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

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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

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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

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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

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2016-03-13 (Sunday)

Posted on by What did you learn in School today ?

Today, I learned that:

Two days ago, 2016-03-11, I was discussing that due to the nuclear accidents that had happened, the safety regulations were tightened in order to reduce the effects of future accidents. However, if certain lessons from Harrisburg 1979 had been taken seriously in Fukushima, maybe their accident would have been causing much less damage than it really did in 2011.

In the same manner, the terrorist attacks on USA on 2001-09-11 led to that the safety measures for access to the cockpit of an aircraft were tightened, so that nobody could enter it without being let in by the occupants of the cockpit. That way, the regulators intended to make it extremely difficult for any trouble makers to take over the aircraft. But what if one of the people in the cockpit was doing something wrong that would jeopardize the flight? This was exactly what happened on 2015-03-24, when the co-pilot of the Germanwings flight from Barcelona to Düsseldorf deliberately crashed his plane into the French Alps. (The header image today shows a photo I took of the Alps from a Lufthansa, parent company to Germanwings, flight the day before Christmas Eve 2001. On the ground level, the ambient temperature was -45 OC, almost the same as on our cruising altitude.)

D-AIPX

Germanwings Airbus A320, D-AIPX, which crashed in the French Alps on 2015-03-24

Today was revealed a report about how he, being a bipolar patient, had searched medical treatment with 41 health professionals, but due to the confidentiality obligation, none of them had dared inform the medical department of the airline. However, the rules for the occupancy of the cockpit were once again changed as a consequence of the co-pilots sole action. Now, there is an obligation that there always must be two people in the cockpit.

Still talking about the same Germanwings’ crash, did you know that parts of a football team from the Swedish club Dalkurd was supposed to be in the main cabin of that flight? They were returning home after a training camp in Barcelona, but changed their tickets to a later flight, so that the whole team could travel on the same flight. It saved them their lives! Full news coverage of the crash can be found in references #1 and #2 below.

Problem #5a (Pizza)
It is the evening after a long day and you have promised your wife to bring pizza for dinner. So you stop by at your favourite pizza parlour for take-out. Today’s special is Margherita, the Queen of pizzas, invented in Italy in 1889. They come in two sizes, a round one with 30 cm in diameter and a small one, also round, with 15 cm in diameter. The big one costs € 10 and the small one € 5. You are an economical person, so you have set a limit of spending to exactly € 10, but which type shall you buy, one big pizza or two smaller ones? Does it really matter what you choose? A solution to this problem will be published next Saturday, 2016-03-19.

pancakes

Question #5b (Pancakes)
And speaking about food, do you know why Microsoft’s founder Bill Gates is so fond of pancakes? I will tell you that as well on Saturday, 2016-03-19.

… That’s what I learned in school !

Refs.:

1: Germanwings Airbus A320 plane crash: Flight 4U9525 down in French Alps with 150 feared dead

2: French investigators to publish report into Germanwings plane crash

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2016-03-12 (Saturday)

Posted on by What did you learn in School today ?

Today, once more I learned that:

There are machines all around us, performing all kinds of tasks. Below are three interesting examples of their versatility.

Solution to Problem # 4, Drilling square holes, posted on 2016-03-06

The question was: How would you construct a tool to drill square holes? The solution can be found in the following drawing. See also the amazing video in reference # 1 below.

Corner mill

This drawing from the Japanese company Dijet show the principle of successive milling of the corners of the hole, which results in a square hole.

Update on AlphaGo vs. Lee Sedol

Just as we could expect, AlphaGo did it again, and won also the third game against Lee Sedol. There are still two more games to go, but the 3-0 lead that AlphaGo already has is of course sufficient to win the match. See the following images and reference #2 below.

go3

Top: The result of the third game of the historic match between AlphaGo and Lee Sedol, played in Seoul 2016-03-09–12. Bottom: AlphaGo operator Aja Huang, Lee Sedol, and Google co-founder Sergey Brin, on a photo taken before the third game. Graphic and photo supplied by Google.

A robot I would not mind having as my partner

Here comes a perfect example of how advanced robots are today. It is the US company Boston Dynamics that has developed Atlas. How about teaming up AlphaGo and Atlas, thus forming the ultimate Go player? See the following photo and another fantastic video in reference #3 below.

Atlas

Atlas lighting a box weighing 4,5 kg. I suggest that Google employs him together with AlphaGo to form an invincible Go player.

… That’s what I learned in school!

Refs.:

1: Square Hole Drill

2: AlphaGo’s ultimate challenge: a five-game match against the legendary Lee Sedol

3: Atlas, the next generation

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2016-03-11 (Fredag)

Posted on by What did you learn in School today ?

