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'Global Warming is real' declares new scientific work from an independent group of researchers called the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study. The research team is at least partially funded by the Koch Brothers who fund several climate denial groups. The team was setup to identify flaws in the climate science |
of global average temperature trends, but has confirmed the analysis undertaken by NASA, NOAA and the Hadley Centre that about 1 degree Celsius of global warming has occurred since 1950. The study confirmed that "We are seeing substantial global warming" and subtantially eliminated arguments that heat island effects, t... |
quality, and the risk of data selection bias had more than a very modest or marginal impact on the trend for increasing global average temperatures. Related Commentary: Nature Different method, same result: global warming is real | Climate Progress Hot Dog Bites Skeptical Man: Koch-Funded Berkeley Temperature Study Doe... |
the Reality of Global Warming” Four research papers have been released for public discussion with a view for them all to be submitted for peer review and eventually published. The research team was lead by Professor Richard Muller, a physicist at the University of California at Berkeley and included Saul |
Perlmutter who was recently announced as a winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics (for his work in cosmology). Muller criticised the global temperature trend during 2004 in an article in Technology Review, alledging that the "hockey stick" of global temperatures was broken. "Our biggest surprise was that the |
new results agreed so closely with the warming values published previously by other teams in the U.S. and the U.K.,” Muller said. “This confirms that these studies were done carefully and that potential biases identified by climate change skeptics did not seriously affect their conclusions." The study ruled out of |
contention the urban heat island effect and poor station quality in terms of bias in the results by NASA, NOAA and the Hadley Centre. Robert Rohde, lead scientist for Berkeley Earth, noted that "the Berkeley Earth analysis is the first study to address the issue of data selection bias, by |
using nearly all of the available data, which includes about 5 times as many station locations as were reviewed by prior groups." In a related study published this week - Effects of Urban Surfaces and White Roofs on Global and Regional Climate - Stanford University researchers have quantified the contribution |
of the heat islands on a global basis for the first time, showing that the contribution to global warming from urban heat islands is very modest compared with what greenhouse gas emissions contribute. The study also ran a simulation for the geoengineering solution of painting roofs white in urban areas |
to enhance local cooling. The cooling effect does work, but it also marginally increases warming on a global scale. Professor Jacobson advised it was better to Install solar panels to combat Global Warming rather than paint roofs white. On the urban heat island effect the BEST study reported "The urban |
heat island effect is locally large and real, but does not contribute significantly to the average land temperature rise. That’s because the urban regions of the Earth amount to less than 1% of the land area". On temperature sites the BEST study detailed "About 1/3 of temperature sites around the |
world reported global cooling over the past 70 years (including much of the United States and northern Europe). But 2/3 of the sites show warming. Individual temperature histories reported from a single location are frequently noisy and/or unreliable, and it is always necessary to compare and combine many records to |
understand the true pattern of global warming." "The large number of sites reporting cooling might help explain some of the skepticism of global warming,” Rohde commented. “Global warming is too slow for humans to feel directly, and if your local weather man tells you that temperatures are the same or |
cooler than they were a hundred years ago it is easy to believe him." The research looked in some depth into the allegations by Anthony Watts that temperature results were skewed in the US due to "poor" station data. The research identified that these stations showed the same pattern of |
global warming as stations ranked “OK”. "Absolute temperatures of poor stations may be higher and less accurate, but the overall global warming trend is the same, and the Berkeley Earth analysis concludes that there is not any undue bias from including poor stations in the survey." The website explains in |
depth the methodology of the research and also publishes full datasets which required combining data from different sites and formats and building from scratch a statistical analysis of the data. While the research identifies that the same degree of global warming is ocurring as other well known analyses, it hasn't |
made an independent assessment of how much of the observed warming is due to human actions according to Richard Muller. Scientists from Australian and the UK have commented on the release of these papers. Several commented that the papers need to undergo the peer review process. “I think it would |
