George Dyson. Credit: edge.org

If you read about Big Data for very long, a quote from science historian George Dyson is sure to come up: "Big data is what happened when the cost of keeping information became less than the cost of throwing it away." 

That will be a platform to talk about the challenges, etc.

But there is a bigger problem that shows the challenges of Big Data - that isn't what Dyson said. But like with Einstein quotes about bees, in a Google world, where accuracy is measured by how often you are repeated and thus make it to the top of search engines, the Big Data problem is accuracy, not volume.

Birdsnap is an iPhone and web based app that uses many of the techniques of facial recognition software to identify 500 of the most common North American birds. The web based version of Birdsnap is actually very easy to use: upload your picture, click on the bird’s eye, click on the bird’s tail, enter your location along with the date the picture was taken, and click submit. I’ll demonstrate how to use Birdsnap even though it was unable to identify the bird I submitted.

Last Wednesday I played golf at South Grove Golf course and my cousin snapped the following picture near the 9th hole tee:

Much of what we know about Öetzi - the 'Tyrolean Iceman’ – such as what he looked like and that he suffered from lactose intolerance, stems from a tiny bone sample which allowed the decoding of his genetic make-up.

A team of scientists have examined the part of the sample consisting of non-human DNA. In the DNA mixture, they detected a sizeable presence of a particular bacterium: Treponema denticola, an opportunistic pathogen involved in the development of periodontitis. The finding supports the computer tomography based diagnosis that the Iceman suffered from periodontitis.

Liquid water is essential for almost every biological process so understanding liquid water is crucial for understanding biology - including some of its exceptional behavior.  

According to classical understanding, when water contacts other water, it will spread out and finally both mix together, i.e., water always completely wets water due to the hydrogen bonds formed among water molecules.

Taking B vitamins doesn't slow mental decline nor will it prevent Alzheimer's disease, according to clinical trial data involving 22,000 people.

High levels in the blood of a compound called homocysteine have been found in people with Alzheimer's disease, and people with higher levels of homocysteine have been shown to be at increased risk of Alzheimer's disease.

Taking folic acid and vitamin B-12 are known to lower levels of homocysteine in the body, so this gave rise to the 'homocysteine hypothesis' that taking B vitamins could reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease.

Lithium-ion batteries could benefit from a theoretical model created at Rice University and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory that predicts how carbon components will perform.

The model is based on intrinsic characteristics of materials used as battery electrodes. These include limitations on quantum capacitance (the ability of the material to absorb charge) and the material's absolute Fermi level, which determines how many lithium ions may bond to the electrodes.

Until a week before basketball player LeBron James returned to the NBA team that drafted him as a rookie, the Cleveland Cavaliers, owner Dan Gilbert had a scathing letter on his website criticizing James. Many fans had thrown out his jerseys.

Suddenly, after so much acrimony, James returned him, two championships and four playoff runs to his credit. What happened? Gilbert caught the boomerang. Maybe you should also.

According to two papers dealing with organizational behavior and human resources management, organizations of all types are beginning to recognize and embrace the value of recruiting and welcoming back former employees. The days when 'you are dead to me' was the norm after someone leaves might be gone.

Using shotgun metagenomics to sequence DNA from a calcified nodule in the pelvic region of a 700-year-old middle-aged male skeleton excavated from the settlement of Geridu in Sardinia, European researchers have recovered a genome of the bacterium Brucella melitensis.

While older people wonder if modern connectivity behavior is leading to a lack of coherent thinking, they tend to forget previous generations worried over that too - because the next to come along couldn't use a slide rule.

A new study has found that, in younger workers, short breaks that include non-work browsing - Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing (WILB) - can potentially improve attention to work tasks.

Concentration during workplace tasks is of the upmost importance; however, it declines over time as mental resources are expended, with cited research from the study finding that subjects begin to lose concentration after 5 to 15 minutes before needing a break.

A new study suggests that experiencing stressful events the day before eating a single high-fat meal can slow metabolism in women.

Researchers questioned study participants about the previous day's stressors before giving them a meal consisting of 930 calories and 60 grams of fat. The scientists then measured their metabolic rate, how long it took the women to burn calories and fat, and took measures of blood sugar, triglycerides, insulin and the stress hormone cortisol.

On average, the women in the study who reported one or more stressors during the previous 24 hours burned 104 fewer calories than nonstressed women in the seven hours after eating the high-fat meal – a difference that could result in weight gain of almost 11 pounds in one year.