Cade Metz from The New York Times pays tribute to Tony Brooker, the mathematician and computer scientist who designed the programming language for the world’s first commercial computer. Brooker died on Nov. 20 at the age of 94. From the report: Mr. Brooker had been immersed in early computer research at the University of Cambridge when one day, on his way…
Tag: Wales
Australia’s Bushfires Have Emitted 250m Tonnes of CO2, Almost Half of Country’s Annual Emissions
Bushfires in New South Wales and Queensland have emitted a massive pulse of CO2 into the atmosphere since August that is equivalent to almost half of Australia’s annual greenhouse gas emissions, Guardian Australia can reveal. From a report: Analysis by Nasa shows the NSW fires have emitted about 195m tonnes of CO2 since 1 August, with Queensland’s fires adding a further…
Flock of birds falls dead from the sky in Wales
Authorities are investigating what might have caused an entire flock of starlings to suddenly drop dead. The alarm was raised by Hannah Stevens who ha… Source: https://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/332886/flock-of-birds-falls-dead-from-the-sky-in-wales…
New biomass map takes stock of Earth’s carbon
ESA released the 1st of a series of global maps aimed at quantifying change in carbon stored as biomass across the world’s forests and shrublands. Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/new-biomass-map-earths-carbon…
Jimmy Wales New Social Network Skyrockets To 345,000 Members, Will Hire Journalists
Jimmy Wales’ new social network WT.Social started November with just 1,500 members. Four weeks later, it’s skyrocketed up to 345,680 members — and that’s just the beginning. Next year Wales plans to hire journalists, with the site’s users acting as their “editors-in-chief,” fulfilling the dreams Wales had for the site’s earlier incarnation as a crowd-sourced news platform Wikitribune, reports the journalism…
Smoke from Australia’s bushfires has spread to South America
Satellites show atmospheric pollution created by the fires across New South Wales and Queensland has travelled more than 10,000 kilometres to Chile and Argentina Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2223677-smoke-from-australias-bushfires-has-spread-to-south-america/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…
Wikipedia’s Co-Founder Takes On Facebook With Ad-Free Social Network
Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has launched a social network called WT:Social. It has no financial association with Wikipedia and operates on donations, not advertising. The Next Web reports: WT:Social went live last month and is currently nearing 50,000 users. The company is rolling out access slowly; when I signed up, I was approximately number 28,000 on the waitlist. Alternatively, you can…
Organic Farming is Actually Worse For Climate Change
Organic practices can reduce climate pollution produced directly from farming — which would be fantastic if they didn’t also require more land to produce the same amount of food. From a report: Clearing additional grasslands or forests to grow enough food to make up for that difference would release far more greenhouse gas than the practices initially reduce, a new study…
Going fully organic would raise greenhouse gas emissions
Food yields would nearly halve if all farms in England and Wales went organic, meaning more land would have to be turned over to agriculture elsewhere Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2220659-going-fully-organic-would-raise-greenhouse-gas-emissions/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…
Mathematician Solves 48-Year-Old Problem, Finds New Way To Multiply
An anonymous reader quotes Popular Mechanics:
An assistant professor from the University of New South Wales Sydney in Australia has developed a new method for multiplying giant numbers together that’s more efficient than the “long multiplication” so many are taught at an early age. “More technically, we have proved a 1971 conjecture of Schönhage and Strassen about the complexity of integer multiplication,”…