have discovered what may be tombs that are thousands of years old in remote stretches of Saudi Arabia (abstract). 'Kennedy scanned 1240 square kilometers in Saudi Arabia using Google Earth. From their birds-eye view he found 1977 potential archaeological sites, including 1082 "pendants" — ancient tear-drop shaped tombs made of stone. According to Kennedy, aerial photography of Saudi Arabia is not made available to most archaeologists, and it's difficult, if not impossible, to fly over the nation. "But, Google Earth can outflank them," he says. Kennedy confirmed that the sites were vestiges of an ancient life — rather than vegetation or shadow - by asking a friend in Saudi Arabia, who is not an archaeologist, to drive out to two of the sites and photograph them. By comparing the images with structures that Kennedy has seen in Jordan, he believes the sites may be up to 9000 years old, but ground verification is needed."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

earth

Art Trembanis

CSHEL

Department of Geological Sciences

University of Delaware

http://cshel.geology.udel.edu