CircleCount helps you better understand Google+

2013-05-21 15:42:40 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

98% Human The end of wild animals in film & TV is coming. Actor Adrien Brody & top ad agency BBDO Worldwide show us what it will look like in this thought-provoking video. Could YOU live this life? http://peta.vg/1iv

2013-05-18 17:34:13 (0 comments, 4 reshares, 5 +1s)

Solar Grandmothers

Bunker Roy is doing something amazing by empowering women. Below is an extended trailer of an upcoming documentary which describes the The barefoot college in India.

From video description: The Barefoot College in India was founded by Bunker Roy to provide knowledge and training to the rural poor to empower them to make their communities self-reliant and sustainable. The solar course at Barefoot College has women from Kenya, Burkina Faso, Columbia, and Guatemala.

It is a double win since women are getting educated and the education is about renewable energy!

Someone has rightly said that many of the world's problems will be solved if Women were in power, not the power hungry imbecile men. It is movements like these which give me some hope for humanity's future.

+STEM Women on G+

Via +Zachary Bird 

2013-05-12 16:40:56 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 4 +1s)

How long is an average dissertation?

Interesting questions indeed. And apparently it takes a bored PhD student to find it out :D...

"It’s debatable as to what, if anything, page length indicates about the quality of one’s work". "Like any indicator, page length provides information that may or may not be useful. However, I guarantee that almost every graduate student has thought about an appropriate page length on at least one occasion during their education." Fair enough...

S/He data-mined the University of Minnesota library's electronic thesis database using R. "*The data contained 2,536 records for students that completed their dissertations since 2007.*" 

Minimum length 21 (either too good or too bad) and maximum length 2002 (looks like some submitted the PhD simulation code :P ).

I hope I can bethis... more »

2013-05-13 15:36:55 (10 comments, 2 reshares, 24 +1s)

So, yeah, I made a pizza today, from scratch :)....

Tomato sauce: http://goo.gl/Aa57a

Pizza dough: http://goo.gl/kJmqU (I used 1c all purpose and 1c multi whole-grain flour)

Recipe: http://goo.gl/klnqL (Didn't have the luxury of having Daiya cheese, but it was good nonetheless)

For toppings I used mushrooms, olives, yellow bell-pepper, onion, baby spinach. 

Total time, including dough rise time and oven baking time, around 2.5 hours...

It came out nice. Even with whole grain flour the base was soft and crunchy around the edges. Finished 5/8 of it, regretting now, had too much :P.... 

2013-05-12 16:40:36 (4 comments, 2 reshares, 3 +1s)

How long is an average dissertation?

Interesting questions indeed. And apparently it takes a bored PhD student to find it out :D...

"It’s debatable as to what, if anything, page length indicates about the quality of one’s work". "Like any indicator, page length provides information that may or may not be useful. However, I guarantee that almost every graduate student has thought about an appropriate page length on at least one occasion during their education." Fair enough...

S/He data-mined the University of Minnesota library's electronic thesis database using R. "*The data contained 2,536 records for students that completed their dissertations since 2007.*" 

Minimum length 21 (either too good or too bad) and maximum length 2002 (looks like some submitted the PhD simulation code :P ).

I hope I can bethis... more »

2013-05-12 04:39:07 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

Vitamin B12 with The Orange Owl / Alternative Roots Wellness Center B12 on a Vegan Diet - The Vegan Zombie

2013-05-09 10:43:45 (2 comments, 1 reshares, 7 +1s)

Good to know that my decision of replacing sugar/sweetener with dates was a good idea :)...

As this video explains dates and molasses have a high level of 
antioxidants as compared to other conventional sweeteners. Moreover, dates provide the much needed extra fiber, which is an extra win.

2013-04-14 19:10:06 (1 comments, 3 reshares, 3 +1s)

Feeling bored?

Looking for something interesting to come along which can kill time? Worry no more...

Listen to experts in evolutionary biology, social psychology, neurobiology, and two magicians (yes magicians). 

From the description: Why is deception such an essential part of the human condition? What evolutionary purpose does it fulfill? How can we recognize it on an individual level, and overcome it on a societal level in a modern democracy?

Like other The great debates this one is also very interesting and will keep you riveted to the computer screen...

Happy #sciencesunday !

