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Asimov’s prediction about mathematical models predicting war conflicts (Psychohistory) seem to come true…

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Global Pattern Formation and Ethnic/Cultural Violence

May Lim, Richard Metzler, and Yaneer Bar-Yam*

ScienceMagazine - September 2007

[the link requires a subscription to sciencemag.org, but you can ask the article per email to the authors from here)]

*New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI)

Abstract:We identify a process of global pattern formation that causes regions to differentiate by culture. Violence arises at boundaries between regions that are not sufficiently well defined. We model cultural differentiation as a separation of groups whose membersprefer similar neighbors, with a characteristic group size at which violence occurs. Application of this model of the former Yugoslavia and to India accurately predicts the locations of reported conflict to the area. This model also points to imposed mixing or boundary clarification as mechanisms for promoting peace.

Prediction of  regions of most probable ethnic violence (red areas) in the former Yugoslavia  by a model based on the population distribution of ethnic groups in 1991.  Credit: © Science

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I personally believe, socio historical patterns of human particles are statistically predictable.

I think Science has to focus more on this promising area which could  benefit mankind quite a lot.

While cross-validation of the proposed model would certainly need some more time to come, congratulation to the NECSI group!

AZ

Popularity: 92% [?]

Popularity: 24% [?]

It took several years R&D from an idea originally  developd at  XEROX in the 70′.

Ladies & Gentklemen the Plastic Logic Reader

Plastic Logic is a spin-off company from Cambridge University’s Cavendish Laboratory, and is a pioneer in polymer transistors and electronics. Production of the Plastic Logic Reader should start this year in Dresden, Germany.

Popularity: 13% [?]

instead, plenty of nice pictures (constantly updated) like this

and this

euphoria spreading all over the internet, already on youtube!

congratulation, Science!

Popularity: 17% [?]

this is a “call for impressions” about the new browers of bigG.

I had no time to try it out (I will soon) but you certainly did it

[fell free to comment in italian if you want - questo minipost é  un idea di Andrea Masseroni che ringrazio!]

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Cari amici,

Popularity: 23% [?]

at least for me .. and for at least 2 reasons:

1.  number of medals pro population (weighting gold > silver > bronze). Here the table

2.  number of world records pro million of inhabitants (ok, I didn’t calculate it for each country, but I am pretty sure no country performed better then Jamaica: 3 world records and 2.8 Mil people - for comparison Australia: 7 WR and 21 Mil people)

One should also consider the kind of gold medals and world records Jamaica scored. (Athletics 100m+200m+4*100m, which are among the top competitive discipline at the olympic games)

Ok, Athletics is only a part of the Olympic Games, and I don’t want to say Athletics is more important than other sports, but how to say.. I am so happy for Jamaica!

AZ

Popularity: 22% [?]

a collection of amazing pictures of the LHC has been put on the web from The Big Picture - Boston.com

Accelerating hadrons never looked so beautiful..

src: (Maximilien Brice, © CERN)

LHC: info from WIkipedia

A cool video explaining LHC in a “rap” way (tip from Dorigo’s blog)

about “the end of the world” LHC related issue you can google plenty of posts, I found this (in italian) from Leonardo’s blog.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Ricercatori del Massachusetts General Hospital’s Center for Engineering Medicine hanno messo a punto un chip basato su nanotecnologie che dovrebbe migliorare sensibilmente la diagnosi e il monitoraggio dei tumori andando a indentificare le celluli tumorali nel sangue (a quanto pare di difficilissima identificazione, ma chiedo lumi all´ Erborista..).

Il lavoro é stato pubblicato su Nature il 20 Decembre 2007.
I pragarafi seguenti sono tratti da Sciencentral.com dell´Aprile 2008 (dove é disponibile anche un video)

Read the Rest of ‘Chip per tumori’

Popularity: 9% [?]