Friday, June 28, 2013

Complex activity patterns emerge from simple underlying laws, ant experiments show

June 28, 2013 ? A new study from researchers at Uppsala University and University of Havana uses mathematic modeling and experiments on ants to show that a group is capable of developing flexible resource management strategies and characteristic responses of its own.

The results are now published in Physical Review Letters.

Group-living animals are led to regulate their activity and to make decisions on how to manage resources, under the action of a variety of environmental stimuli and of their intrinsic interactions. The latter are typically cooperative, in the sense that the activity of a single animal increases nonlinearly with the number of already active ones.

The researchers monitored experimentally and using mathematical modeling the activity profile of food-searching ants in a natural environment. The number of ants entering in or exiting the nest was recorded as well as the local temperature over several days.

The study shows that the group is capable of developing flexible resource management strategies and characteristic responses of its own. This is achieved by operating in an aperiodic fashion close to a regime of chaos, where nonlinearity is especially pronounced and offers the group more options than just following passively the day/night temperature cycle.

Furthermore, the group bursts into its foraging activity rapidly and subsequently relaxes to the inactive mode more slowly. This flexible behavior is reminiscent of "free will" in the sense that groups' activities are not totally constrained by the environment but on the contrary constitute new, emerging modes of behavior not encoded in the external stimuli or in the activity rhythms of the individuals within the group.

"Our results are likely to account for a wide range of temporal rhythms observed across the animal kingdom as well as in human societies," says Stamatios Nicolis, researcher at the Department of Mathematics, who lead the study.

"For instance, signal processing in the brain typically leads to complex patterns of electrical activity as witnessed by the electroencephalogram whose aperiodic, chaotic-looking structure is not a simple replica of the signal but reflects instead the ability of the brain to store vast amounts information and to process them selectively depending on the circumstances," says Stamatios Nicolis.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/s8EfwWh0yUw/130628091951.htm

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Solar power heads in a new direction: Thinner

June 26, 2013 ? Most efforts at improving solar cells have focused on increasing the efficiency of their energy conversion, or on lowering the cost of manufacturing. But now MIT researchers are opening another avenue for improvement, aiming to produce the thinnest and most lightweight solar panels possible.

Such panels, which have the potential to surpass any substance other than reactor-grade uranium in terms of energy produced per pound of material, could be made from stacked sheets of one-molecule-thick materials such as graphene or molybdenum disulfide.

Jeffrey Grossman, the Carl Richard Soderberg Associate Professor of Power Engineering at MIT, says the new approach "pushes towards the ultimate power conversion possible from a material" for solar power. Grossman is the senior author of a new paper describing this approach, published in the journal Nano Letters.

Although scientists have devoted considerable attention in recent years to the potential of two-dimensional materials such as graphene, Grossman says, there has been little study of their potential for solar applications. It turns out, he says, "they're not only OK, but it's amazing how well they do."

Using two layers of such atom-thick materials, Grossman says, his team has predicted solar cells with 1 to 2 percent efficiency in converting sunlight to electricity, That's low compared to the 15 to 20 percent efficiency of standard silicon solar cells, he says, but it's achieved using material that is thousands of times thinner and lighter than tissue paper. The two-layer solar cell is only 1 nanometer thick, while typical silicon solar cells can be hundreds of thousands of times that. The stacking of several of these two-dimensional layers could boost the efficiency significantly.

"Stacking a few layers could allow for higher efficiency, one that competes with other well-established solar cell technologies," says Marco Bernardi, a postdoc in MIT's Department of Materials Science who was the lead author of the paper. Maurizia Palummo, a senior researcher at the University of Rome visiting MIT through the MISTI Italy program, was also a co-author.

For applications where weight is a crucial factor -- such as in spacecraft, aviation or for use in remote areas of the developing world where transportation costs are significant -- such lightweight cells could already have great potential, Bernardi says.

Pound for pound, he says, the new solar cells produce up to 1,000 times more power than conventional photovoltaics. At about one nanometer (billionth of a meter) in thickness, "It's 20 to 50 times thinner than the thinnest solar cell that can be made today," Grossman adds. "You couldn't make a solar cell any thinner."

This slenderness is not only advantageous in shipping, but also in ease of mounting solar panels. About half the cost of today's panels is in support structures, installation, wiring and control systems, expenses that could be reduced through the use of lighter structures.

In addition, the material itself is much less expensive than the highly purified silicon used for standard solar cells -- and because the sheets are so thin, they require only minuscule amounts of the raw materials.

John Hart, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, chemical engineering and art and design at the University of Michigan, says, "This is an exciting new approach to designing solar cells, and moreover an impressive example of how complementary nanostructured materials can be engineered to create new energy devices." Hart, who will be joining the MIT faculty this summer but had no involvement in this research, adds that, "I expect the mechanical flexibility and robustness of these thin layers would also be attractive."