+ScienceSunday 

2013-04-13 15:26:04 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

Are you eating ground flaxseeds yet? You might consider if you caught Wednesday’s video on how the lignan-rich flaxseeds appeared to decrease tumor growth: http://nutritionfacts.org/video/flaxseeds-breast-cancer-survival-clinical-evidence/

2013-03-25 19:39:14 (0 comments, 2 reshares, 4 +1s)

Last week at the APS March Meeting 2013 in Baltimore, Steven Chu opened the Kavli Foundation Special Session with a talk on the "Promise of Photovoltaics." In case you missed it, you may watch the session online.

#physics #photovoltaics #stevenchu  

2013-03-21 18:11:40 (1 comments, 3 reshares, 14 +1s)

Interesting and very informative talk about Paleo diet fad...

2013-03-17 18:56:10 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

Largest print photograph and a pretty darn small hole

The great picture as the name suggest is pretty great. Its size is 34m x 9.8m. And you wouldn't expect how it was created. The humongous beast was created using a pin-hole camera. The team build the world's largest pin-hole camera in a discarded F-18 hanger. They drilled a tiny pin-hole of radius 3mm in the hanger's metal door and hung the huge photosensitive print in front of it at a distance of 24m. The hanger was sealed and the print was exposed to the light from the pin-hole for 35 minutes. The developed print can be seen in the link below.

Pin-hole cameras are pretty nice. Imagine you are watching an object through a tiny hole. If the hole is tiny and you are not shoving your eyes in the pin-hole, then you will only see a tiny point size portion of the object. That is, pin-hole allows you to make&... more »

2013-03-17 17:48:55 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

Found this on the comment list of this video.

"No veganism: no poop.
Know veganism: know poop."

This is true on so many levels :) 

2013-03-11 06:09:03 (1 comments, 4 reshares, 11 +1s)

Hello Earthlings, kindly consider signing this petition.

EU has already banned the animal testing of "Beauty" products.
http://goo.gl/lnWO4

It's about time that other nations should follow too. 

2013-03-09 04:35:15 (2 comments, 1 reshares, 7 +1s)

A pretty nice  and informative talk, although pretty long. It is not pro-vegan but it does reveal one of the devil in people's diet: fructose from processed foods. 

It has been watched by more than 3 million people and I hope that some of these people researched more about diet and turned away from  detrimental foods. It might also promote the idea that if corporations and Govts. are hiding such info from people what else they might have pushed under the rug. 

All and all, this video could be a good conversation starter.

2013-03-03 18:16:45 (4 comments, 17 reshares, 38 +1s)

Math punniness at its best.

I can't believe that this awesome song still has 725K views even after 6 years! This song needs to be spread more! 

The song starts as:

The path of love is never smooth 
But mine's continuous for you
You're the upper bound in the chains of my heart
You're my Axiom of Choice, you know it's true...

For people who are familiar with math jargon this song will blow you away :)

#sciencesunday   +ScienceSunday 

2013-02-27 11:25:50 (3 comments, 2 reshares, 8 +1s)

A very nice short film signifying children's innate (?) empathy for animals (in this case, the humble insects). It is through the societal norms and pressure that they learn to be indifferent of animal suffering. 

I don't know what was the original motivation for the creators but connecting it to veganism would seem appropriate to me :)

2013-02-21 04:46:17 (1 comments, 1 reshares, 10 +1s)

And people eat these amazing creatures.....

2013-02-11 05:22:31 (5 comments, 3 reshares, 12 +1s)

Nearly four-fifths of the antibiotics sold in the US are now given to meat animals.

Animals can't survive the cramped, unhealthy conditions of factory farms, so the industrial meat industry gives animals antibiotics to keep them alive until they can be slaughtered.

While the amount of antibiotics administered to humans by doctors is steady, the amount consumed by the livestock industry grows every year. 

