Author: What did you learn in School today ?

2016-03-23 (Wednesday)

Posted on by What did you learn in School today ?

Today, I learned that:

I should have told you more things yesterday, but the events in Brussels made me forget it.

In the beginning of 1982, there was a Canadian couple who was worried about the violence in the world and therefore thinking about moving to a quiet place where they could live in peace and let their children grow up in harmony with nature. So they spun the globe, closed their eyes and pointed at a spot. They liked the result and started to prepare for the big move, which they finally made in September, 1982. Their new home was located in a town called Port Stanley. They were still decorating their house when hell broke loose! In October, their cosy little town became the battle ground between Argentina and Great Britain, in the Falklands / Malvinas war!

But frankly speaking, to live in a small city in Brazil should not pose very big risks for terrorist attacks, more about me and Brazil tomorrow.

This morning, Radio Sweden presented two more interesting pieces of scientific news. The first one, references #1 and 2 below, is a fish that is both mother and father to its offspring.

herm-fish

This fish, a hybrid of two cichlids, does it all by her&himself. Photo: Xavier David/(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

And the second one is a revolutionary material which researchers in Arizona want to employ to gather carbon dioxide from the air. Their invention should be able to collect 1 ton of CO2 every day, see reference #3 below.

Today is my blog post # 73, which reminds me of when I was younger and engaged in DX-ing and HAM radio. 73 was the code which meant “Best regards”, commonly used in all contacts between radio amateurs. See reference #4 for origin and more codes.

… That’s what I learned in school & 73 !

Refs.:

1: Ensam fisk lyckades bli både mamma och pappa

2: Hybridization generates a hopeful monster: a hermaphroditic selfing cichlid

3: Plastmatta fångar in koldioxid från atmosfären

4: On the Origin of “73”

+: What did you learn in school today ?

2016-03-22 (Tuesday)

Posted on by What did you learn in School today ?

Today, I learned that:

I woke up early this morning and when I was just about to make a move in Wordfeud, I noticed that there was a chat message waiting for me, “… a lot of mischief in Brussels”. So I tuned in to Radio Sweden P1 and heard all about the monstrosities that were happening there.

Twin Towers

I took this picture from the Empire State Building of the Manhattan skyline on 1994-09-18, when the Twin Towers were still the landmarks. 7 years later they did not exist any more!

It reminded me of other similar events which had happened during the last decade (London, Madrid, Paris,…), but most of all the “9/11” airplane crashes in New York. So I looked up the photo you can see above, which I took on 1994-09-18. You may remember that on 2016-02-07, I published a photo from an NFL-game in Atlanta, which I had taken one week earlier. I was there for product training at the Philips office, and after having concluded training Claudeir, Michael and I flew to New York, from where we would make other visits on the East Coast of USA the following week. So when I took that photo from the top of the Empire State Building, of course I remembered how the Twin Towers stood out in the horizon. Seven years later they did not exist!

And of course I also remember very well what happened on 2001-09-11. I was in a meeting in my office, when our secretary told us the news about the nightmare in New York. And on that very same morning, a Philips sales man landed in São Paulo for an important meeting later in the week. He took a taxi directly from the airport to the hotel, where he rested for some hours without knowing about what had happened earlier in the US. So I broke the news to him over the phone, he called his parents in Chicago, who gave him first-hand information about the calamity in their country. Due to the shutdown of the airports all over USA, his flight back on Friday evening was cancelled, but he was lucky enough to fly out on the following Monday evening.

But, in the midst of all these dark memories, today I also heard an illuminative piece of news. It was delivered by Scientific American about researchers at Harvard who have developed a material that can go from clear to opaque in a second, when an electric field is applied. Imagine that when you want to sleep without being bothered, you do not have draw any curtain or Venetian blind, no you just press a button and the windows in your bed room stops any voyeurs from peeking in. And then in the morning, in order to see the Sun in all its beauty, you just press the button again, while saying “Let there be light!”

… That’s what I learned in school !

