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On the occasion of the current convention on biodiversity some images from a green part of Berlin, called Teufelsee (the “satanic lake”) in the district of Köpenick.

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In todays nature magazine there was an article about the “Global phytoplankton decline over the past century”. I have no access to the article however in an article by Markus Becker – a reporter from the german news magazine Spiegel Online – it was reported that since 1950 on average the mass of phytoplankton declined globally by 40%. Since phytoplankton are amongst others a major food source for food webs this affects e.g. the abundance of fish. Moreover phytoplankton are responsible for much of the oxygen present in the earth’s atmosphere. A main reason for the decline of phytoplankton is climate change.

-> related article on randform about oceans and climate change
->related article on randform on microorganisms and oxygen supply
-> see also here
update 30.7.10: You might also want to kick into the subject by reading
about the decline in fish occurence:
->Elizabeth Kolbert on overfishing on Azimuth
-> randform post about fish consumption and nutrition

some koi after the click
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Last time when I was in Göttingen I found a poster at the math department documenting an art science collaboration between mathematics professors William Thurston, Kazushi Ahara and Sadayoshi Kojima on one side and a team around clothing designer Issey Miyake, notably including chief designer Dai Fujiwara of Issey Miyake (here a link to a partial version of the poster, see also absnews article by Jenny Barchfield). A result of this collaboration is that the Issey Miyake Fall-Winter 2010-2011 ready-to-wear collection is inspired by the geometrization conjecture.

From the poster:

In the mid-October of 2009, Prof. Thurston showed us the detail drawings of the “8 Geometry Link models as Metaphor of the Universe” They inspired us to make the collection based on them, accompanying design study with rope and toile. Considering the body itself as the Universe, we have added our own interpretation of beauty to them. The new perception of the body shared by all the members of the team resulted in the discoveries of new lines and forms, which were then applied to textile, color and detail studies. Thus the new collection has taken shape steadily, revealing its whole picture eventually. To sum up the exchange with Prof. Thurston led us to find a completely new kind of beauty and embody it in clothing. This mission was, as it were, an odyssee to explore the Universe with infinite imaginations.

The geometrization conjecture roughly says (I am not an expert on this) that a three dimensional volume form without boundary (a two dimensional analog of such a form would be for example the surface form (i.e. the “skin”) of a ball or the surface form of a doughnut) can be decomposed into “pieces” which have one of 8 characteristic “geometric structures”, which means roughly that in a small neighbourhood of any such “piece” there is – out of only 8 characteristic ways – one specific way to measure length. A theorem states that any three dimensional (oriented) volume form without boundary can be obtained by cutting a “thick” (that is instead of a rope take a ribbon) link out of a three dimensional sphere. Thus you can characterize special types of three dimensional volume forms (here: “the pieces”) by assigning a link to them. This is – by what I understood sofar- why there are 8 links (or link models) on the poster – they characterize the 8 types of possible “pieces”, which built up three dimensional volume forms without boundary.

Why do they call these 8 links “Metaphor of the Universe”? I can only make wild guesses, which sound rather like science fiction than science: Maybe if you imagine the space of the universe to be eventually such a three dimensional volume then by cutting it into pieces (may be along black hole horizons huh?!) and “measuring distances” (determine a metric) one could make deductions about the actual form of the universe? Or – reversely by making assumptions about the form of the universe (like e.g. that its space is a three sphere) one may get informations about what could be inside black holes…given that one finds all black holes…(this is just a funny joke).

But joking aside – I think they call it Metaphor of the Universe because these simple 8 links may be used to describe quite complicated things.

->wikipedia link math and fiber arts

randform reported already earlier about the decline of music education in Berlin. The last post was about a protest note by well-known musicians who protest against the cutbacks of music education in schools .
Currently you can hear the Vuvuzelas everywhere here in Berlin — they are quite LAUUUUt (this is approximately the noise of a german Vuvuzela) — thus one could easily conclude that the decline of music education already reached the bottom.
But of course the Vuvuzelas are due to the soccer fever and luckily there are still some people left in Berlin who prove that its music education has not (yet) reached the bottom. Here a video snippet from the concert of the Musikalische Werkstätten (a music project with pupils from the Berlin districts of Lichtenberg-Hohenschönhausen, Treptow-Köpenick und Marzahn-Hellersdorf, organized by Landesmusikakademie Berlin) where pupils perform not with Vuvuzelas but partially with similar simple instruments the piece “seven nation army” (here the original) in a very cool style.