Antibiotic-resistant pathogens. It's what's for dinner. 

http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2013/02/meat-industry-still-gorging-antibiotics

2013-02-11 05:26:28 (7 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

The study which this news article mentions seems lacking very important factors to me. For example, they only consider the energy content of food items (Kcal/g) and their method of analysis is based on substituting caloric content of meat with calories from fruits/vegetables. This is absurd. 
Of course one would need crazy amount of fruits and vegetables to get enough calories. That is why we use tofu/chickpeas/seeds/nuts to lessen the food portion! I couldn't get my hand on the article in concern (http://goo.gl/54kei ; paywalled!!!) but I did find a little older article (http://goo.gl/z8H00) by the same authors in the same context (the current article is I guess an updated version). This older article has no mention of soya products/chickpeas/nuts(exception: wallnut)/seeds. 

Yet another case of comparing apples and oranges.

2013-02-01 19:07:51 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 11 +1s)

VICTORY! After March 2013, the sale of all cosmetics tested on animals will be BANNED in the European Union: http://peta.vg/hk

2013-01-26 20:15:22 (5 comments, 3 reshares, 14 +1s)

Nice report guys. Now, if you can just get it printed in popular media  and educate more people, then that would be great :) ....


Via +David Pearce 

2013-01-19 16:19:50 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 6 +1s)

This was a complete win with awesomely tasty results!

Be careful, some guilty licking might ensue.

2013-01-17 04:59:46 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 7 +1s)

So, what do you guys think about the risks mentioned here.
I do agree with that cooking is not always bad for food. As usual the message which comes out is that eat a variety of food, in this case the variety is a spectrum of cocked and raw food...

2013-01-16 02:54:24 (0 comments, 10 reshares, 9 +1s)

With the exception of 1998, the nine warmest years in the 132-year record all have occurred since 2000, with 2010 and 2005 ranking as the hottest years on record.

#climatechange   +rasha kamel  +Azimuth  +Climate News 

2013-01-13 14:03:43 (4 comments, 19 reshares, 4 +1s)

Women in Academia

An awesome and must see interactive info-graphics about women in academic publications. Explore and find out about how percentage of women in the author list changed over time. 

For some reason the data-set doesn't include Physics but it has a large data-set nonetheless. 

The info-graphic shows that during 1991-2010 Women were co-authors in almost 47% of articles about Education and around 10% of articles about Mathematics.

#sciencesunday   +ScienceSunday  +STEM Women on G+  

2013-01-10 04:44:07 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Please consider donating to this science project.

Dr. Jason Box (Greenland ice-sheet scientist; http://bprc.osu.edu/wiki/Jason_Box_Homepage) and Bill Mckibben (founder of the 350.org) are gathering funds to conduct an experiment in which they want to connect huge wildfires in recent times to the albedo lose in the Greenland ice sheet (via aerosol). 

Check the video out for their purpose and visit http://darksnowproject.org/ 
for more information and to donate. They need 150,000$ and have reached 60,000$ so far.

+rasha kamel  +Azimuth 

2013-01-08 08:40:29 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

Modern concentration camps

2013-01-02 18:51:54 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 8 +1s)

Healthy Granola :) 

Thanks, +Heather Nauta,  for sharing the recipe (Healthy Granola Recipe)

Changes/compromises in recipe: wheat flour, fresh orange juice instead of pineapple juice, no ginger, less cinnamon, little maple syrup.

It tastes very nice... num num num.. 

2012-12-31 16:30:36 (4 comments, 3 reshares, 12 +1s)

Anthropocene arrived for the animal kingdom long before Humans started affecting Earth's climate.  This video epitomizes this notion.

The guy who made this must be a Vegan :)

2013-05-21 07:57:09 (3 comments, 5 reshares, 6 +1s)

Anthropocene arrived for the animal kingdom long before Humans started affecting Earth's climate. 

The guy who made this must be a Vegan :)

2012-12-30 19:28:25 (2 comments, 5 reshares, 8 +1s)

Parasitic skills at its best

These Larvae live and thrive inside the caterpillar for some time and then come out by literally making their way out of the caterpillar once they are ready to go to the pupa stage. Watch the video as the most ingenious part about these parasites is what they do to the caterpillar once they are out!

Evolution, oh you crazy evolution...

#sciencesunday   +ScienceSunday 

2012-12-24 08:08:52 (1 comments, 7 reshares, 24 +1s)

Banded Giants

Our solar system has four giant planets. According to their compositions they are categorized into two categories: Gas giants and Ice giants. Uranus and Neptune are called Ice giants because they carry relatively higher percentage of "ices" (methane and some other chemicals). Jupiter and Saturn have very small percentage of such chemicals and are called Gas giants.