Refs.:

1: Smart Glass Goes from Clear to Cloudy in a Jolt

2: Electrically tunable window device

+: What did you learn in school today ?

2016-03-21 (Monday)

Posted on by What did you learn in School today ?

Today, I learned that:

Everyone involved in paying the electricity bill knows well how it is determined. For many years, the standard unit used has been kWh, an abbreviation of kiloWatthours. Let us have a look at what this means.

Take all your electro-electronic devices and appliances and one by one, do the following:
– Look at the label on the device that informs of its electric power consumption, e.g. the refrigerator may be 80 W, the television set 100 W, etc.
– For each one of those devices consider how many hours you are using them during the month. Since the refrigerator is on all the time, it therefore generates an energy consumption of 30 x 24 x 80 Wh = 57 600 Wh = 57,6 kW. You watch TV on average during 4 hours per day, so it contributes with 30 x 4 x 100 Wh = 12 000 Wh = 12 kWh, etc.
– Sum all of those individual devices and you will get the total energy consumption during one month, and thus you have a good idea if the amount of the electricity bill seems reasonable or not.

Provided you have the money to pay the bill, you can consider the electricity grid a source of energy supply that never ends, of course restricted to the internal cabling, the capacity of the fuses, etc. But when you deal with portable devices, then you are disconnected from the grid and need to rely on the battery in the device, which nowadays is mostly of the rechargeable type.

Let us now look at one device, the one that most people cannot even think about living without, the mobile phone. Do you know how they are specified energywise? The most common way is considering the maximum capacity of its battery, that is how much energy you should be able to squeeze out of the battery, if it is brand new and totally charged. Smaller smartphones typically use a battery in the range of 2 000 mAh, bigger ones somewhere in the 3 000 mAh region. So comparing the battery capacity of the different phones you are thinking about buying may be one important decisive factor.

However, I just learned that there is another means of measuring how potent the battery is, namely considering the Wh you can squeeze out of the battery. Ohm’s Law tell us that power (measured in watt, W) is the result of multiplying the electrical tension, colloquially named “voltage”, (measured in volt, V) and the electrical current, “amperage” (measured in ampere, A). So from this you can understand that if the operating tension in the phone is the same among the phones you are comparing, then of course you can get a higher total current, and consequently usage time, out of a phone with a higher battery capacity. But what if you could obtain the same operational results from a phone which main processor works at a lower tension? Evidently, from an energy point of view, the same total battery capacity would guarantee a longer time of usage! Something to think about. See also the following photo from an alleged test setup for the upcoming Apple iPhone 7 and the complete article in reference #1 below.

iphone7

Citation from an article on macrumors.com, discussing the upcoming iPhone 7: “An image of the battery said to be for the iPhone 7 has surfaced, listing a capacity of 7.04 watt-hours. That’s slightly larger than the equivalent battery capacity listed for the iPhone 6s (6.61 watt-hours) and almost identical to the iPhone 6 (7.01 watt-hours). Voltage is not visible on the alleged iPhone 7 battery, so the exact charge capacity is not yet available, but should be similar to the iPhone 6 battery.”

… That’s what I learned in school !

Refs.:

1: iPhone 7: Coming in 2016, Everything We Know

+: What did you learn in school today ?

2016-03-20 (Sunday)

Posted on by What did you learn in School today ?

Today, I learned that:

Astronomy continues to be such a fascinating science! Today’s podcast from 365 days of Astronomy deals with the latest feat by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Recently, it was able to reach out to photograph a galaxy that lies at a distance bigger than we have ever traveled before, 13,4 billion light-years. More about this amazing fact can be found in references # 1 and # 2 below.

hubble

This photo is a look 13,4 billion years back in time, when our Universe was only 400 million years old. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has broken the record for how far back we have been able to look. The galaxy that is the star (!) of this photo is named GN-z11.

