Browsery QE523.T285 B4413 2019

All you poetry lovers, check out this wonderful documentary that will be airing on the CBC website March 25th! In this CBC Radio One Special Program, Where Have All the Poets Gone? Sook-Yin Lee gives “a surprising look at the conditions that inspire Canadians to express themselves through poetry.” Here’s a blurb about the documentary: […]

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The Left emerged out of the chaos and violence that fractured Bengal; as it dissipates, will the vacuum be filled by violence? It is tempting to see the immediate future as a mirror image, with variations, of the 1960s.

Barker Library - QB638.8.W35 2019

Dewey Library - QD95.E554 2019

Consejos de cristianos en la “Antioquía de Asia” sobre cómo su congregación puede sobrevivir (y prosperar) en medio del brote de COVID-19.

Online News Editor Catherine Matacic shares stories on how earthquakes may trigger volcanic eruptions, growing obesity in China’s children, and turning salty water sweet on the cheap.   Lauren Cohen joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the rise of patent trolls in the United States and a proposal for cutting back on their sizable profits.     [Image: © Alberto Garcia/Corbis]

This week, walk like an elephant—very far, with seeds in your guts, Cassini’s mission to Saturn wraps up with news on the habitability of its icy moon Enceladus, and how our shoes manage to untie themselves with Online News Editor David Grimm. Aylin Caliskan joins Sarah Crespi to discuss how biases in our writing may be perpetuated by the machines that learn from them. Listen to previous podcasts. Download the show transcript. Transcripts courtesy of Scribie.com. [Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

When Indonesia’s Mount Toba blew its top some 74,000 years ago, an apocalyptic scenario ensued: Tons of ash and debris entered the atmosphere, coating the planet in ash for 2 weeks straight and sending global temperatures plummeting. Despite the worldwide destruction, humans survived. Sarah Crespi talks with Online News Editor Catherine Matacic about how life after Toba was even possible—were humans decimated, or did they rally in the face of a suddenly extra hostile planet? Next, Julia Buck of the University of California, Santa Barbara, joins Sarah to discuss her Science commentary piece on landscapes of disgust. You may have heard of a landscape of fear—how a predator can influence an ecosystem not just by eating its prey, but also by introducing fear into the system, changing the behavior of many organisms. Buck and colleagues write about how disgust can operate in a similar way: Animals protect themselves from parasites and infection by avoiding disgusting things such as dead animals of the same species or those with disease. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Emma Forsber/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Several thousand years ago the volcano under Santorini in Greece—known as Thera—erupted in a tremendous explosion, dusting the nearby Mediterranean civilizations of Crete and Egypt in a layer of white ash. This geological marker could be used to tie together many ancient historical events, but the estimated date could be off by a century. Contributing Correspondent Lizzie Wade joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about a new study that used tree rings to calibrate radiocarbon readings—and get closer to pinning down a date. The findings also suggest that scientists may need to change their standard radiocarbon dating calibration curve. Sarah also talks to Tony Belpaeme of Ghent University in Belgium and Plymouth University in the United Kingdom about his Science Robotics paper that explored whether people are susceptible to peer pressure from robots. Using a classic psychological measure of peer influence, the team found that kids from ages 7 to 9 occasionally gave in to social pressure from robot peers, but adults did not. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy, with help from Meagan Cantwell. Download a transcript of this episode (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Softbank Robotics; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

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Dewey Library - SB387.7.F73 2019

Sponsors

• Datadog  

• Sentry use code “devchat” for 2 months free

Panel

• Aimee Knight

• AJ O’Neal

• Charles Max Wood

With Special Guest: Rene Rubalcava

Episode Summary

Rene is a software developer for ESRI and works in spatial and mapping software. ESRI has been around since 1969 and has seen their work explode since they shifted to providing address and location services. Rene talks about how he thinks about location and mapping when building software around it and things that he has to approach in unique ways. The panel discusses some of their past experiences with location software. Some of the most difficult aspects of this software is changing time zones for data and actually mapping the Earth, since it is not flat nor a perfect sphere. Rene talks about the different models used for mapping the Earth.

Most mapping systems use the same algorithm as Google maps, so Rene talks about some of the specific features of ArcGIS, including the ability to finding a point within a polygon. Rene talks about what routing is, its importance, and how it is being optimized with ArcGIS, such as being able to add private streets into a regular street network.

The panel discusses how the prevalence of smartphones has changed mapping and GPS and some of their concerns with privacy and location mapping. One thing ESRI is very careful about is not storing private information. Rene talks about the kinds of things he has seen people doing with the mapping and location data provided by ArcGIS, including a Smart Mapping feature for developers, mapping planets, indoor routing, and 3D models. 

Links

• Webricate 

• Esri

• ArcGIS

Follow DevChat on Facebook and Twitter

Picks

Rene Rubalcava:

• Old Man’s War series

• Always Be My Maybe

• Rene’s website

AJ O’Neal:

• INTL

• Colorful

• Time zones in Postgress

• Time zones in JavaScript

Aimee Knight:

• Advice to Less Experienced Developers

Charles Max Wood:

• Heber Half Marathon

• Netlify CMS

• Villainous

• Firefox

The new book targets IT professionals and helps them get projects back on track using proven, real-world project management tools and techniques. Readers learn how to make an immediate impact on IT projects.