be very unwise to comment until the peer review process has completed. If we have learned anything over the last couple of years it is surely that ensuring the rigour of the science is paramount - however good the "scoop" might seem." said Professor Chris Rapley, Professor of Climate Science |
at UCL Professor Neville Nicholls from the School of Geography and Environmental Science at Monash University, Melbourne said "Only those most desperate to dismiss global warming have tried to blame urbanization for the observed warming. But I guess it is always good to have yet another group confirm decades of |
work by climate scientists. Perhaps this will finally put to rest the furphy that the warming is caused by urbanization. I won't hold my breath though. I guess those spreading misinformation about warming will just move on to another one of their furphies." Professor Dave Griggs, CEO of ClimateWorks Australia |
and Director of the Monash Sustainability Institute, Melbourne said that: "The paper confirms previous work that the observed warming of the Earth since the beginning of the 20th Century cannot be attributed to the urban heat island (UHI) effect." "This comes as no surprise to climate scientists who take great |
care to take account of this effect in their work. It also confirms findings from other studies using very different methods. For example, looking at temperature trends on windy days and calm days also show no difference contrary to what you would expect from the urban heat island as the |
heat would build up more on calm days. So, hopefully this paper will help to put this urban (heat island) myth to bed." said Dave Griggs. Professor Simon Tett, Head of Global Change Research Institute School of Geosciences at the University of Edinburgh, said: "Earlier analysis, including that from the |
[Hadley] Climatic Research Unit, using a restricted set of temperature records, to avoid urban warming, show large scale warming. Comparison of that data with climate models leads to the conclusion that anthropogenic drivers are responsible for the late 20th century warming. The BEST study, assuming its results are sim... |
peer review, would not change that view." Bob Ward, Policy and Communications Director, Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics (LSE), said: "This new study confirms what we already knew. The warming of the land areas of the Earth since the 19th century |
cannot be explained by the impact of cities growing to engulf rural weather stations. So-called 'sceptics' should now drop their thoroughly discredited claims that the increase in global average temperature could be attributed to the impact of growing cities, which create an urban heat island effect. This claim was alw... |
dubious as oceans also show the same level of warming as land areas." "The warming of the Earth is unequivocal and, as every major scientific organisation in the world has pointed out, the overwhelming evidence indicates that this warming is being driven by the unarguable increase in greenhouse gas concentrations |
in the atmosphere." "More broadly this study also proves once again how false it was for 'sceptics' to allege that the e-mails hacked from the University of East Anglia proved that the Climatic Research Unit's land temperature record had been doctored. Several independent inquiries, and now this study, have shown |
that allegation to be entirely untrue. It is now time for an apology from all those, including US Presidential hopeful Rick Perry, who have made false claims that the evidence for global warming has been faked by climate scientists." concluded Bob Ward. - Berkeley Earth Summary of Findings, 20 October, |
2011 - Cooling the Warming Debate - Berkeley Earth Releases Global Land Warming Analysis (PDF) - Australian Science Media Centre, 21 October 2011 - RAPID REACTION: New data on climate change from the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project – experts respond - Image - Decadal Land-Surface Average Temperature f... |
STEM | News Google Gives 15,000 Raspberry Pi Computer Boards to UK Students The Raspberry Pi Model B computer board The Raspberry Pi Foundation has received a grant from Google Giving to provide students in the United Kingdom with 15,000 |
Raspberry Pi Model B computer boards for learning to program. The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a charitable organization in the UK that develops the credit-card sized ARM processor-based computer boards. Students can connect an SD memory card, keyboard, mouse, and |
display, and then install Linux and learn to program the devices. The Raspberry Pi Foundation, Google, and six UK educational partners will work together to identify the students who will receive the Raspberry Pi devices. The educational partners are CoderDojo, |
Code Club, Computing at School, Generating Genius, Teach First, and OCR. The Raspberry Pi Foundation already offers a free Raspberry Pi Education Manual from Computing at School, which guides students through the process of learning to program the devices using |
the Scratch and Python programming languages, as well as how to use the Linux command line interface. As part of the Google Giving program, OCR will be creating 15,000 free teaching and learning packs to accompany the devices. "This is |
a brilliant way for us to find kids all over the country whose aptitude for computing can now be explored properly," wrote a Raspberry Pi Foundation representative in a blog post. "We believe that access to tools is a fundamental |