And speaking about celestial objects, today we also learned that the fear of getting sick by the Sun which has led to that many people are trying to hide from it can have negative consequences on our body. An article in the April issue of Journal of Internal Medicine presents a study made in the South of Sweden:

“There were 2545 deaths amongst the 29 518 women who responded to the initial questionnaire. The authors found that all-cause mortality was inversely related to sun exposure habits. The mortality rate amongst avoiders of sun exposure was approximately twofold higher compared with the highest sun exposure group, resulting in excess mortality with a population attributable risk of 3 %. The results of this study provide observational evidence that avoiding sun exposure is a risk factor for all-cause mortality. Following sun exposure advice that is very restrictive in countries with low solar intensity might in fact be harmful to women’s health.”

See references #3 and #4 below for more information.

And speaking once more about the Sun, as you probably already know today occured the March Equinox, when the day and night are practically of equal length all over the world. But if you live on the Northern Hemisphere, then you can look forward to an increased amount of day light during the coming three months, culminating with the Solstice around mid-summer. (The situation for us in the Southern Hemisphere is of course inverse, the days are slowly getting shorter now …) Reference #5 below has more information about the Equinox.

… That’s what I learned in school !

Refs.:

1: Hubble Breaks The Cosmic Distance Record, 365 days of Astronomy

2: Hubble Breaks The Cosmic Distance Record, Space Telescope

3: Avoidance of sun exposure is a risk factor for all-cause mortality: results from the Melanoma in Southern Sweden cohort

4: För lite sol kan vara skadligt

5: Equinox

+: What did you learn in school today ?

2016-03-19 (Saturday)

Posted on by What did you learn in School today ?

Today, I learned that:

Once an hour per year, the World Wide Fund for Nature arranges the so-called “Earth Hour”, when they ask everyone on our planet to turn off the non-essential lighting for one hour, during the local time of 20:30 to 21:30, to make us aware of global warming. See reference #1 below for more information.

LVdark

The Strip in Las Vegas during Earth Hour 2009-03-29

The photos above were taken during the Earth Hour on 2009-03-29 at 21:17 in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. I was there to visit a trade show during the following week and had arrived in the city on the same afternoon. I managed to obtain a good ticket for the Cirque du Soleil’s performance at the theatre of New York, New York, and when I stumbled out of there, I was greeted by the unusual, almost pitch-black night of the Las Vegas Boulevard (a.k.a. the Strip), so I snapped those pictures in both directions from the overpass in front of New York, New York.

Solution to Problem # 5a, Pizzas, posted on 2016-03-13

So, should you bring one big pizza or two small ones? Do not get confused about the fact that the bigger one has twice the diameter of the smaller one. Since we are comparing two three-dimensional objects, and consider that both types of pizzas have the same thickness, then we must compare the two areas. And since the big pizza has a diagonal that is twice that of the smaller one, then of course the area has the same relation squared. So, the bigger pizza has 4 times the area of the smaller one, yet only costs twice as much. Take the big pizza and go home with twice as much pizza as if you had choosen two small ones. See also the following picture, and “buon appetito” !

marguerita

Pizza Margherita in two different sizes, the big one has a real diameter of 30 cm and each of the smaller ones have individual diameters of 15 cm

The Margherita pizza was created in 1889 by pizzaiolo Rafaelle Esposito, as a tribute to Queen Margherita di Savoia during her visit to Naples. The ingredients were chosen to mimic the Italian flag: white represented by buffalo mozarela cheese, red by the tomato, and as the green “piece de resistance” fresh basil. In all its simplicity, still one of the best pizzas you can ever eat! See also reference #2 below.

Solution to Question # 5b, Pancakes, posted on 2016-03-13

I also asked why Bill Gates is so fond of pancakes. The answer is that his only scientific article deals exactly with pancakes. This is the story: You are working as an extra hired waiter for the morning rush at the International House of Pancakes. Everyone goes there for their breakfast pancake and today the chef has a bad day. Not all pancakes turn out the same, some are bigger, others are smaller. Your task is to serve the pancakes to the patrons from a neatly arranged pile, with the largest one at the bottom and the smallest one on top. The question is then, is there a maximum limit for the number of times you have to interchange the pancakes until you have reached your objective?