Idag lärde jag mig, att:

Det är idag precis 5 år sedan den allvarligaste kärnkraftsolyckan i historien, när det japanska kärnkraftverket i Fukushima drabbades av tre härdsmältor. Jag lyssnade på SR Vetenskapsredaktions Veckomagasin idag, där man kommenterade vad som har blivit konsekvenserna av de tre största olyckorna, Harrisburg 1979, Chernobyl 1986 och Fukushima 2011. Jag rekommenderar att de intresserade lyssnar på det programmet, se referens nummer 1 nedan.

Men densamma vetenskapsredaktionen hade också en mycket trevligare nyhet att berätta om några timmar tidigare. Det rör sig om en den australiensiska fjärilen Common bluebottle, en släkting till den svenska Makaonfjärilen, som har utsetts till världens skickligaste färgseende insekt.

Forskare har tidigare misstänkt att den här fjärilen ser färger bra. Den har nämligen ovanligt stora ögon och använder sina regnbågsskimrande vingar för att kommunicera. Men att den skulle ha 15 olika färgreceptorer i ögat har ingen kunnat gissa. Vi människor hara bara tre olika färgreceptorer, så kallade tappar, i våra ögon. De är känsliga för rött, grönt respektive blått ljus. Insekten på andra plats har nio.

Common bluebottle

Common bluebottle, världens färgkänsligaste varelse. Foto: Kazuo Unno

… Slut för idag, tack för idag !

(The text in Swedish above deals with the fifth anniversary of the nuclear accident in Fukushima in 2011 and presents the world’s most colour sensible creature.)

Refs.:

1: Blir kärnkraften säkrare efter katastroferna?

2: Fjärilen som slår världsrekord i färgseende

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2016-03-10 (Thursday)

Posted on by What did you learn in School today ?

Today, I learned that:

The world is undergoing a constant evolution, and in the field of technology it seems more evident than ever.

Do you remember Deep Blue, the first computer to beat a human world champion in chess? It happened in 1996, when it won the first game of six against Garry Kasparov, although Kasparov came back and won the series with 4-2. But in 1997, Deep Blue got its revenge, winning a tough series of games with 3,5-2,5. Deep Blue was a joint project between IBM and Carnegie Mellon University. Kasparov accused IBM of cheating and demanded a rematch, but IBM denied it. Later it was the inverse, IBM challenged Kasparov again, in vain. However, Deep Blue gave inspiration to other chess playing programs and nowadays it is quite common to see human chess players go up against their virtual opponents. See also reference #1 below.

DBW

To the left: Deep Blue (photo by James the photographer – http://flickr.com/photos/22453761@N00/592436598/), and to the right: Ken Jennings, Watson, and Brad Rutter in their Jeopardy! exhibition match (Wikipedia)

Then came Watson, yet another implementation from IBM. In 2011, a computer won the popular quiz game of Jeopardy! against the champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. IBM later continued development of Watson further into a commercial application for management decisions in lung cancer treatment, announced in 2013, see reference #2 below, and an update in January 2016 (reference # 3 below) gives more recent examples of where Watson is finding applications for its skills.

Both Deep Blue and Watson are good examples of what is commonly called Artificial Intelligence (AI), and yesterday, 2016-03-09, represented another historic date for AI. This time, the application is playing the ancient Chinese boardgame Go, considered to be far more complex than chess. The British company Deep Mind started in 2010 to develop a computer system which purpose was to play Go the way no man (or machine) had ever done before. Google acquired the company in 2014 and here comes the graduation task for AlphaGo: beat the world’s leading Go player.

The series of best of 5 games, which is held in Seoul, started yesterday, when AlphaGo won the first game of Go against the world’s best player, the Korean Lee Sedol. Also in the second game, held today, AlphaGo defeated its opponent, and unless Sedol wins the remaining three games, we will have proof, once more, that well designed computers can beat the best players in the world in their respective specialities. The following images show the result of the first two games. For more information about the match and Go in general, see references #4 and #5 below.

go12

The two first games of the historic match between AlphaGo and Lee Sedol, played in Seoul 2016-03-09–10. Graphic produced by Google.

Finally, although the machines are clever, do not forget that there are humans behind them, responsible for the programming. Reference #6 below talks about a case revealed today about how hackers were able to transfer US$ 81 million from the US Federal Reserve Bank in New York to Asia, completing thus 4 of the assigned 13 transfers. But on the fifth task, a routing bank in Germany detected a misspelling of “foundation” as “fandation”, which stopped the remaining US$ 850 million from getting stolen.

This reminds me of the old slogan for Esso gasoline to “put a tiger in the tank”. Such a procedure will not have any effect if there is “a jackass sitting behind the wheel” !!!

… That’s what I learned in school !

Refs.:

1: Deep Blue (chess computer)

2: Watson (computer)

3: The Rise Of Thinking Machines: How IBM’s Watson Takes On The World

4: AlphaGo’s ultimate challenge: a five-game match against the legendary Lee Sedol

5: Go (game)

6: Hackers tried and failed to steal a billion dollars from bank

+: What did you learn in school today ?