necessity in finding out who you are and what you're good at. We want those tools to be within everybody's grasp, right from the start." The Raspberry Pi devices are available in two models. The grant from Google will provide |
students with the higher-end Model B devices, which include 512 MB of RAM, two USB ports, and an Ethernet port. The Model A devices include 256 MB of RAM, one USB port, and no Eithernet port. Further information about the |
Explanation: Please wait while one of the largest mobile machines in the world crosses the road. The machine pictured above is a bucket-wheel excavator used in modern surface mining. Machines like this have given humanity the ability to mine minerals and change the face of planet Earth in new and |
dramatic ways. Some open pit mines, for example, are visible from orbit. The largest excavators are over 200 meters long and 100 meters high, now dwarfing the huge NASA Crawler that transports space shuttles to the launch pads. Bucket-wheel excavators can dig a hole the length of a football field |
New feat for Colombia’s urban innovator: slum escalators MEDELLIN, Colombia — The upper reaches of a mountainside slum called Comuna 13 are so steep that streets give way to staircases. To get home, many residents here used to climb the equivalent of a 28-story building. But last year, Medellin officials |
installed a $7 million outdoor escalator — the first ever designed for a slum. The ride to the top now takes five minutes. “It’s a relief because we no longer have to climb all those steps on foot,” said Jose Ivan Taborda, 69, who has lived in Comuna 13 all |
his life. “The escalator is comfortable, especially for older people.” Rising above tin-roofed shanties with laundry hanging from clotheslines, the escalator, which has a bright orange roof, seems a little out of place. Many slum residents had never before ridden an escalator so city officials organized field trips to ... |
malls so they could practice. But rather than an extravagance, the electric staircase is part of a broader plan to reduce crime and improve living conditions in Medellin, the hometown of the late drug kingpin Pablo Escobar and the former murder capital of the world. While police work is important, |
a major part of the strategy is to install public transportation and link these systems to newly built parks, libraries and community centers that encourage people to reclaim their neighborhoods from drug-dealing gangs. Comuna 13 and other slums were founded by people displaced by Colombia’s guerrilla war. Many relocat... |
Medellin, which sits in a river valley, and built illegal settlements high on the mountaintops overlooking the city center. Isolated and ignored by politicians, many slum residents became gunmen for the Medellin cartel or joined guerrilla or paramilitary units that later controlled the neighborhoods. “This displaced po... |
they were part of the city,” said Laura Isaza, a consultant for ACI Medellin, an organization focused on bringing foreign investment to the city. “These people used to say: ‘I live in this neighborhood and I don’t live in Medellin.’ So, one of our first steps was to try to |
gain their confidence and to make them feel that they are part of our city.” One of the main projects integrating Medellin is a network of cable cars that opened in 2004. The aerial trams carry people from the mountaintop slums to the subway system, giving them access to the |
rest of the city. Unlike exhaust-spewing buses, the system is quiet — and efficient. Reaching downtown via cable cars and the subway now takes 45 minutes rather than two-and-a-half hours. The gondolas move 20,000 people a day. They’re so popular they’ve inspired similar cable car networks in the mountainside ghettos |
of Rio de Janeiro and Caracas. While the view high above the slums is impressive, some cable car passengers opt to read during the ride. They can check out books from a handsome new library and community center, designed by Bogota architect Giancarlo Mazzanti, that sits next to one of |
can’t bring Mohamed to the mountain, bring the mountain to Mohamed.” Many of these experiments were cited last month when Medellin was named — along with New York and Tel Aviv — as one of the world’s most innovative cities in a competition sponsored by The Wall Street Journal, Citi, |
and the Washington-based Urban Land Institute. The winner, which will be chosen by the public through an online poll will be announced in January. Medellin was selected for its “progress and potential” and was also cited for cutting CO2 emissions by 175,000 tons annually and for reducing crime. Although the |
annual murder rate remains high, it has been cut in half over the last decade and now stands at about 50 homicides per 100,000 people. That’s well below New Orleans’ rate of more than 70, but still over three times that of Miami. In lauding the innovation displayed by Medellin |
and the other finalists, Anita Kramer of the Urban Land Institute said the reforms “reflect remarkable forward-thinking decisions on the part of municipal leadership. Taken together, they provide models for the world.” But not everyone is convinced. John Hernandez, a holistic healer who lives in Comuna 13, says the fla... |
