An Eye to the World, an Eye to the Net
Great video about science and a way of thinking.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PT90dAA49Q]
Best quotes:
Plait:
Teach a man to reason
And he’ll think for a lifetime
Randi:
Enjoy the fantasy, the fun, the stories
But make sure that there’s a clear sharp line
Drawn on the floor
To do otherwise is to embrace madness
The only thing I’m really missing right now, it’s not to be in Italy to actual join the manifestation going on in the country against the infamous reform ‘Gelmini’ which is a disastrous choice for the Public school and Italian University.
Anyway I’m supporting, from here. For now.
Neuronvisio is now 0.5.1. The project is well mature and stable. This is just a release to add some features and polish it a bit.
More info on the google groups ML
Today I’ve tried to get the City7 from Cambridge to Hinxton. Usually I take the shuttle bus in the morning and in the afternoon, but if you’ve got stuff to do in town, you have only two options left:
The train+bike means boarding your bike @ Cambridge station and getting out at Whittlelsford Parkaway station and then cycle to the Genome Campus and cycle back in the evening.
The path is really nice, especially in summer, but right now it gets dark rather too quickly, and the road from the Genome Campus to Whittlesford ParkAway is completely without any kind of illumination. So not available in the winter.
[googlemaps http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=117346831772329393426.00048f2f5310609e8b669&ll=52.091784,0.172152&spn=0.025068,0.029241&t=h&output=embed&w=425&h=350]
The other option is to catch the City 7.
Now, the problem with the city 7 is the service is quite disastrous. There is only one city7, that goes hourly from CB to Hinxton, where the Genome Campus and the EBI is based and it’s never on time. We actually call it the “Unpredictable city 7”.
Real life experience, today the bus @11.05 never show up and I was forced to take the one @12.05. I was at the bust stop from 10.40 (to not miss it if was going to pass really early), so I waited 1 hour and 30 mins. Oh yeah!
I think those guys can do better than this. So I wrote the letter below. Feel free to send them an email as well if you care about this. You can use mine as template if you like.
Their email address is cambridge.enquiries@stagecoachbus.com .
Dear Stagecoach,
The the City 7 line, specifically the one that goes from Cambridge to Saffron Walden has a very sloppy service for an amazing high price.
While I understand you can’t provide a service every 10 mins I think it’s outrageous that your bus is most of the time either late or too early in respect of the schedule.
When I started my PhD, 3 years ago, the frequency of the bus was every half hour for 2.80 £. Right now the service is hourly and the price is 3.10 pounds. As I already stated the punctuality is not a strength.
I’m working @ the EMBL-EBI which is in the Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, together with the Sanger institute and the Hinxton Hall Conference Center. The Campus is very close to the Hinxton Village.
The Genome Campus has roughly 4000 people and I can tell you I’m not the only one who would enjoy a better service. Most of the people I know have completely given up the idea to take the public bus, in favour of cycling or going by car or other means because of its unreliability.
I think there is enough potential to try to run things differently.
Other City 7 lines stops at Duxford and the Duxford museum. Maybe you can run a trial and extend those services to Hinxton, which is just few miles away.
If you can provide a reliable schedule with an increased number of services maybe the perception would change and more people will use those service more often.
That would be a better service for us and a good business for you.
I hope you will take those suggestions in consideration.
Thanks for your time.
Best regards,
Michele Mattioni.
I don’t believe and I already expressed my opinion about religion.
However when I think that somebody could end up in jail fr the rest of his life because has written a post like this I think that if a state has a law based on religion is a bit anachronistic nowadays. And also a lot sad.
via Costa
..Mi sento così:
🙂
Poi passa eh…
If you use Ecell simulator sometimes it’s handy to have a way to use it inside an ipython/pylab session to quickly test some features and try some small thing.
For this reason I’ve created a class called quickEcell which takes care to initialize ecell simulator, create the ses object and offer a qcuik way to create loggers and plot the variable.
Below is the minimal to run a model and plot it. All the code is on http://github.com/mattions/QuickEcell
[code]"""Demo method. This should be the skeleton of your simulation"""
qE = QuickEcell(‘simple_ecell_mod.eml’)
variables = [‘S’, ‘P’]
loggers = qE.create_loggers(variables)
qE.run_and_plot(1000, variables, loggers)
plt.title("Test for Michaelis-Menten")
plt.show()[/code]
Sometimes you find yourself in a really big mess:
That’s why a git reset is not the way to go, however there is a really nice way to do it:
This is the magic trick:
[code]git checkout -b fixing some_commit
git checkout master
git merge -s recursive –strategy-option theirs B[/code]
H/T darkhax
Terna, the Italian Transmission and System Operator, has joined the Desertec project. I got known the DESERTEC project some years ago and I was really excited about it for two reasons:
In my idea Italy should lead this effort, given the geographical position. To achieve that we need to create a culture that is able to integrate with the other, in a way of respect, with the possibility to be free to like or dislike.
One interesting initiative on this line was the Adriatic Festival, happened in Ancona.
1 The photovoltaic panel are the right solution for roofs, however under a certain latitude the concentrated solar power should be preferred due to the better performance per land unit use, the buffer ability and the bigger output.
This morning I had a really interesting conversation with a friend of mine on the bus to work.
Then I read this post from Luca De Biase about the Japanes law of Science and Technology which was in good agreement with my position.
Sometimes Science and Research is seen as a tool to achieve a better handling of technology. That’s a really narrow way to look at it and it’s not the main point.
I think Research regarding both humanistic and scientific topics, is a way to improve society. The better we understand the world and ourself, the better we can live on this planet and have a better society.
Japan has passed in 1995 a law called: “Science and Technology basic law“, this is the first article
Article 1
The objective of this law is to achieve a higher standard of science and technology (hereinafter referred to as “S&T”), to contribute to the development of the economy and society in Japan and to the improvement of the welfare of the nation, as well as to contribute to the progress of S&T in the world and the sustainable development of human society, through prescribing the basic policy requirements for the promotion of S&T (excluding those relevant only to the humanities in this law) and comprehensively and systematically promoting policies for the progress of S&T.
The real deal is to improve society and to create a sustainable way to do it. It is not about the money, is about the vision of the society and about building a better one for the future.
This is way, I signed the petition on science is vital, and I’m going to the rally on Saturday.
People should not be mistaken, this is not scientists calling for more money because they are fearing to loose the job, they can always do another job.
This is scientists calling the whole society to understand that research is a way to build a better society and to build a better future. The rally is happening in UK, but this is a worldwide issue.