The MIT team's work so far to demonstrate the potential of atom-thick materials for solar generation is "just the start," Grossman says. For one thing, molybdenum disulfide and molybdenum diselenide, the materials used in this work, are just two of many 2-D materials whose potential could be studied, to say nothing of different combinations of materials sandwiched together. "There's a whole zoo of these materials that can be explored," Grossman says. "My hope is that this work sets the stage for people to think about these materials in a new way."

While no large-scale methods of producing molybdenum disulfide and molybdenum diselenide exist at this point, this is an active area of research. Manufacturability is "an essential question," Grossman says, "but I think it's a solvable problem."

An additional advantage of such materials is their long-term stability, even in open air; other solar-cell materials must be protected under heavy and expensive layers of glass. "It's essentially stable in air, under ultraviolet light, and in moisture," Grossman says. "It's very robust."

The work so far has been based on computer modeling of the materials, Grossman says, adding that his group is now trying to produce such devices. "I think this is the tip of the iceberg in terms of utilizing 2-D materials for clean energy" he says.

This work was supported by the MIT Energy Initiative.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_science/~3/8FVH4mhCcNE/130626153926.htm

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Communications minister Conroy resigns in wake of spill ...

Communications minister Stephen Conroy has announced he has resigned in the wake of last night?s Labor leadership coup against Julia Gillard.

Senator Conroy?s office this morning confirmed the minister has stepped down announcing the news on Twitter.Communications minister Conroy resigns in wake of spill      Conroy 468x159

?Can confirm Conroy has resigned. Keep supporting Labor & the #NBN, most important infrastructure in our country?s history #auspol,? his office tweeted.

Conroy has been a controversial and somewhat combative communications minister who spearheaded Labor?s NBN policy and led the media reform debate in March, which ultimately saw the legislation scrapped under fierce opposition from the media industry.

The Daily Telegraph is reporting former arts minister Simon Crean is tipped to be the new communications minister.

Nic Christensen

June 27th, 2013 at 10:45 am

Source: http://mumbrella.com.au/communications-minister-conroy-resigns-in-wake-of-spill-164220

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What Are The Different Roasts Of Coffee Beans

Finally, your website includes a blog that covers such topics as the top protein powders, teas and green coffee beans being a fitness and fat lose supplement, basics on weight reducers and weight-loss, and preparing for the body building competition. These impressive effects were presented in the 243rd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society in San Diego. These assistance to remove unwanted toxins through the body to assist your bodily organs to function better.

If you are about the search for the best pure green coffee bean extract, do your research. Try this and have that slender body again. The sealed capsules contains every one from the ingredients needed, you have no have to grind or mix.

Next the beans can ferment for several days in water, an activity that dissolves remaining traces of fruit pulp along with the sticky coating that surrounds the beans. This is additionally the stage where roast character is overtaking the origin character. An espresso coffeemaker, is a perfect demonstration of said multi function machines.

There are sure lots of variants of roasting to choose from. It is encouraging to find out the quantity of Indianapolis area coffee shops which can be either roasting their own pinto beans or acquiring them from local roasters. At now, the golden beans, called pergamino, have to be hulled, which is done by machine.

However, could I do this, there is a certain a higher level understanding I (and now we) must have with regard to sustainable coffee and its ecological significance. where to buy pure green coffee bean. Still within their original state, green beans are weighed and placed into a coffee roasting machine. But none have shown the dramatic results on this new study.

green coffee beans

Other reports have linked caffeine to weight loss and a reduced chance of metabolic syndrome. Shade grown/shade-grown pinto beans: traditional espresso beans that are shade grown (with a canopy of trees). Bjava Coffee and Tea, at 56th and Lafayette, is among the most recent coffee shops to begin roasting their beans on site.

Green Coffee Pure Bean Extract is really a revolutionary product which has taken the weight-loss industry by storm. The researchers identified chlorogenic acid which is present in unroasted coffee beans as the reason behind this fat loss phenomenon. Drop in a handful of beans, and stir them around.

Include it in in your taste or coffee, you'll feel lighter. Is there a coffee antioxidant? So what about coffee shops in the past, did they exist, did they survive?

About the Author:
He is known by the name of Tory Paquin. Kansas is where he's been living for years and he does not intend on changing it. He is a library assistant however he's constantly wanted his own business.
Running is what he does every week.Gwendolyn is what people call her however she does not like when individuals use her complete name. Filing is exactly what she does. Her husband and her reside in Puerto Rico however she will have to move one day or an additional. As a lady what she actually likes is modelling trains and she is trying to make it a career.

Source: http://www.articlesnatch.com/Article/What-Are-The-Different-Roasts-Of-Coffee-Beans/5172988

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Thursday, June 20, 2013

93% The Sapphires

All Critics (125) | Top Critics (29) | Fresh (116) | Rotten (9)

The harmonies they strike in this reality-inspired charmer are sweetly sublime.

You could drive an Abrams tank through the film's plot holes, but you'll likely be too busy enjoying yourself to bother.