new projects have distracted people’s attention from lingering issues. He says gangs still control the city slums where they sell drugs and extort businesses. City officials, he said, “are sweeping those problems under the rug.” Indeed, when a reporter showed up to visit the escalator, city officials at first hesitated |
at providing a tour of the area due to recent gang shootouts. But at the same time, there are clear signs of progress. Tourists now come to slums to ride the escalator and cable cars. Property values in Comuna 13 and other barrios are on the rise. What’s more, Colombian |
and foreign investors have shown new interest in Medellin. Over the past five years, Hewlett-Packard, Kimberly Clark and Unisys have all opened production and research centers in Medellin. Though much work remains, Isaza of ACI Medellin says she believes the city has turned a corner. “We still have a pretty |
difficult city and we are still struggling against violence in our city.” Isaza said. “But conflict in Medellin has changed … We don’t have this huge war we had before. This is a conflict that could only be ended through real opportunities for the people.” |
Project Part I: Definition This week’s scenario: You are an employee of Cereals Incorporated, a large manufacturer of breakfast food products. Your supervisor, Madison County, approaches you because she knows you recently took a course on gamification, which she has heard will revolutionize marketing. She tells you tha... |
is about to release a new line of ready-to-eat breakfast pastries, and she wants to know whether to use gamification as part of the marketing strategy. The breakfast pastries will be aimed at the 18-35 age bracket. Surveys show members of this demographic often skip breakfast because they don’t want |
to eat the typical cereals of their youth, and they are too active to cook their own breakfasts. Market research indicates that the pastries are likely to appeal more to women than men by a 65%-35% ratio. Cereals Inc. has a 35% share of the overall breakfast food market, but |
only a 10% share of the fragmented ready-to-eat segment. Provide as many reasons as you can why gamification could be a useful technique to apply to the situation your manager has presented to you. Explain why these reasons address the specific scenario provided. At this stage, focus on the problem |
rather than the solution. In other words, describe the goals of the project, not the particular game elements or other techniques you plan to use. We strongly encourage you to watch this week’s lecture segments before attempting this assignment. In this paper I will show how Cereals Inc. can use |
aspect in The Pyramid of Gamification Elements. Hereafter mentioned as “ThePyramid”. Please note that I sometime use the word player as a synonym for customers. 1. How gamification can increase the market/market share by forming customers habit. In this case the demographic target group often skips breakfast. By associ... |
breakfast pastries with the right emotion one might increase the number of times the player eats breakfast and thereby increases the overall market and Cereals Inc. market share. One aspect of FourKeys regarding emotions is that many “Players treasure the enjoyment from their internal experiences in reaction to the vis... |
behavior, cognitive, and social properties” (page7) In the light of the “ThePyramid”one may argue that a well made gamification structure which focuses on generating emotion through behavioral components like the change of eating habits, can help form a habit that addresses the problem of the target group skipping brea... |
How gamification can identify customers needs. By letting the individual player give and receive feedback on what is important for them, Cereals Inc. can gain valuable consumer insights. FourKeys has identified that some players focus on “Being better at something that matters” (page5). By using “ThePyramid” progressio... |
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Light glowing from a "super-Earth" planet beyond our solar system has been detected by Nasa’s Spitzer Telescope. Until now, scientists have never been able to detect infrared light emanating from 55 Cancri E, a super-hot extrasolar planet twice the size and eight times the mass of our own. 55 Cancri E is one of five ex... |
a solar system lying in the constellation of Cancer (The Crab). Previously, Spitzer and other telescopes were able to study the planet by observing how the light from 55 Cancri changed as the planet passed in front of the star. In the new study, Spitzer instead measured how much infrared light came from the planet itse... |
At 41-light years from Earth, the giant planet is considered uninhabitable. The giant planet is tidally locked, so one side always faces the star. The telescope found that the sun-facing side is extremely hot, indicating the planet probably does not have a substantial atmosphere to carry the sun's heat to the unlit sid... |
space] On its sun-facing side, the surface has a temperature of 1,727 Celsius – or 3,140 degrees Fahrenheit – That’s hot enough to melt silver or aluminium. The new findings are consistent with a previous theory that 55 Cancri E is a water world: A rocky core surrounded by a layer of water in a "supercritical" state wh... |