In his article from 1978, Bill Gates at Microsoft in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA, and his co-writer Christos Papadimitriou developed an algorithm to try and almost answer that question. And their theory was undisputed until 2008, when a team in Dallas, Texas, USA improved it when they applied the pancake flipping theory to a minimization of connections between neighbouring network processors.

… That’s what I learned in school !

Refs.:

1: EARTH HOUR

2: Pizza Margherita

3: Bounds for Sorting by Prefix Reversal

4: Flipping pancakes with mathematics

5: Team Bests Young Bill Gates With Improved Answer
to So-Called Pancake Problem in Mathematics

+: What did you learn in school today ?

2016-03-18 (Fredag)

Posted on by What did you learn in School today ?

Idag lärde jag mig, att:

Ett Lag uti Sundsvall och Östersund
Bland Orden botaniserar en stund
I glädje och sorg
Och med hjälp från Göteborg
Begraver skräpord och K-märker juveler såsom misskund

Ordalaget-WF4

Ordalaget fyller 5 år och firar det tillsammans med Grammatikdagen och Ingemar Stenmark

OFB

Samma Wordfeud-bräde som ovan publicerat på Ordalagets Facebook-sida idag.

Såsom rutinerad poddradiolyssnare, med start i september 2005, har jag naturligtvis valt ut mina favoriter. På fredagar ser jag till att inte missa en enda episod av Ordalaget, ett mycket underhållande språkprogram från SR Jämtland och SR Västernorrland, som gör att man kommer i rätt humör inför helgen. Tack Stefan, Lars T och Christina, och må Ordalaget leva i åtminstone 5 år till! (Dagens program går att lyssna på enligt referens nummer 1 nedan.) Eller varför inte sikta på att komma ikapp en av svensk idrotts främsta i alla tider, både sportsligt och som person, Ingemar Stenmark, som fyller 60 år just idag. Grattis till er alla!

Ingemar Stenmark

Ingemar Stenmark i full fart, från den tiden när hela Sverige stod still och följde hans framfart i pisterna

SR Vetenskapens värld berättade igår om den grundliga undersökning som utförts på resterna av vad som uppgivits ha varit Erik den helige, svensk kung under 1100-talet. För så vitt forskarna kan förstå så kan det mycket väl röra sig om honom. Intressant material från Sveriges Radio finns på referenserna nummer 2 och 3 nedan, och i referens nummer 4 återges en video från när resultaten presenterades i Uppsala domkyrka tidigare i veckan.

Erik

Erik den heliges skalle och krona. Foto: Mikael Wallerstedt

… Slut för idag, tack för idag !

(Sorry, only Swedish today! I am talking about a clever language program, which celebrates 5 years of discussions, say congratulations also to ski master Ingemar Stenmark and reveal the results of the examination of the bones of the great Swedish king Erik, monarch during the 12th century.)

Refs.:

1: En märkesdag för femåriga Ordalaget

2: Legenden verkar stämma: Erik den helige var stark och from

3: Erik den helige bentätare än dagens 35-åringar

4: Erik den helige

+: What did you learn in school today ?

2016-03-17 (Thursday)

Posted on by What did you learn in School today ?

Today, I learned that:

Although we are used to all the facilities connected with international travel, primilarily on the Northern hemisphere, there are still people who suffer a lot when the they change their physical location. An example of this is in a report made by Radio Sweden’s correspondent in Africa, Richard Myrenberg, based in Kigali, Rwanda. He needed to travel to Yaoundé, capital of Cameroon, and for that purpose had to obtain a visa at the Cameroonian embassy in the neighboring Kinshasa, Congo. So he travelled to Addis Abeba, Ethiopia, where he boarded another flight to Kinshasa. He finally got his visa and could take one of the only 7 international flights leaving the brand new airport of N’Djili Airport in Kinshasa to his final destination in Yaoundé. If you think that sounds complicated, then you should know that not many years ago, for a person to travel from East Africa to West Africa or vice-versa, s/he had to make a stopover in Frankfurt, Germany or Amsterdam, the Netherlands!

