Internet may phase out printed Oxford Dictionary
“It weighs in at more than 130 pounds, but the authoritative guide to the English language, the Oxford English Dictionary, may eventually slim down to nothing.
Oxford University Press, the publisher, said Sunday so many people prefer to look up words using its online product that it’s uncertain whether the 126-year-old dictionary’s next edition will be printed on paper at all.
The digital version of the Oxford English Dictionary now gets 2 million hits a month from subscribers, who pay $295 a year for the service in the U.S. In contrast, the current printed edition — a 20-volume, 750-pound ($1,165) set published in 1989 — has sold about 30,000 sets in total. It’s just one more sign that the speed and ease of using Internet reference sites — and their ability to be quickly updated — are phasing out printed reference books. Google and Wikipedia are much more popular research tools than the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and dozens of free online dictionaries offer word meanings at the click of a mouse. Dictionary.com even offers a free iPhone application.
By the time the lexicographers behind the century-old Oxford English Dictionary finish revising and updating its third edition — a gargantuan task that will take a decade or more — publishers doubt there will be a market for the printed form. “At present we are experiencing increasing demand for the online product,” a statement from the publisher said. “However, a print version will certainly be considered if there is sufficient demand at the time of publication.” Nigel Portwood, chief executive of Oxford University Press, told The Sunday Times in an interview he didn’t think the newest edition will be printed. “The print dictionary market is just disappearing. It is falling away by tens of percent a year,” he said.”
Read more at Google News (Thanks Anna)
iPhone set to replace the stethoscope
“The stethoscope – medical icon, lifesaver and doctor’s best friend – is disappearing from hospitals across the world as physicians increasingly use their smartphones to monitor patients’ heartbeats.
More than 3 million doctors have downloaded a 59p application – invented by Peter Bentley, a researcher from University College London – which turns an Apple iPhone into a stethoscope.
Last week, Bentley introduced a free version of the app, which is being downloaded by more than 500 users a day. Experts say the software, a major advance in medical technology, has saved lives and enabled doctors in remote areas to access specialist expertise.
“Everybody is very excited about the potential of the adoption of mobile phone technology into the medical workplace, and rightly so,” said Bentley, who initially developed the app “as a fun toy”.
“Smartphones are incredibly powerful devices packed full of sensors, cameras, high-quality microphones with amazing displays,” he said. “They are capable of saving lives, saving money and improving healthcare in a dramatic fashion – and we carry these massively powerful computers in our pockets.”
Bentley’s iStethoscope application is not the only mobile phone programme lightening doctors’ bags and transforming their practices: there are nearly 6,000 applications related to health in the Apple App Store. The uptake has been rapid. In late 2009, two-thirds of doctors and 42% of the public were using smartphones – in effect inexpensive handheld computers – for personal and professional reasons. More than 80% of doctors said they expected to own a smartphone by 2012.”
Read more at The Guardian (Thanks @rogibson)
Gray Matter: In Which I Fully Submerge My Hand in Liquid Nitrogen
“A layer of bubbles protects the flesh from liquid nitrogen, though only for a split second. Need proof? Watch the video.”
“When I first saw this photograph of a man’s hand submerged in liquid nitrogen at somewhere below -320° F, my immediate thought was, “That guy must be crazy! One second in that stuff, and you’re shopping for new skin!” My shock was tempered only slightly by the fact that it was my hand, and we’d taken the picture just a minute earlier.”
“I hadn’t realized that my hand was quite so deep into the liquid. Amazingly, I barely felt the cold at all. My skin didn’t get hurt for the same reason that water droplets dance on a hot skillet. An insulating layer of steam forms almost instantly between the water and the metal, keeping the droplets relatively cool as they float for several seconds without actually touching the hot surface.”
Read more at PopSci (Thanks @moonylein and Tiffany T)
Heaps of Fossils From Evolutionary ‘Big Bang’ Discovered
“One of paleontology’s most revered fossil sites now has a baby brother. Scientists have discovered a group of astonishing fossils high in the Canadian Rockies, just 40 kilometers from the famous Burgess Shale location.