All of our giants have these majestic bands of rotating winds called Zonal-winds or Zonal-jets. Jupiter and Saturn have very conspicuous bands while Uranus and Neptune have these bands on a rather modest level. The direction and relative strength of these winds in shown in picture 1 for the case of Jupiter.

Beauty aside, these bands are very puzzling because there is no scientific consensus as to how these bands are generated on these planets. To add to the complexity, theseZon... more »

2012-12-24 08:08:52 (2 comments, 16 reshares, 15 +1s)

Banded Giants

Our solar system has four giant planets. According to their compositions they are categorized into two categories: Gas giants and Ice giants. Uranus and Neptune are called Ice giants because they carry relatively higher percentage of "ices" (methane and some other chemicals). Jupiter and Saturn have very small percentage of such chemicals and are called Gas giants.

All of our giants have these majestic bands of rotating winds called Zonal-winds or Zonal-jets. Jupiter and Saturn have very conspicuous bands while Uranus and Neptune have these bands on a rather modest level. The direction and relative strength of these winds in shown in picture 1 for the case of Jupiter.

Beauty aside, these bands are very puzzling because there is no scientific consensus as to how these bands are generated on these planets. To add to the complexity, theseZon... more »

2012-12-07 09:06:59 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Info alert: If you post something on a public #community  , then that post will be visible on your Google+ profile. Kind of strange.

I hope Google fixes it because this is very odd. The whole point of a community is a communal discussion! 

2012-12-05 17:06:52 (2 comments, 1 reshares, 3 +1s)

Confirm what you already know about your country :D ...

Apparently, Denmark is the least corrupt country and Somalia is the most.

India, as expected, is among the very corrupt nations.  

2013-01-04 16:39:30 (5 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

Since the UN climate change summit has started in Doha (#COP18), lets educate ourselves with some climate numbers. The attached video highlights the major numbers which we need to keep in mind:

- 2° Celsius rise in Earth temperature is the "safe" limit above which catastrophic changes in Earth's weather will be unavoidable. 

- 565 Gigatonnes of CO2 is an estimated  "safe" emission limit which will not overshoot Earth's tempreature above 2° Celsius. With the current consumption of world nations, we will hit this limit in only about 16 years.

- 2795 Gigatonnes of potential CO2 is right now locked in the proven sources of natural gas, coal, and petroleum. This is almost 5 times the safe limit! 

- 1 % of global GDP ($790 Billion) per year is sufficient to initiate global level shift to renewable energysources ... more »

2012-11-26 05:59:33 (0 comments, 15 reshares, 18 +1s)

Why every scientist should pay attention to Google Scholar

Google Scholar is an alternative to Web of science kind of tools which lets you search through the plethora of research articles available (open access or behind a pay-wall) on internet. 

Here is why I am cheer-leading for it: 

Free - It is FREE! Much like the NASA ADS service.

Access - The best thing about Google Scholar is that it searches the whole freakin internet and many a times it finds the pdf files of otherwise pay-walled articles on some university/collaboration/homepage websites and it displays it along the article (see the attached image). This feature can be a life saver (or an anxiety remedy :) ) while you are travelling. 

Research profile - In Google scholar you can create your profile and add your research articles. Google scholar will updateall of y... more »

2012-11-11 18:01:42 (4 comments, 3 reshares, 16 +1s)

Ohh, it's #sciencesunday  already! Lets continue ....

Life and magnetic fields (Part 2 of 2)

Part 1: http://goo.gl/OtP8g

Mars - Like Venus, it also does not have a large scale magnetic field which can create a magnetosphere around it. But, wait, the plot thickens in this case. Mars global surveyor satellite showed that Mars has a strong crustal magnetization (Mars rocks are magnetized). This hints that Mars had a strong large scale magnetic field in the past. And, more weirdly, only Mars' southern hemisphere is magnetized. Probably a very giant impact in the northern hemisphere erased its magnetization. But, recently, using first principle numerical simulations, scientist have shown that we can actually create Mars like southern crustal magnetization! We have to wait for the consensus :) 

Jupiter - It has a strong dipolarmagn... more »

2012-11-04 16:23:32 (8 comments, 13 reshares, 17 +1s)

Life and Magnetic fields 

Few weeks back this video (below) was making rounds in the Google+. It discusses about the importance of planetary magnetic fields in providing favorable conditions for life to flourish. Without the protection of magnetosphere, harm full radiation from Sun would literally scoop off our atmosphere! Motivated by this, I thought it might be interesting to share few words about magnetic fields in our solar system. These loopy fields are dear to me because I study how these fields are generated in planets and low-mass stars :)...