"The Sapphires" feels like a movie you've already seen, but it's nonetheless thoroughly enjoyable, like a pop song that's no less infectious when you know every word.

"The Sapphires" sparkles with sass and Motown soul.

Sapphires is hardly a cinematic diamond mine. But this Commitments-style mashup of music and melodrama manages to entertain without demanding too much of its audience.

Quite possibly the least original movie you'll see this summer -- and one of the most enjoyable.

The mood is so charming and the music so inspiring that you continually cut it a break.

By-the-numbers in every sense of the word, the film tracks a tried-and-true sort of triumph while featuring renditions of soul classics so bursting with energy and joy you won't care that the originality meter is leaning on empty.

Even when it seems contrived The Sapphires is a feel-good movie in the most positive meaning of that term, thanks to the Motown music and O'Dowd's cheeky charm. Like the Four Tops, I loved every sugar pie, honey bunch moment. I can't help myself.

Unfortunately, it has been turned into a routine and uninspiring movie, following a tired, old formula the entire way.

A surefire crowdpleaser with all the ingredients for the type of little-movie-that-could sleeper success that Harvey Weinstein has nurtured in years and award seasons past.

You've seen this story before, but never pulled off with so much joie de vivre.

They can put a song across just like the Dreamgirls. What's not to like?

Exuberant but fairly formulaic.

Doesn't always mix its anti-prejudice message and its feel-good nostalgia with complete smoothness. But despite some ragged edges it provides a reasonably good time.

Director Wayne Blair -- another veteran of the stage show -- finds his footing during the film's many musical numbers.

Despite the prosaic plot and reserved approach taken by Blair, Briggs, and Thompson, it's tough to get cynical about such a warmhearted picture that strives to tell so uplifting a story.

A movie with enough melody and camaraderie to cover up its lack of originality.

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Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_sapphires_2012/

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Chinese Contemporary Ink Paintings Shuimo Water Ink

The selling exhibition ?Shuimo Water Ink: Chinese Contemporary Ink Paintings,? curated by Mee-Seen Loong at Sotheby?s in New York, demonstrated once again the versatility and power of art made with the simplest of materials and the most refined and complex techniques. The works ranged from soaring, meticulous Song-style landscapes to confrontational abstractions achieved with the single thrust of a large, wet brush. But the show had less to do with traditional, scholarly self-effacement or Modernist iconoclasm, and more to do with acts of personal expression.

For example, color is used in non-traditional ways in Li Huayi?s Whispering Pine, Reaching to the Clouds (2012), a vast white-to-grey mountain landscape depicted from a vertiginous angle, with the twisting pine of the title ?colorized.? Whereas the tree executed in blacks and grey would naturally attract the eye, the addition of color adds a touch of surprise to the work, much louder than a whisper.

Color was not used in the dense, convoluted, near-terrifying landscapes of Tai Xiangzhou. Tai?s lengthy calligraphic colophons, in skillful regular script, demonstrate the artist?s respect for his classical heritage. At the other extreme, color bursts across the comical expressionist works of Li Jin, with their overt social criticism.

Abstraction in a traditional mode might describe the works of American born Arnold Chang?in which elements familiar in Chinese landscape painting appear to be distorted and displaced in a fresh and modern way?yet his scrolls still bear the stamp of the refined scholar-intellectual. Similarly, Liu Dan?s large?Silent Mountains, Meandering Paths?(2013) delights and disarms the eye with its ambiguous confusion and blending of clouds and mountains.

Scholarly fondness for the grotesque is stretched to the limits by Zeng Xiaojun, whose?Wild Spirit Screen?(2012) is a haunting depiction of a psychedelic, surrealistic plant form?an uprooted tree of sorts with stark intertwined branches, odd root systems, unnatural growths and spooky crevices. Call it Chinese Gothic, if you please.

In technical terms, the collages by the Master of the Water, Pine and Stone Retreat, are unique in this exhibition in a couple of ways. First, the inscriptions are in English, the native language of the British artist. Second, the subject matter?or more precisely, the ink on the paper?is applied in the form of collage. The Master first paints traditional landscape elements on ?cloud-dragon paper? and then cuts out sections of this material to paste on the finished work. The trompe l?oeil effect is entirely convincing. In?The Eight Sainted Staves?(2012), eight separate scrolls each depict a walking stick accompanied by a long text in a faux-literary Chinese style about the artist?s encounter with the ?Chisel-Immortal,? the artisan to whom the artist attributes the creation of the staves. With (British) tongue firmly in (Chinese) cheek, these works raise intriguing questions about Chinese art and identity.

?Water Ink,? one of Sotheby?s first selling exhibitions of Asian art, set off a small controversy over the issue of a major auction house stepping on the toes of individual galleries and dealers with fewer resources. But there are more factors than the obvious commercial ones at play here, and it is hoped that the incident will remain a storm in an inkpot.

Source: http://artasiapacific.com/Magazine/WebExclusives/ChineseContemporaryInkPaintingsShuimoWaterInk

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