If you ever wondered how many books are out there, now you can get an "educated guess" from Google. After reading the whole post it turns out that it was not a simple sum, but rather a sophisticated algorithm what they had to use.
Read the post if you are interested in details, if not, I give you the short answer:
The "educated guess" mentioned above is 129,864,880 books.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Thursday, August 26, 2010
World Congress on Genetics full papers online
Beginning of August I was in Germany on the 9th World Congress on Genetics Applied to Livestock Production. It was a great event with excellent organization. If you don't know the event, I can describe it briefly as the Olympic Games of animal breeders. It is organized every 4 years with participants from all over the World.
The only thing is that after some time it is very hard to find the full papers from the congress. Partly from this reason, and partly because I was asked by our Erasmus Mundus - Animal Breeding and Genetics students, I put the full CD online. Also I put up the previous two from France 2002 and Brazil 2006. These are not reachable on their original websites, so if you need them, just click the link.
Happy downloading! :)
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Reboot
In the past several days I was thinking about my blogging "career". I like the idea of having a blog, a personal space for my thoughts. But obviously I can't post as many times as I initially thought.
To clarify this point: At the beginning (a few months ago) I was starting this blog to write extensive posts about the topics of my interest, which are research (in particular in developing countries), new media and the education of the context of the previous two. I wanted to write long posts to disseminate good ideas and adding mine.
The main problem is time - the usual excuse. I was surprised how long it takes me to write a longer post. Even when I find some time to sit down and write, it takes me around 2 hours to put everything together. This most likely because I want to work out every aspect of the formatting/language. The posts evolve during the writing, which takes time of course. The best example is this post. I wanted to write 5 sentences, and look where am I now...
Anyway: I am starting with the blog again. If for nothing else it is a good writing practice (+ I hope it will be of use in the future somehow).
To clarify this point: At the beginning (a few months ago) I was starting this blog to write extensive posts about the topics of my interest, which are research (in particular in developing countries), new media and the education of the context of the previous two. I wanted to write long posts to disseminate good ideas and adding mine.
The main problem is time - the usual excuse. I was surprised how long it takes me to write a longer post. Even when I find some time to sit down and write, it takes me around 2 hours to put everything together. This most likely because I want to work out every aspect of the formatting/language. The posts evolve during the writing, which takes time of course. The best example is this post. I wanted to write 5 sentences, and look where am I now...
Anyway: I am starting with the blog again. If for nothing else it is a good writing practice (+ I hope it will be of use in the future somehow).
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Back to the Ground
After a longer time I am back to my blogger keyboard writing down some things that were in my head for a longer time. Now it is time to "digitalize" them...
There was an event organized by the Centre of Development Research called Soil health: Pathways to well-being in developing countries. It was held on 16th June, the advent of the World Day to combat desertification. This time I knew that I want to write down my thoughts to this blog, so I took a paper to make some more sophisticated notes, not to end up like during the waste management presentation.
This time the discussion was somewhat closer to my field of animal breeding, but the main focus was on the soil. Still, it was interesting to hear some new things. The first new info I got right with the second sentence of the opening speech. This was that desertification is not connected to expansion of existing deserts. For me the meaning was exactly this: desertification = desert expansion. Instead of "my" definition desertification means degradation of soil because of human acivities such as overexploitation, overgrazing, an inappropriate use, as well as climate change.
You can get a crash course on the meaning of inappropriate use by watching the video Killing Fields - the battle to feed factory farms. These issues (not only in South America) are of big importance. Saying it shortly: approx. 25% of Worlds surface is endangered by desertification, directly affecting lives of cca. 200 million people.
There was also a link to the International Year of Biodiversity. As it was pointed out during the discussion the soil "produces" and "sustains" biodiversity. Thinking about it this way, it is true... The whole agriculture is connected to the soil. For the plants it is obvious, but also the ruminants relying on pastures and the monogastric animals on the feed that was produced there. Also carnivores are connected to it through their prey. Without soil there are no herbivores, no carnivores, no people...
The second part of the discussion event resulted into a more general discussion about development research and the importance of the participatory approach with local people.
If you have doubts what development research means then I have two (self made) definitions for you.
The first one is the plain explanation: Research done in developing countries on almost any issue.
The second explanation is more complicated, I will illustrate it with a methaphor. I like to think about development research as a big puzzle game containing social sciences, water and waste management, all possible branches of agriculture and some more things I am not aware of. Now you have this big puzzle... You don't know how many pieces are in total or how or where to find them. And the goal is it put the picture together.
There are people who are committed for the search. As for me, I believe I have found on more piece during that evening.
There was an event organized by the Centre of Development Research called Soil health: Pathways to well-being in developing countries. It was held on 16th June, the advent of the World Day to combat desertification. This time I knew that I want to write down my thoughts to this blog, so I took a paper to make some more sophisticated notes, not to end up like during the waste management presentation.This time the discussion was somewhat closer to my field of animal breeding, but the main focus was on the soil. Still, it was interesting to hear some new things. The first new info I got right with the second sentence of the opening speech. This was that desertification is not connected to expansion of existing deserts. For me the meaning was exactly this: desertification = desert expansion. Instead of "my" definition desertification means degradation of soil because of human acivities such as overexploitation, overgrazing, an inappropriate use, as well as climate change.
You can get a crash course on the meaning of inappropriate use by watching the video Killing Fields - the battle to feed factory farms. These issues (not only in South America) are of big importance. Saying it shortly: approx. 25% of Worlds surface is endangered by desertification, directly affecting lives of cca. 200 million people.
There was also a link to the International Year of Biodiversity. As it was pointed out during the discussion the soil "produces" and "sustains" biodiversity. Thinking about it this way, it is true... The whole agriculture is connected to the soil. For the plants it is obvious, but also the ruminants relying on pastures and the monogastric animals on the feed that was produced there. Also carnivores are connected to it through their prey. Without soil there are no herbivores, no carnivores, no people...
The second part of the discussion event resulted into a more general discussion about development research and the importance of the participatory approach with local people.
If you have doubts what development research means then I have two (self made) definitions for you.
The first one is the plain explanation: Research done in developing countries on almost any issue.
The second explanation is more complicated, I will illustrate it with a methaphor. I like to think about development research as a big puzzle game containing social sciences, water and waste management, all possible branches of agriculture and some more things I am not aware of. Now you have this big puzzle... You don't know how many pieces are in total or how or where to find them. And the goal is it put the picture together.
There are people who are committed for the search. As for me, I believe I have found on more piece during that evening.
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