Sciencesque has noticed it first: T shirts at Biomed Central for sale. Do your really want that shirt?
Tag Archives: science
Face recognition, face value
With a new child, people are always asking if the baby looks like the father or the mother – probably a prehistoric social reflex to confirm that this is your offspring that you are caring about.
Face recognition clearly is a science of its own – a lot of heuristics and Bayesian computing – more at face-rec.org – and even a big business if you think of automatic passport control or age determination for goods that are only allowed for adults.
Face recognition works quite robust as I found in the advanced online demo at betaface.com. A new browser plugin from polar rose will even allows to annotate web pictures – Orwell meets Flickr.
Science elite in Germany
Three German universities that have been elected into an excellence cluster. This oracle isn´t too bad for me ;-) as I have been raised close to the first and teached at both other universities.
Yes, I agree, there are some differences but – as science is done mainly by individuals or at least local teams – the differences are not so large and this election (for whatever criteria) doesn’t have so much meaning.
I believe, however, there will be some self-fulfilling prophecy, as on the longterm run these Universities will attract more excellent people – a point being missed in the current discussion. Yea, yea.
Addendum
Another 8 universitites enter the club: HU Berlin, FU Berlin, Göttingen, Freiburg, Heidelberg, Konstanz, Aachen and Bochum.
Blog together
Just read the entry of Janet D. Stemwedel about the 2007 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference, a “free, open and public event for scientists, educators, students, journalists, bloggers and anyone interested in discussing science communication, education and literacy on the Web.” Do not miss her tag “Shameless self-promotion” ;-) Three editors from The Lancet will take up to 49 registrants. Who can give me a free ride from Munich (bonus miles welcome)?