Kitchen Budapest: Hungary's MIT Media Lab

During my vacation in Budapest, I visited Kitchen Budapest, a bunch of cool, creative people doing art, inventing new technology and services. For example, combine a bunch of motion sensitive cellphones, a Mac, write some software and you have yourself a social mobile jamming session coming up. Kitchen Budapest and MobilJAM: I wish you luck.

Salaries in Hedge Funds

Rents are high in New York, but it seems that one group of people can make ends meet anyway.

At funds that manage $1 billion to $3 billion, people with just a few years of finance experience will make $337,000 this year, Mr. Zoia says, and those with five to nine years of experience will average $830,000, up 6 percent from last year. These estimates include analysts and researchers but not portfolio traders, who can make much more because they sometimes share in profits.

New York Times

Perception: Look at the Red Dots

Here is an exercise to think about visual perception.

1. Open the visual applet
   
2. Study the movement of the red dots

Now look at the explanation.

(Thank you, Illusion Forum)

Europeans Support The Common Agricultural Policy

EU's Common Agricultural Policy hurts the third world, but EU's population belive the current level of support is reasonable. In Eurobarometer's "Europeans, Agriculture and the Common Agricultural Policy" (2006) p. 22:

The evaluated importance of agriculture is reflected in evaluations of the EU budget for agriculture and rural development. Here more respondents believe the current share of the total EU budget given over to agriculture and rural development is sufficient (45%) compared to those who think it is either too high (16%) or too low (15%).

Don't expect real change in this area.

Why Have Sex? - About Evolution

Here is a demonstration of a simple evolutionary model driven by selection and mutation, no sex. If a creature is killed, it is replaced by a slightly mutated version of its killer. Created by Jeffrey S. Rosenthal, University of Toronto.

Evolution Applet

Marbled crayfish, an asexual species of crayfish, are doing very well around Madagascar as discovered by Dr. Julia Jones. Reproduction without sex can be more efficient in the short term, while endangering the species in the long term (from Economist ).

Early this year, biologists working in Madagascar were shocked to discover that Procambarus 'Marmorkrebs', the world's only known parthenogenetic decapod, had become established in brick pits and rice fields around the capital. I am working with colleagues at the University of Antananarivo (Jeanne Rasamy and Olga Ravoahangimalala) carrying out preliminary research on the rate of spread, the level of risk to biodiversity and agriculture and investigating possible ways of controlling the invasion.

Dr. Julia Jones

In 2005, Matthew Goddard from University of Auckland could report how his team had found evidence that sex speeds up evolution. They experimented with a sexual and asexual version of otherwise identical strains of yeast, monitoring their growth and survival across harsh and benign environments. It turned out that sex did not matter in benign environments, while the sexual strain did much better in the harsh environment.

National Geographic - Nature