News, Science

Happy Darwin day !

As Wikipedia says:

Darwin Day is a recently instituted celebration intended to commemorate the anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin on February 12, 1809. The day is used to highlight Darwin’s contribution to science and to promote science in general.

Today is the bicentenary of Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of the On the Origin of Species. So, take some time to read.

“I love fools experiments.
I am always making them.“

charles-darwin-cropped-1258

Charles R. Darwin (b. 1809 – † 1882)

by Christian S. Perone
Python

Python: acessing near real-time MODIS images and fire data from NASA’s Aqua and Terra satellites

From Modis Rapid Response System site:

The MODIS Rapid Response System was developed to provide daily satellite images of the Earth’s landmasses in near real time. True-color, photo-like imagery and false-color imagery are available within a few hours of being collected, making the system a valuable resource (…).
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) flies onboard NASA’s Aqua and Terra satellites as part of the NASA-centered international Earth Observing System. Both satellites orbit the Earth from pole to pole, seeing most of the globe every day. Onboard Terra, MODIS sees the Earth during the morning, while Aqua MODIS orbits the Earth in the afternoon.

One thing that a few people know is that everyone can have access to a near real-time moderate resolution images from two NASA satellites (Aqua and Terra) which orbits the earth from pole to pole every day and captures images and data like thermal anomalies from the most part of the globe.

In this post, I’ll show how to get and plot those imagery and data to a map using Python and Matplotlib + Basemap toolkit.

The Aqua and Terra orbits

The "Terra" orbit

(more…)

by Christian S. Perone
Article, Philosophy

Considerações sobre o determinismo e livre-arbítrio para uma futura e distante ciência

Decidi escrever este post em português para evitar mal interpretações em algumas pequenas considerações sobre o determinismo e livre-arbítrio.

Bom, como maioria deve saber, o determinismo é a doutrina/pensamento que afirma que todos acontecimentos [efeito]  (inclusive nossas atitudes, escolhas, idéias) sejam causados por acontecimentos anteriores [causa]. Ela afirma que determinado acontecimento não poderia deixar de acontecer, visto que foi impulsionado por uma causa anterior, como por exemplo, uma esfera que for jogada para cima, ela irá subir e depois cair por efeito da gravidade, a causa da subida foi a força utilizada para jogá-la no ar e a causa da queda é a gravidade. Desta forma, o determinismo vê o universo interconectado por relações de causa e efeito.

(more…)

by Christian S. Perone
Genetic Algorithms, Pyevolve, Python

Pyevolve: work on the distributed Genetic Algorithm support

I’m currently working on the distributed GA support for the Pyevolve framework, the approach I’m using to network communication (individuals migration) is the hightweigh and unreliable UDP protocol, due it’s performance (for lan/wan) and broadcasting compatibility.

The distributed GA will have options to create the logical migration topology for the connected nodes (islands of evolution), migration schemes, migration rates and other parameters.

by Christian S. Perone
Genetic Algorithms, News, Science

A beautiful example of cooperation between theory and experiment, the new Boron form

The NY Times has a nice article talking about the discovery of a new Boron form using Genetic Algorithms:

Now researchers led by Dr. Oganov have added to the actual discoveries. They have found a form of boron that is nearly as hard as diamond.

This discovery even illustrates the power of the idea of evolution, using a so-called genetic algorithm to decipher the structure of the new boron crystal.

“This work is a beautiful example of cooperation between theory and experiment,” said Aitor Bergara, a physicist at the University of the Basque Country in Spain. Dr. Bergara was not involved with the research, which was published online by the journal Nature.

Read the full article.

by Christian S. Perone