But here follows two good pieces of news if you are exchanging flights in Keflavik, Iceland or Schiphol, the Netherlands:

Iceland, reference #2 below
When you fly Icelandair across the Atlantic, you can stop over in Iceland for up to seven nights at no additional airfare. And once on Iceland, the employees of Icelandair offer to be your travel partner and explore all the interesting things one can do on the island.

The Netherlands, reference #3 below
If your starting point lies in Canada, USA or Italy, and you have at least 6 hours between planes at Schiphol, then you can benefit from a new mobile app from KLM. It lets you connect with a local resident in Amsterdam for a brief sight-seeing. KLM pays the train round trip from the airport and even the first round of drinks for you and your local guide to enjoy.

Limerickctr

An unusually fine day in Limerick, photo taken by Dina Guiltinan on 2016-02-22

There once was a family in Limerick
Who from all the rain got pretty sick
So they went to meet the Sun
In the Canaries, oh what fun
And as a bonus they cheered for St. Patrick

… That’s what I learned in school !

Refs.:

1: Richard Myrenbergs mödosamma resa till Yaoundé

2: Travel in Iceland with a stopover buddy

3: Layover with a Local

4: Saint Patrick’s Day

+: What did you learn in school today ?

2016-03-16 (Wednesday)

Posted on by What did you learn in School today ?

Today, I learned that:

My international readers have felt to be set aside the last two days, because both posts were in Swedish. Of course, there are several ways to remedy that. Why not learn Swedish, the language of honor and heroes? I can teach you, drop me a line at medieborgaren@sjson.com.

But the fastest way would no doubt be that I write another post in English, like this one. However, in order to enjoy all information, it would be good if you also had some understanding of Swedish to fully enjoy the following radio programme:

SR Vetenskapens värld today reported from Campus Norrköping at the University of Linköping, where a team of scientists are creating electronic plants, i.e. plants that have been doped with electronic components, either analog or digital. The researchers there have succeeded in introducing an eletrically conductive polymer into the stem of a flower. This polymer then sticks to the irrigation path of the flower and turns into electrical components, which can be remotely controlled. See reference #1 (where some dialogues also are in English) and #2 below, for more interesting details.

norrk+

(Left) The rose manages to accept the conductive polymer and continue alive. (Right) The dark blue spots on the leaf are the conductive polymer, which was deposited by way of a syringe. Both photos were taken by Per Gustafsson/SR.

… That’s what I learned in school !

Refs.:

1: Växter som kan styras elektroniskt

2: Electronic Plants

+: What did you learn in school today ?

2016-03-15 (Tisdag)

Posted on by What did you learn in School today ?

Idag lärde jag mig, att:

Alla mynt har två sidor och som jag skrev igår, efter en hel del positiva fraser, idag blir det andra bullar. Ibland när man bakar så ser resultatet fint ut, men när man väl tar sig en tugga så avslöjar sig brödet som dödbakat.

Det verkade ju så positivt 2016-03-03, med Sverige på tredje plats i Europas patentranking, men om man väl tränger in på djupet så är sanningen kanske en annan. Vi ska börja med en artikel från Dagens Nyheters Debatt häromdagen, se referens nummer 1 nedan. I den beskriver artikelförfattarna, Mats Benner och Sverker Sörlin, som båda är ledamöter av regeringens forskningsberedning, hur Sverige håller på och tappar mark i banbrytande forskning. Intressant läsning, och som bonus finns det ytterligare 7 artiklar med relaterat material.

För att praktiskt illustrera hur “vetenskaperna” tillämpas i det svenska samhället tänker jag ge er tre exempel. Det första, om de konstgjorda luftstruparna som Paolo Macchiarini opererade in på patienter, har jag redan beskrivit i detalj, se inlägget 2016-02-17.

