- Other Interesting arXiv Papers This Week
The best of the rest from the Physics arXiv preprint server
How Does Group Interaction And Its Severance Affect Life?
- This Is Your Brain on E-Books
When we read on dead trees, do we retain more?
I don’t have the best of memories, but ever since I was young, I prided myself on a particular talent with respect to reading. Occasionally I’d be near the end of a book, and would recall a passage near the beginning that I wanted to revisit. I wouldn’t remember the page or chapter, but almost without fail, I would recall the location on the page where the passage in question was. I knew that that wondeful description of Mr. Pumblechook appeared on the bottom half of a right-hand page, perhaps 10 lines from the bottom, and a few lines after a paragraph break.
- Soon Your Bird Can Sing: Twitter to Release Music App
It sounds cool, but only a select few such as Ryan Seacrest get to play with Twitter’s music app for now.
It’s not yet available to everyone, but Twitter’s giving a few hints about its forthcoming music app, which the social site is surely hoping will challenge music listening and sharing service Spotify.
- A Decade of Advances Since the Human Genome Project
Despite breakthroughs in technology and medicine, there’s still a lot of work ahead for understanding and using the human genome.
This Sunday, the National Institutes of Health will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the completion of the Human Genome Project. Since the end of the 13-year and $3-billion effort to determine the sequence of a human genome (a mosaic of genomes from several people in this case), there have been some impressive advances in technology and biological understanding and the dawn of a new branch of medicine: medical genomics
- Batteries: Cheapest Form of Grid Power?
Using a wind energy and expensive lithium-ion batteries, AES Energy Storage is making money by stabilizing the grid.
The conventional wisdom is that batteries, particularly lithium-ion batteries, are way too expensive to be used on the electricity grid in a financially viable way. Chris Shelton begs to differ and he has two years of data to make his case.
- Last Year’s U.S. Drought Wasn’t Caused by Climate Change
Those advocating limits on greenhouse gases can’t count on the weather to make their argument.
Last summer, in response to an intense and prolonged drought in the U.S.—the worst, indeed, since 1895—we ran an interview with a climate scientist, Thomas Karl, director of the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina. He said that droughts in general will be exacerbated by climate change, while noting that it’s difficult to link any particular drought to greenhouse gases. “I suspect it will be really difficult to show how much these changing patterns contributed to the drought in the Midwest this year,” he said (see “Is Climate Change to Blame for the Current U.S. Drought?”).
- Foursquare Gets a Big Check
The company known for check-ins is already a fundamental part of the app economy. Now it just has to make money.
Foursquare built its brand as a social app for people to check in at locations, compete for badges, and maybe get some discounts at businesses they frequent.
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