A paper describing the find appears in the September issue of Geology.
Since its discovery in 1909, the Burgess Shale has yielded many thousands of fossils dating to 505 million years ago — a period often called “evolution’s big bang,” when animals were exploding in diverse body plans. These soft-bodied critters scurried around on the sea floor, then were buried in mudslides and exquisitely preserved.
Burgess fossils appear in several outcrops, all within about 60 kilometers of Field, British Columbia, and all occurring in shale deposits of the Stephen Formation that are 270 to 370 meters thick. Now, a team led by paleontologist Jean-Bernard Caron of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto reports finding Burgess-like fossils in the valley of the Stanley Glacier in Kootenay National Park, where a much thinner part of the Stephen Formation that ranges from 16 to 160 meters thick is exposed.
“This new locality adds to our knowledge of the environments where these organisms lived and died and thus adds important context,” says Peter Allison, a geoscientist at Imperial College London.
About half of the animal groups found at Stanley Glacier, such as trilobites, are found at other Burgess sites in different abundances. But the creatures unearthed also include eight taxa previously unknown to science. They include an unnamed worm; Stanleycaris hirpex, a segmented shrimp-like critter known as an anomalocarid; and an arthropod with big eyes dangling on stalks from its head shield.
Until now, paleontologists had thought one reason the Burgess fossils were so well preserved was because they settled in thick deposits at the bottom of an ancient ocean protected by a submarine cliff. But the Stanley Glacier fossils weren’t formed in the presence of such a cliff, suggesting that creatures can be fossilized in amazing detail in other environments.
“We consider it likely that future exploration and study will continue to yield new taxa from the ‘thin’ Stephen Formation, which is exposed over a broader area regionally than the ‘thick’ Stephen Formation,” the researchers write.
New discoveries are still emerging from the classic Burgess localities. In May, after studying new Burgess fossils from one of the original sites, Caron and colleagues reported new details on a creature that may be one of the earliest known relatives of octopuses, squid and other cephalopods.”
Read more at Wired (Thanks @UKgnome)
Gentle stroll ‘can help boost intelligence’
“A gentle stroll several times a week not only boosts fitness levels – it also makes you brighter. New research has shown that walking “at one’s own pace” for 40 minutes, three times a week can improve intelligence. Scientists say moderate walking enhances connections between the brain’s circuits, combats a drop in brain function linked to ageing and even improves performance in reasoning tasks.
Psychologists at Illinois University found brain function levels among nearly 100 self-confessed couch potatoes improved dramatically after a year in which they walked a few times a week. All the volunteers, aged between 18 and 35 and 59 to 80, led a sedentary lifestyle before the study, with less than two bouts of physical activity of 30 minutes or more during the previous six months. Professor Art Kramer, who led the study published in the science journal Frontiers in Ageing Neuroscience, said:”Almost nothing in the brain gets done by one area – it’s more of a circuit. “These networks can become more or less connected. As we get older, they become less connected, so we were interested in the effects of fitness on connectivity of brain networks that show the most dysfunction with age.”
The team found that older adults who are more fit tend to have better connectivity in specific regions of the brain than their sedentary peers. Those with more brain network connections also tend to be better at planning, prioritising, strategising and multitasking. The new study used brain scans to determine whether aerobic activity increased connectivity in the brain’s networks. The researchers measured participants’ brain connectivity and performance on cognitive tasks at the beginning of the study, at six months and after a year of either walking or toning and stretching. At the end of the year, brain network connectivity was significantly improved in the brains of the older walkers, but not among those who did only stretching and toning exercises.”
Read more at The Telegraph (Thanks @XxLadyClaireXx)
QED: Question. Explore. Discover.
” ‘QED: Question. Explore. Discover.’ proudly announces 10 of the spectacular speakers who are taking to the stage in front of 500 skeptics and fans of science in The Piccadilly Hotel, Manchester (UK) on the 5th and 6th of February, 2011.
