March 2017 Media Thread

You don't know what newtonian means, do you?

In this issue of ' Pteridologist' (pdf warning), there are two short communications (pp. 12-15) on the difficulties of identifying British species of Dryopteris (male ferns) and Polypodium, with a note on the inconstancy of morphological features of plants in the field. (I mean, okay, some species hybridize, but what the heck does it mean when a probably hybride plant has a frond or two looking just like one of the parents? somatical mutations?..)

'Pteridologist' as a whole is a 'nice' magazine - easy language, cultural/biogeographical/anatomical forkfuls, lots of photoes. Enjoy!

Singing above the chorus: cooperative Princess cichlid fish (Neolamprologus pulcher) has high pitch - teleost fishes communicate; they might use sound for it; proving it is difficult, because it's difficult to study their hearing.

On the Origin of Deep Learning

https://arxiv.org/abs/1702.07800

"This paper is a review of the evolutionary history of deep learning models. It covers from the genesis of neural networks when associationism modeling of the brain is studied, to the models that dominate the last decade of research in deep learning like convolutional neural networks, deep belief networks, and recurrent neural networks, and extends to popular recent models like variational autoencoder and generative adversarial nets."

Deep Forest: Towards An Alternative to Deep Neural Networks

https://arxiv.org/abs/1702.08835#

"The training process of gcForest is efficient and scalable. In our experiments its training time running on a PC is comparable to that of deep neural networks running with GPU facilities, and the efficiency advantage may be more apparent because gcForest is naturally apt to parallel implementation. Furthermore, in contrast to deep neural networks which require large-scale training data, gcForest can work well even when there are only small-scale training data. Moreover, as a tree-based approach, gcForest should be easier for theoretical analysis than deep neural networks."

Website of an experimental camera made with 32.000 drinking straws and photosensitive paper. Gives a 1:1 picture of what it "sees", little depth of picture; I keep thinking that it ought to be used for research in some way, but so far haven't an exact idea.

A New Year Song about the Hirsch Index, on the joy of reciprocal citing (funnier if you know Russian, but should be clear enough even if you don't. Unfortunately, no subtitles. Ends with 'Happy New Year! Happy New Hirsch! I'm off to write an article.')

http://archiveofourown.org/works/10343850/chapters/22859958

Inspired by HPMOR. After his wife died in a carriage crash, George Joestar remarried himself to a bright young author hiding her works under a pen name, and their son grew up with a taste for literature and the strength of mind necessary for a Stand. Then came his research on the Stone Mask, and a world of intriguing new possibilities to exploit.

Interest Check - HPMOR inspired me to try and write a Rational fanfic. I've decided to rationalize Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. Where should I publish this work?

(In Russian) Colleagues - a fic about Captain Peter Blood who gets to meet Dr. Hans Sloane during the latter's survey of Jamaican flora. They discuss fashion! shooting! racial differences! botanical nomenclature! international scientific correspondence! and other things! And then, of course, go on to save a town from dreadful French pirates and have an awkward moment of Blood being too famous for his own good. Outstandingly well-written, for a piece of fanfiction.

Robert Dick, baker of Thurso, geologist and botanist (the Internet Archive page). Abouth the book:

'This man, a baker who started work around 3 am would set off around 7 am and walked fantastic distances to see a small fern before returning home in time to start work again at 3 am. In another letter he says: 'I got home around 3 am Wednesday morning having walked with little halt, for about twenty four hours' - T. Munyard, 'Pteridologist' v. 4 (2), 2003. p. 41

Me and my cohost are starting a podcast series read-through of the web serial Worm. So far it's our most popular feature ... by a factor of ten or so.

Even if you've never read manga before I recommend giving A Promised Neverland a try.It's ongoing and I have a feeling most people here would like it.

https://www.gwern.net/newsletter/2017/02

Time for media thread to become less frequent than monthly?

https://protokol2020.wordpress.com/2017/03/08/europeans/