Rare seahorses found in Thames This is the
first time that these rare creatures have been found so far up the Thames and
the first time in this part of London. The
short-snouted seahorse (Hippocampus hippocampus), which grows up to 15cm (6
inches) is more commonly found in the waters of the Mediterranean and Canary
Islands. Seahorses have often been a
visitor to coastal waters
around Britain but the agency said recent sightings suggest that there may be
more permanent populations around the UK.
Seahorses have elaborate courtship rituals and are
one of the few animals that mate for life.
Emma Barton, Environment Agency fisheries officer, said: "The
seahorse we found was only 5cm (2 inches) long, a juvenile, suggesting that
they may be breeding nearby. See picture
at: http://phys.org/news/2011-10-rare-seahorses-thames.html
Ideas Illustrated: Survival Skills for the
Information Age presents "Visualizing English
Word Origins" with well-done graphics analyzing American and British
literature, and language from the legal, medical and spots fields. http://ideasillustrated.com/blog/2012/04/01/visualizing-english-word-origins
The Symphonic Boom, review of Site and
Sound by Victoria Newhouse
In a global construction explosion that echoes the last performing-arts
center boom of the 1970s and '80s, spectacular buildings for music are
replacing the art museum as the most conspicuous cultural icon of the 21st
century. Stylistically, they represent
architecture's leading edge. Musically,
they signal radical changes in place, performance and audience attitudes. In
the United States alone, 360 opera houses and concert halls were completed
between 1994 and 2008.
"Site and Sound: The
Architecture and Acoustics of New Opera Houses and Concert Halls," by
Victoria Newhouse, is an ambitious history and critique that covers everything
from the amphitheater at Epidaurus (third century B.C.) to Zaha Hadid's
cutting-edge Cultural Center in Baku, Azerbaijan, which is under construction
now. But the emphasis of this precisely
written, meticulously researched study is on the most recent work. Ms. Newhouse has visited every building she
writes about, attending multiple performances and interviewing architects,
acousticians, managers and users. The only constant in the long history of this
singular art form is inconsistency; attitudes have swung back and forth from
the creation of a reverential atmosphere that stresses music for its own sake
to an emphasis on music as a social event.
Ms. Newhouse believes that there is no guarantee of perfect sound. Even with scientific computer modeling, she is
convinced that perfection is an unreal objective and that judgment is a
subjective act. The standard,
horseshoe-shaped operas and "shoe box" concert halls that worked well
in the past are rarely as reliable as when they were custom-built and tuned
just for the instruments and sounds of their time. Yet so strongly does belief in the tried and
true persist, and so great is the fear of failure, that many of the most
extreme new exteriors have traditional configurations inside. Because we are
addicted to instant gratification, we want our judgments up or down, good or
bad, and we expect new or remodeled structures to receive immediate praise or
condemnation. As a working journalist
who covered the previous round of performing-arts construction, I was paired
with the music critic, who would stride across the stage, clapping his hands,
testing various spots in the orchestra and balcony for reverberation times
while I studied the design. After a
rehearsal and an opening-night performance, our paired evaluations would appear
in the next morning's New York Times. And the job was done. What followed was usually an essential period
of evaluation and fine-tuning. But Ms. Newhouse has learned that ideal acoustics are
not even necessary for a hall to succeed. The essential factor is ambience—the sum total
of how a place looks, feels and sounds, an intangible combination that
satisfies the senses and fills an important but unexpressed social need that
extends from the audience's shared experience to its communication with the
performing artists. Ada Luise Huxtable,
artchitecture critic of The Wall Street Journal
See a picture of the Danish
Radio Concert Hall, Copenhagen (2009), designed by the French architect Jean
Nouvel, featuring a 'vineyard' layout of terraced seats at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304356604577340211822833758.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion
An automated reader developed by the Educational Testing Service, e-Rater, can grade 16,000
essays in 20 seconds, according to David Williamson, a research director for
E.T.S., which develops and administers 50 million tests a year, including the
SAT. The e-Rater’s biggest problem, he says, is
that it can’t identify truth . He tells students not to waste time worrying
about whether their facts are accurate, since pretty much any fact will do as
long as it is incorporated into a well-structured sentence. “E-Rater doesn’t care if you say the War of
1812 started in 1945,” he said. Les
Perelman, a director of writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, found
that e-Rater prefers long essays. A
716-word essay he wrote that
was padded with more than a dozen nonsensical sentences received a top score of
6; a well-argued, well-written essay of 567 words was scored a 5. E-Rater, he said, does not like short
sentences.
Or short paragraphs. Or sentences that begin with “or.” And sentences that start with “and.” Nor sentence fragments. However, he said, e-Rater likes connectors,
like “however,” which serve as programming proxies for complex thinking. Moreover, “moreover” is good, too.
Gargantuan words are
indemnified because e-Rater interprets them as a sign of lexical complexity. “Whenever possible,” Mr. Perelman advises,
“use a big word. ‘Egregious’ is better
than ‘bad.’ ” Michael Winerip http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/23/education/robo-readers-used-to-grade-test-essays.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
Lori Roy won the
Edgar for best first novel by an American author for her book, Bent Road
on April 26. The award was presented by
bestselling writer Mary Higgins Clark, who was "delightful," Roy
said. The Edgars, named after Edgar
Allan Poe (who is credited with inventing the detective story), are presented
annually in several categories by the Mystery Writers of America. Bent Road, published by Dutton in March
2011, is a taut, suspenseful, gracefully written thriller that could be
called heartland noir. Set in rural
Kansas in 1967, it takes the reader inside the secrets of a family 20 years
after one of its members died mysteriously. She is
"at the tail end of finishing up" her second novel, another literary
thriller, set this time in Detroit in the 1950s. Colette Bancroft http://www.tampabay.com/news/tierra-verde-author-lori-roy-wins-edgar-award-for-first-novel-bent-road/1227301
Q: Does the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control
Devices now require agencies to provide a flashing yellow
arrow indication for a left-turn movement for the permissive left-turn phase?
A: No, this is not
mandatory, but the flashing yellow arrow is now allowed in the 2009 MUTCD as an
optional alternative display for PPLT or "permissive only" left turn
movements (see Sections 4D.17 through 4D.20). NCHRP Report 493 describes the results of a
comprehensive research project to evaluate the use of different permissive
displays for protected-permissive mode left turns (PPLT), including the
flashing yellow arrow (FYA). The
research found that the most easily understood and most effective permissive
display is the FYA in an all-arrows separate turn signal face for the left
turn. An NCHRP follow-up study found
that converting circular green permissive left-turn displays to flashing yellow
arrow improved safety. Flashing yellow
arrow displays are also now allowed for use with permissive right-turn
movements (see Sections 4D.21 through 4D.24.) http://mutcd.fhwa.dot.gov/knowledge/faqs/faq_part4.htm
MUCTD=Manual
on Uniform Traffic Control Devices http://mutcd.fhwa.dot.gov/index.htm
NCHRP=National
Cooperative Highway Research Program http://www.trb.org/NCHRP/NCHRP.aspx
The moon will be at its
fullest
on Saturday, May 5 at 11:35 p.m. EDT, at which point it will also be at perigee
— just 221,802 miles from Earth. Skywatchers can expect to see the moon shining
16% brighter than usual. Last year’s
supermoon, which fell on March 19, was reportedly the biggest and brightest in 18
years. http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/05/04/the-supermoon-is-upon-us-the-years-biggest-full-moon-lights-up-the-sky-this-saturday/
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