During the concert I was a bit concerned that parts of the ceiling in the gym at FEZ, where the concert took place would fall down, however then I told myself that just because the ceiling is deformed (probably due to ball shots, see image) that doesn’t necessary imply that it will fall down. ??

The protest has now a website at http://www.ohne-musik-keine-bildung.de/ and you can leave your signature against the cuts in music education (german newspaper article in Morgenpost about the campaign)

foto by fotonotof

Short notice: as published in one of the current gazettes (2010-04-20) of the US Trade mark office the company Disney had filed an application for the name “snow white” (if I understood correctly ?) for:

Production, presentation, distribution, and rental of motion picture films; production, presentation, distribution, and rental of television and radio programs; production, presentation, and rental of sound and visual recordings; production of entertainment shows and interactive programs for distribution via audio and visual media, and electronic means; production and provision of entertainment in the nature of shows, current events news, and entertainment information via communication and computer networks; amusement park and theme park services; educational and entertainment services rendered in or relating to theme parks, namely, live stage shows, live amusement park shows, live performances by costumed characters, and presentation of live theatrical performances; presentation of live stage shows; presentation of live show performances; entertainment in the nature of theater productions; entertainer services, namely, live appearances by a professional entertainer

short video clip about jboard (1.4 MB) (link to 12.1 MB)

randform reader Lano Ferryman asked in a comment to a randform post:

If you are so interested in new input devices – so why don’t you report on the new iPad?

answer: First of all I think there had already been quite some media coverage about the Apple iPad thus I dont really think that testing the iPad on randform is really needed. And in order to be fair one would need also to report on other similar tablet computers or tablet PCs. Moreover I haven’t seen the iPad yet, apart from displays in in-depth video demonstrations. Tim is a bit skeptical about it, since you can’t run a programming language on the iPad, so he couldn’t e.g. install his string-rewriter jsymbol on the iPad. So he is rather waiting, like there is e.g. a Berlin company called neofonie, which produces a similar pad, called wePad (wikipedia site (sofar only in german)) which is announced to run like with an Android-like-OS that is it is some Linux, but able to run with Android applications (and rumor has it, that google is also about to release an android powered pad), furthermore Adobe Air is available on the wePad, thus Flash would run on it (i am not such a fan of flash though). However the webpage of the wePad isn’t really overly informative. On the wePad’s facebook site (in german) one can at least read (in german) that more information in particular regarding price etc. is to be released tomorrow.

It is also that I am getting more and more reluctant to promote new technologies which make people want to consume more.

On the other hand its not that randform is totally uninterested. Tim has meanwhile some new programs, which would run nicely on an iPad-like pad. The above short clip displays his program jboard (under development) for using an electronic board. I was asking him to implement something like stickers (on the right side of the board) where you can store little pieces of text and graphics, which you can freely move and copy to other pages. The stickers are automatically “tagged” with parts of what the sticker holds, but one can also tag them also with any other self-designed icon/text. So for example if you have a table you are constantly referring to throughout a lecture then you can get that table from the sidebar by clicking on your icon. We forgot to display the highlight feature in the clip.

update 13.04.10 – I forgot to mention: Tim is not sure wether jBoard will be GPL, LGPL or something similar, in any case jBoard will be open. There will also no ridiculous patents be filed (like for the stickers). Further development of jBoard will be rather slow, in particular next week the semester starts again and Tim will mutate again into a teaching machine.

A reader commented to the post dripping pains:

It is quite arrogant to say that such a design is bad – just because you have other criteria! You say your comment shouldnt be seen as an insult, but of course it is an insult! Even worse you discredit the makings of a different country than your country of origin, you should have a better respect of other cultures! Your comment may sound very disheartening!

My reply to this and some more photos from the Juno oven (see above) which works without dripping pans (the drip goes onto the outer surface and is not collected in a dripping pan) after the click.
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