Advertising Science

I took this picture in Lisbon (Portugal) last month. There are several adds like this on buses and trams. Very nice indeed!

You can visit the web site at http://www.cienciaviva.pt

Remembering the Death Star

Was it all a galactic conspiracy?

They Might Be Giants - Science is Real

Technically, th e music is for kid, but you know...

Balloon to the Moon!

The non-profit Aeronautics and Cosmonautics Romanian Association (ARCA)is about to test a new way to send a probe to the Moon: using a balloon.

Their first prototype should be ready to launch in October. Watch a cool video below and go to Nature's Great Beyond blog to read the full story here.

Geomorphometry 2009

Last week we had a very good time at the Geomorphometry 2009 conference, held at the Zürich University (in Switzerland, you know).

Before the conference there were two workshops, one about working with SAGA, GRASS and R combined, hosted by Tom Hengl and me, and the other about reconciling geomorphometry and geomorphology in a field trip, hosted by Oliver Korup.

The workshops were great. In our case, there were 27 students, all very keen to learn. Those were two intense days, running command-line interface apps is not the easiest thing, specially if one comes from the point-and-click world of many applications. In the end, we all enjoyed the workshop, and learned a lot.


Students at the Workshop SAGA+GRASS+R

During the three following days, we had the conference itself. There were about 70 participants, from all the areas of science: geomorphology, geology, ecology, oceanography and more, even aerospace engineering!

Also, some very big names of geomorphometry were there like Ian Evans, Jo Wood and John Gallant.

You can find more information on the Geomorphometry website. There are some pictures of the people and the proceedings are also available.

One big decision was made to create a new scientific society, to gather all scientists working on this exciting field. The next edition is due to 2011, maybe in the USA. Meanwhile, register yourself on the website and keep updated with the latest news!

Geomorphometry 2009 - day 0 - travel

Just a quick post: the travel from Sao Paulo to Zurich went well, I could almost say it was really good, but a worker's strike in some airports in Portugal end in my luggage being lost... Will post more when I get a better connection (one that doesn't charge by the second).

Because we all love gadgets

Another excellent video from The Onion


Sony Releases New Stupid Piece Of Shit That Doesn't Fucking Work