and topped by a blanket of steam. Bill Danchi, Spitzer programme scientist at NASA, said: “Spitzer has amazed us yet again. The spacecraft is pioneering the study of atmospheres of distant planets and paving the way for NASA's upcoming James Webb Space Telescope to apply a similar technique on potentially habitable pla... |
conceived of Spitzer more than 40 years ago, exoplanets hadn't even been discovered. Because Spitzer was built very well, it's been able to adapt to this new field and make historic advances such as this.” The planet was first discovered in 2004 and the new findings are published in the current issue of Astrophysical J... |
Places - Franklin, “Canaday-I-O” The major recurring theme in these folksongs from Maine and Maritime Canada is the flow of cultural products and people within the area of New Hampshire, Maine, and eastern Canada. But while this cultural and demographic exchange helped define the region, it did not mean there |
was no rivalry or animosity between states, provinces, or nations. Within the woods song-making tradition was a subset of satirical songs that ranged from poking fun at individuals and places to utterly scandalizing them, and this was very much alive in the northeastern United States and eastern Canada. In some |
labor traditions, this type of song served as a form of protest, but among lumbermen this was not usually the case. What purpose did they serve? Some scholars suggest they served as a means of control over bosses, preventing them from being hard-driving skinflints. The argument suggests that as a |
boss, if someone “songed” you, then other men would know not to go to work for you and business would collapse. Yet, so many satirical songs were written that if this were the case, then no one would have been able to find men willing to work in the woods. |
It was more likely that this was primarily a way of blowing off steam after a hard day, week, or winter in the woods. “Canaday-I-O” is thus an interesting case in point, as it takes this latter point to its extreme. The song did not merely mock an individual or |
a single lumber outfit; rather, it attacked the entire Canadian lumbering industry. Scholars generally attribute the song to Ephraim Braley, a Maine woodsman, and point to 1854 as its probable date of origin. Of course, Canada was not yet an independent nation, and the song cites “Three Rivers” (or, Trois-Rivieres, |
into complaints about woods work in Pennsylvania and Michigan, and eventually a gripe song about skinning buffalo called “The Buffalo Skinners,” which was found in Texas. In this song, a “preacher of the gospel” convinces some Mainers to travel to Quebec for a winter. This was not, however, a man |
of the cloth recruiting loggers. According to Fannie Hardy Eckstorm, this was a slang term for an agent who hired men to work in the woods. The version of the song heard here is slightly shorter than versions collected elsewhere, such as the one printed in Eckstorm and Smyth’s Minstrelsy |
of Maine. These forgotten verses do not change the story, they just make the winter in Canada seem slightly less disastrous. Come all ye jolly lumbermen, and listen to my song, But do not get discouraged, the length it is not long, Concerning of some lumbermen, who did agree to |
go And spend one pleasant winter up in Canaday-I-O. It happened late one season in the fall of fifty-three, That a preacher of the gospel one morning came to me; Says he: “My jolly fellow, how would you like to go And spend one pleasant winter up in Canaday-I-O?” To |
him I quickly made reply, and unto him did say: “In going out to Canaday depends upon the pay. If you will pay good wages, my passage to and fro, Then I think I’ll go along with you to Canaday-I-O.” “Yes, we will pay good wages, and will pay your |
passage out, Provided you sign papers that you will stay the route; But if you do get homesick, and swear that home you’ll go, We never can your passage pay from Canaday-I-O.” It was by his gift of flattery he enlisted quite a train, Some twenty-five or thirty, both well |
and able men; We had a pleasant journey o’er the road we had to go ‘Til we landed at Three Rivers, up in Canaday-I-O. But there our joys were ended, and our sorrows did begin; Fields, Phillips, and Norcross they then came marching in; They scattered us all directions, some |
where I do not know, Among those jabbering Frenchmen up in Canaday-I-O. After we had suffered there some eight or ten long weeks We arrived at headquarters, up among the lakes; We thought we’d find a paradise, at least they told us so, God grant there may is no worse |
a hell than Canaday-I-O! To describe what we have suffered here is beyond the art of man, But to give a fair description I will do the best I can; Our food the dogs would snarl at, our beds were on the snow, We suffered worse than murderers up in |
Canaday-I-O. But now our lumbering is over and we are returning home, To greet our wives and sweethearts and never more to roam, To greet our friends and neighbors; we tell them not to go To that gosh darn forsaken place called Canaday-I-O. Sources: For “Canaday-I-O” see Eckstorm, Fannie Hardy |
and Mary Winslow Smyth. Minstrelsy of Maine: Folk-Songs and Ballads of the Woods and the Coast. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1927, 21-25; Gray, Ronald Palmer. Songs and Ballads of the Maine Lumberjacks with Other Songs from Maine. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1924, 37-40; Linscott, Eloise Hubb... |
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