Adam's Blogroll: click through to the author's blog
Different species of birds make different sounds. However, the sounds are so quick and compressed that it can be tough to pick out what is what. So Kyle McDonald, Manny Tan, and Yotam Mann created a “fingerprint” for each bird song and used machine learning to classify. Through the visual browser, you can play sounds and search for bird types. Similar sounds are closer to each other.
Tags: birds, Google, machine learning, nature
Using a long-exposure photography technique, Xavi Bou captured bird flight patterns in his series Ornitographies.
Unlike other motion analysis which preceded it, Ornitographies moves away from the scientific approach of chronophotography used by photographers like Eadweard Muybridge and Etienne-Jules Marey.
The approach used by Xavi Bou to portray the scene is not invasive; moreover, it rejects the distant study, resulting in organic form images that stimulate the imagination.
Tags: long-exposure, nature, photography
Posted by in Data Art, long-exposure, nature, photography
Plants and animals interact with each other to stay alive, which in turn forms complex systems. I think the Lion King covers the system simplistically in song-form at the beginning of the movie, but that doesn't cut it when trying to predict the effects of things like climate. Jianxi Gao, Baruch Barzel, and Albert-László Barabási study the complexities of nature's network in greater detail.
Mauro Martino helps explain the work in this video for Nature. [Thanks, Mauro]
Tags: environment, nature, video
Posted by in environment, nature, Network Visualization, video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqdOkXQngw8
There are a lot of trees on this planet. But how many trees there actually are is still kind of fuzzy, because the estimates are based on satellite imagery. It's hard to gauge density. Research by T. W. Crowther et al., recently published in Nature, used on-the-ground sampling to estimate more accurately.
The global extent and distribution of forest trees is central to our understanding of the terrestrial biosphere. We provide the first spatially continuous map of forest tree density at a global scale. This map reveals that the global number of trees is approximately 3.04 trillion, an order of magnitude higher than the previous estimate. Of these trees, approximately 1.39 trillion exist in tropical and subtropical forests, with 0.74 trillion in boreal regions and 0.61 trillion in temperate regions.
Tags: environment, nature, trees
Posted by in environment, maps, nature, trees
In the department of comparing large numbers to objects and situations that are slightly more relatable, this graphic from Nature explores citations in research.
The bar on the left shows the height of a theoretical stack of papers that represents the first page of every paper cataloged in Web of Science. It would almost reach the height of Mount Kilimanjaro. The breakout stack is a zoomed in view of the 14,351 paper pages with at least 1,000 citations, and finally, the magnified orange section represents the top 100 papers. Also a flying bug.
Posted by in Infographics, nature, Research, scale
Nature highlights the research of R. Brent Tully et al, which defines a supercluster called Laniakea. A supercluster is like a network of galaxies, and according to this work, the Milky Way is at the edge of this one.
From the abstract:
Here we report a map of structure made using a catalogue of peculiar velocities. We find locations where peculiar velocity flows diverge, as water does at watershed divides, and we trace the surface of divergent points that surrounds us. Within the volume enclosed by this surface, the motions of galaxies are inward after removal of the mean cosmic expansion and long range flows. We define a supercluster to be the volume within such a surface, and so we are defining the extent of our home supercluster, which we call Laniakea.
See the full paper here [pdf].
Tags: Milky Way, nature, supercluster
Posted by in Mapping, Milky Way, nature, supercluster