Stars and planets sustain their magnetic fields via the so-called Dynamo mechanism. This mechanism requires: a complex enough motion of fluids which have sufficiently high electrical conductivity (a measure of how "transparent" the fluid is to the electron's motion)

Sun - Sun magnetic field,... more »

2012-10-28 15:16:42 (0 comments, 4 reshares, 5 +1s)

Awesome video with beautiful music depicting our crazy history filled with mass wipe-outs of species. A good reminder of the fact that most of the species which existed on Earth have actually gone extinct. 

#sciencesunday   +ScienceSunday 

2012-10-22 14:39:44 (4 comments, 0 reshares, 19 +1s)

Looking for wallpaper candidates?? ... :)

#macromonday  

2012-10-14 15:32:03 (1 comments, 27 reshares, 13 +1s)

Behold the amazing birds of paradise in a short preview of an upcoming documentary about these amazing animals. 

One can only wonder what kind of evolution processes would have given rise to such a jaw-dropping oddity.

Don't forget to turn on FullHD while watching this trailer!

#sciencesunday  
Sharing for +ScienceSunday  curated by +Robby Bowles , +Allison Sekuler , +Rajini Rao , and +Chad Haney .

Via +Rekha Rao 

2012-10-07 16:12:35 (3 comments, 21 reshares, 20 +1s)

Recently, 32 out of sync metronomes end up synchronizing video was making rounds on G+ which demonstrate the syncing phenomenon. Some time back, Prof. Steven Strogatz presented a very nice ted-talk (below) on this topic, and I thought this might interest the #sciencesunday   audience. Prof. Strogatz  is known for (at least in student circle) his very popular and interesting book "Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos: With Applications to Physics, Biology, Chemistry and Engineering". 

Syncing behavior is very prevalent in nature, few example are LASER, bird Flock or fish school, heart beats etc. It might help animals or sometimes be rather dangerous (epileptic seizures are due to overly synchronized neural activity!).

For +ScienceSunday , curated by +Robby Bowles , +Allison Sekuler , +Rajini Rao , and +Chad Haney . 

2012-10-07 13:05:23 (8 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

This is what happens when scientists and engineers become serious about showing-off their work :) 

#sciencesunday   +ScienceSunday 

2012-10-06 13:12:15 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 8 +1s)

Recently visited Nice, France for a conference. Quite an amazing place.

2012-09-27 16:42:32 (1 comments, 3 reshares, 6 +1s)

College text books are known to cost in the range of 100s of dollars! The right of free access to knowledge about any basic field should be a basic Human-right, and with the help of such horrendous prices of these books, it is no way near the above notion. 

+OpenStax College  is a non-profit profit organization which is dedicated to providing free, beautiful, peer-reviewed books on basic subjects. They are finished with "College Physics" and "Introduction to sociology"! Other interesting books are in the pipe-line. PDF is of course free, and the printed version costs $49 (Physics) and $30 (Sociology).

Spread the news and help in building this awesome initiative more awesome.

#scienceeveryday   #freebooks

Via +Raziman T V 

2012-09-24 17:17:45 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 10 +1s)

Trip to the forest was quite fruitful :) 

#macromonday  

2012-09-23 12:52:58 (1 comments, 8 reshares, 11 +1s)

Awesome video explaining the basics of how a Star forms and how its life progresses. 

#sciencesunday   +ScienceSunday 

By the way, the "Brown Dwarf" dude is special to me because we are trying to find out its magnetic field behavior using computer simulations :)

Via +Carlos Portela 

2012-09-09 12:08:54 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 10 +1s)

For some reason, today morning the weather was highlighting the flight path of  each and every airplane. 

Kind of ruins a beautiful clear-sky morning. Looks pretty amazing though.

The second image almost matches the true colors of today's morning. The  first image had auto mode on.