Is the world ready for this jelly?: “

You can’t tell from the photo, but this jellyfish is huge. Nomura jellyfish, native to the waters off China and Japan, can grow to be the size of a refrigerator, and weigh up to 400 pounds. And, since the 1990s, there’s a lot more of them. Swarms, 500 million jellies strong, have sunk ships, writes Brandon Keim in Wired. It’s part of a global increase in jellyfish populations. Right now, nobody’s sure whether this is a blip, or a new normal. But everybody would like to know how jellyfish affect ecosystems, and new research offers some sobering analysis.

In what may be the most comprehensive jellyfish study to date, Condon’s group spent nearly four years gathering data from Chesapeake Bay on Mnemiopsis leidyi and Chrysaora quinquecirrha, two species that have caused trouble elsewhere and are considered representative of jellyfish habits worldwide.

The researchers counted them at sea, measured the nutrients in surrounding water, and calculated the composition of nearby bacterial communities. In the lab, they observed how bacteria in seawater reacted to jellyfish, and tracked chemicals flowing through their aquariums.

They found that jellyfish, like many other marine species, excrete organic compounds as bodily wastes and as slime that covers their bodies. But whereas the excretions of other species are consumed by bacteria that form important parts of oceanic food webs, jellyfish excretions nourish gammaproteobacteria, a class of microbes that little else in the ocean likes to eat, and that produces little of further biological use.

‘Lots of marine creatures make this dissolved organic matter that bacteria use to live. But the point of this paper is that the organic matter produced by jellies doesn’t make it back up the food web,’ said study co-author Deborah Steinberg, also a Virginia Institute of Marine Science biologist. ‘When jellies are around, they’re shunting this energy into a form that’s just not very usable. They’re just shunting energy away from the rest of the food web.’

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Bubble-in forms betray individual, traceable “handwriting”: “

Original research from Princeton’s Joe Calandrino, Ed Felten and Will Clarkson show that machine analysis can make very accurate guesses about the identity of people who complete bubble-in forms — that is, there’s something like a recognizable, individual ‘penmanship’ for the small scribbles used to fill in the bubbles on machine-readable forms.

These individuals have visibly different stroke directions, suggesting a means of distinguishing between both individuals. While variation between bubbles may be limited, stroke direction and other subtle features permit differentiation between respondents. If we can learn an individual’s characteristic features, we may use those features to identify that individual’s forms in the future.

To test the limits of our analysis approach, we obtained a set of 92 surveys and extracted 20 bubbles from each of those surveys. We set aside 8 bubbles per survey to test our identification accuracy and trained our model on the remaining 12 bubbles per survey. Using image processing techniques, we identified the unique characteristics of each training bubble and trained a classifier to distinguish between the surveys’ respondents. We applied this classifier to the remaining test bubbles from a respondent. The classifier orders the candidate respondents based on the perceived likelihood that they created the test markings. We repeated this test for each of the 92 respondents, recording where the correct respondent fell in the classifier’s ordered list of candidate respondents.

New Research Result: Bubble Forms Not So Anonymous

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[Watch! As the very concept of identity dissolves before your very eyes! -e]

White man from Georgia is “Gay Girl from Damascus”: “

For weeks, journalists, bloggers, and human rights advocates have been trying to track down a ‘disappeared’ mideast blogger named Amina, who identified herself on her blog as a ‘Gay Girl from Damascus.’ The journal purported to chronicle ‘an out Syrian lesbian’s thoughts on life, the universe and so on.’

Well, not so much. After she went missing, people started digging. And it turns out Amina is a 40-year-old white man from Stone Mountain, Georgia named Tom MacMaster.

Christ, what an asshole.

Update: Andy Carvin (@acarvin) of NPR deserves credit for pushing this story from the start, poking at cracks early on, and doing much of the sleuthing that led to the ultimate realization that this was an exploitative hoax. Here’s his post at NPR.org. As usual, Andy’s doing tireless and important work.

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Evolved, 3D printed creatures: “

Dolf sez, ‘I am growing creatures I call Entoforms using the open source Blender 3D software. To do so, I’ve written the equivalent of a 300 page book in python scripts, which though a work in progress, are already available. The Entoforms have text as DNA, and can thus be based on words, or names. I print them out in 3D, then pin, and label them in insect boxes like collected invertebrates. These I am selling as limited issue collectible art pieces. To help me create the first larger series, and exhibit them this summer and fall at art galleries… I started a crowdfunding campaign.’

Entoforms

(Thanks, Dolf!)

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3D printed trigonometry calculator: “

Lalbritton’s ‘Ideal Harmonic Transformer’ is a 3D printed mechanism for calculating sines and cosines: ‘
It is a thing to hold, enjoy turning the crank, and look at. If you can’t find your calculator, and need to know the sine or cosine of an angle real quick, you can dial in the angle and read off of the Scotch Yokes. It also works in reverse.’

Ideal Harmonic Transformer by lalbritton

(via Make)

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Very bad late ’90s hip-hop cover art: “

An academic appreciation of very bad late ’90s Hip-Hop cover art. (thanks, David)

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NYC cyclist vs. bike lanes – kamikaze law-abiding: “

A NYC cyclist who received a fine for straying out of the bike-lane recorded this video of his attempt to ride around town without leaving the bike-lane, instead crashing merrily into any obstacle that he encountered, from taxis to construction equipment.

Guy Crashes Multiple Times To Make Point About NYPD Ticketing Bicyclists

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Dalai Lama fails to understand Dalai Lama joke, but is a good sport about it: “

An Australian newsreader found himself interviewing the Dalai Lama, so, naturally, he told him the joke about the Dalai Lama who asks the pizzeria to make him one with everything. The Dalai Lama really, really didn’t get it. In a funny way.

The Dalai Lama walks into a pizza shop…

(via Neatorama)

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[Weird weird weird. -e]

Möbius Ship: “

Tim Hawkinson’s Möbius Ship sculptures are nautical, single-surfaced and have fractional dimensionality. Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

Echoing the working methods of ship-in-a-bottle hobbyists, Hawkinson created a painstakingly detailed model ship that twists in upon itself, presenting the viewer with a thought-provoking visual conundrum. The title is a witty play on Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick, which famously relates the tale of a ship captain’s all-consuming obsession with an elusive white whale. The ambitious and imaginative structure of Hawkinson’s sculpture offers an uncanny visual metaphor for Melville’s epic tale, which is often considered the ultimate American novel.

Möbius Ship

(via Kottke)

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