George Hrab
Eugenie Scott
Jon Ronson
Kat Akingbade
Bruce Hood
Wendy Grossman
Chris Atkins
Colin Wright
Simon Singh
Jim Al-Khalili
The above list is enough to sate the needs of any hungry rationalist, while the bar will take care of their thirst… but this newly established feature of the skeptical and science festival calendar has one more, unique feature to introduce to the thousands of people who are already keenly following what QED has to offer: The amazing price.
Standard: £99
Students: £75
Gala Dinner with Celebrity Special Guests: £45
QED is affordable by all, easily accessible from every part of the country by road, rail or air and, even with the cost at an incredibly low level, it will raise a significant sum for two amazing causes that are much in the minds of anyone with an interest in science, rationalism and skepticism: Sense About Science and the National Autism Society.
Tickets can be purchased from the QED website from:
http://www.qedcon.org/tickets/ ”
I want to spend a penny, not go to the shop: nurses to be taught euphemisms
“Norfolk hospital organises lessons for foreign nurses to avoid cultural misunderstandings with patients.
Foreign nurses are receiving a crash course in euphemism after bewildered patients expressing the wish to “spend a penny” found themselves being escorted to a hospital shop. Norfolk’s Queen Elizabeth hospital has organised special “adapting to life in Norfolk” sessions for Portuguese staff whose otherwise excellent English results in too-literal translations of everyday expressions. Patients, particularly the elderly, face being met with incomprehension when complaining of “feeling under the weather”, suffering “pin and needles” or experiencing problems with their “back passage”.
Local expressions such as “blar”, meaning to cry, and “mawther”, meaning “young woman”, are also likely to see mystified nurses flicking in vain through conventional phrasebooks. The distinct Norfolk brogue provides another linguistic obstacle for the recruits hired by the Queen Elizabeth Hospital King’s Lynn NHS trust. “One of the things people from overseas had difficulty with was our euphemisms such as ‘spend a penny’,” said a hospital spokesman. “In the past some of the new recruits from abroad, when patients used the expression, were taking people to the hospital shop.”
“They all speak exceptional English, but that doesn’t necessarily cover the type of English spoken in Norfolk. We have many different phrases and sayings in this part of the world. A lot of patients are elderly and use what can only be described as quaint phrases and descriptions, especially for body parts and common illnesses.” The hospital has organised two-hour induction courses in dialect, idiom and colloquialism, covering phrases such as “spick and span”, “higgledy-piggledy”, “la-di-dah” and “tickled pink”. Other useful terms on the agenda are “jim jams”, “a cuppa” and “elbow grease”. Nurses are being asked to write down any confusing phrases they hear on the wards so they can be discussed in follow-up meetings.”
Read more at The Guardian (Thanks @UKgnome)
9.2 Million Adults In The UK Have Never Been Online
“A whopping 9.2 million UK adults have never been online according to data released by the Office of National Statistics, out of a population of around 62 million or one out of every seven Britons.
The ONS figures show some pretty interesting trends; more than one million UK citizens have used the internet for the first time over the last 12 months, although the OAPs, low income earners and those without qualifications represent an overwhelming portion of those who never used the internet.
97 per cent of those with a degree have used the internet while 98 per cent of those earning over £41,600 have been connected to the web at least once.
More than 30 million UK adults use the internet every day with another eight million being regular internet users instead and nearly a third connecting to the internet though a mobile handset.
A spokesperson for the Office for National Statistics said that “Since 2006 we have seen a significant increase in the number of people using the Internet, with the number of adults accessing the Internet every day almost doubling to just over 30 million, though the UK is some way off from being completely online.”
Notably, 2.7 million people access the internet regularly though Wi-Fi hotspots commonly used at cafes, restaurants, libraries and other public places.”
Read more at IT Pro Portal (Thanks @XxLadyClaireXx)