2016-03-09 (Wednesday)

Posted on by What did you learn in School today ?

Today, I learned that:

Already yesterday, I could watch in real time a streaming video of the total solar eclipse, which was happening at the same time next day in the Pacific Ocean. It was a webcast arranged by NASA (North American Space Administration) transmitting live from one of the Micronesian islands, where the eclipse was total during 4 minutes, from 22:38 to 22:42 yesterday my time. Below, I show two screen shots that I took during the totality.

totaleclipse

Two photos from NASAs webcast from Micronesia, showing the totality of the solar eclipse. The left photo, from the first seconds of totality, shows the Sun’s corona and the second one is the exact moment when the Sun starts to get out of the Moon’s obstruction, creating a so-called Diamond Ring.

And while we are at it, here comes another update to my post from 2016-02-15, when AIK celebrated its 125th anniversary:

After an exciting sudden death, AIK beat Tingsryd with 4-3 and won the Swedish Icehockey’s 2nd division, aka Allsvenskan. Now AIK will dispute a series of best of 7 against Karlskrona, where the winner is qualified for SHL next year.

And of course, we must not forget that the Swedish female national football team today qualified for the Olympic Games after a draw (1-1) with the Netherlands.

To continue in the name of sports, here are two other interesting facts:

According to a podcast from Scientific American (reference #2 below), a researcher who wanted to measure perception went to a softball game and after the game, she showed the players a poster with different sized softballs, asking them to point out the correct one. People who hit better selected a larger circle, meaning the batters who were hitting better saw the ball as bigger. Which means not everyone sees the ball the same way. And it also means that what we see is affected by our ability to act. Performance impacts vision.

In other studies she found that golfers who putted better saw the hole as bigger than did poor putters. Faster swimmers saw targets underwater as being closer than did slower swimmers. And she had athletes who were not placekickers try to make field goals in American football. The ones who did better saw the space between the uprights as wider.

Bottom line:
“You don’t see the world the same the others. You see the world in a way that’s unique to you, and it’s unique to your abilities.”

Finally, do you know what a golden set is? In volleyball, if after the last play-off match, two teams are still tied, a sixth set (“golden set”) decides which team wins the play-off series. This means, that one team wins by a 3-3 set draw! See reference #3 below, if you do not believe me!

… That’s what I learned in school !

Refs.:

1: The total solar eclipse 2016-03-09 over Micronesia

2: Ball Really Looks Bigger to Better Hitters

3: Golden set to decide a volleyball game

+: What did you learn in school today ?

2016-03-08 (Tuesday)

Posted on by What did you learn in School today ?

Today, I learned that:

Many countries around the world is today commemorating the International Women’s Day, and of course I participate in congratulating all those women who make our lives worth living. I understand that there places, including my home country Sweden, where the women do not believe that there is a need for such a day, argumenting that there is no special day for the men. Well, they are correct, of course, but only in part! In fact, we men have 364 days (even 365 days this year) we can call special days for men, so we cannot complain. Girls, I beg you, please acknowledge your day and do not leave us in the dark!

Eclipsesolar

Total Eclipse of the Sun in Salzburg, Austria, on 1999-08-11

Speaking about being left in the dark, the photo above shows just that situation. I took it in Salzburg, Austria, on 1999-08-11 when there was a total solar eclipse against a complete clear sky! I was there with my family and still in the very morning of that day, we were worried that an abundant volume of clouds would continue to reign the skies and leave us without any sighting of the vacant sun. But luckily, one hour before the point of totality, the sky cleared and we had a marvellous view of this rare phenomenon. More information can be found in reference #1 below.

When I was a kid, my parents often told me about the total solar eclipse which occurred on 1954-06-30, when suddenly in the middle of the day the sky went pitch black and the birds stopped their usual singing. I was there but only passively participating from within my mother’s womb. 45 years later, our daughter was in the same spot, present but not actively so. References # 2 and #3 give more information about that eclipse.

The reason for all this talk about a total eclipse of the sun is that such a one will occur tomorrow in Indonesia, see reference #4 below. A band of eclipse hunters have headed there and let us hope that their travel is worth their while. Listen to the podcast of reference #5 below from one of them.

The travelers of flight Alaska Airlines 870 from Anchorage to Honolulu will receive a bonus on their flight when the departure time will be delayed so that they can intercept the eclipse en route, see reference #6 below.

… That’s what I learned in school !

Refs.:

1: Solar eclipse of August 11, 1999

2: 1954-06-30 Senaste totala solförmörkelsen i Sverige

3: Solförmörkelsen 1954 i direkt reportage på Sveriges Radio

4: Solar eclipse of March 9, 2016

5: Mar 6th: The Indonesian total solar eclipse of 8/9 March 2016

6: Alaska Airlines is adjusting a plane’s flight plan so passengers can see tomorrow’s solar eclipse

+: What did you learn in school today ?