Det andra exemplet kunde vi höra om på radion igår, 2016-03-14. Det hyllade manliga U21-landslaget i fotboll, som vann EM 2015, använder sig av en pseudovetenskap, den mentala träningsmetoden HRV, som förkastas av vetenskapsauktoriteter. Gårdagens avsnitt av FotbollsArena Radiosporten, se referens nummer 2 nedan, innehåller ett långt reportage om detta kontroversiella ämne, och ytterligare information kom idag, när Sveriges Olympiska Kommitté bekräftade att de hade nekat att bidra med pengar till att laget skulle kunna hyra in s.k. specialister på området, men Svenska Fotbollförbundet försvarar metoden. Se referens nummer 3 nedan.

Det tredje exemplet illustreras i en serie på fem program av SR Kaliber, där man beskriver en metod som kallas faciliterad kommunikation (FC), avsedd att kunna tolka vad en person som inte kan kommunicera direkt vill berätta. I det första programmet anklagas en pappa för sexuella övergrepp på den egna dottern. Sahlgrenska Universitetssjukhuset anser: “Att använda FC strider mot vetenskapligt grundad metodik och god praktisk erfarenhet, och är att ge sig ut på mycket djupt vatten.” Se referens nummer 4 nedan.

Tack för att du hängde med ända hit i dessa tunga ämnen. Men nu är det …

… Tack för idag, slut för idag !

(This article in Swedish describes the current usage of pseudo sciences in elit football and every day life in Sweden.)

Refs.:

1: ”Sverige tappar mark i den banbrytande forskningen”

2: FotbollsArena Radiosporten 14 mars kl. 16:00

3: SOK sa nej – Förbundet fortsätter stötta kritiserad metod

4: Mirakelmetoden del 1: brottet

+: What did you learn in school today ?

2016-03-14 (Måndag)

Posted on by What did you learn in School today ?

Idag lärde jag mig, att:

Metro publicerade en lista med 10 positiva saker om Sverige:

  1. Vi blir tryggare
  2. Färre dör på jobbet
  3. Ungdomar super mindre
  4. Vi förväntas leva längre
  5. Vi har mindre ångest
  6. Vi litar mer på polis och domstolar
  7. Vi har mindre besvär med huvudvärk
  8. Självmorden minskar
  9. Vi litar mer på varandra
  10. Våra tänder blir bättre

Detaljer om varje punkt finns i referens nummer 1 nedan.

Du kommer säkert ihåg att 2016-03-03 skrev jag om att Sverige är europatrea i patent, och i dag hörde jag om hur forskare i Alnarp håller på att genmodifiera raps, så att det ska kunna gå att utvinna fiskolja ur dem. Ett intressant alternativ till föda för fiskodlingar, vilket skulle minska nödvändigheten att finkamma haven efter småfisk. Mer detalj finns i SR Vetandets värld, referens nummer 2 nedan.

raps

Böljande rapsfält på Österlen. Foto taget 2015-05-31 av Harald Persson.

Slutligen, idag är det π (pi)-dagen, 3/14/16 på amerikanskt datumvis. För exakt ett år sedan firades den ultimata π-dagen, 3/14/15, eftersom π=3,141592635…, men en korrekt avrundning till fyra decimaler leder till 3,1416, så rätt dag är ju i år! Fira det med en pi(e) (=paj) av önskat innehåll, salt eller söt !

Igår avgjordes också SM i π-decimalsuppräkning. Segrare med nytt svenskt rekord, hela 13 208 decimaler, blev 24-årige Jonas von Essen. Se också referens nummer 3 nedan.

Gläd dig idag, för imorgon blir det andra bullar !

… Slut för idag, tack för idag !

(The post above in Swedish deals with 10 positive current facts about Sweden, the use of GMO crops to feed fish, and π.)

Refs.:

1: 10 saker som visar att det inte går helt åt helvete för Sverige

2: Fiskraps – kan det göra laxodlingen hållbar?

3: Jonas, 24, är mästare i pi – rabblade över 13 000 siffror utantill

+: What did you learn in school today ?