Communications Media

“Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?” Zoologist Konrad Lorenz once asked in postulating the “butterfly effect,” the idea that the flapping of fragile wings could start a chain reaction in the atmosphere. In today’s world of the Internet the question might be rephrased: Can a single e-mail from Brazil set off a torrent of action in Texas?

Sociologists postulate that what a few influential leaders think and say can spread and grow and bring abo

The world is full of complicated networks that scientists would like to better understand—human social systems, for example, or food webs in nature. But discerning patterns of organization in such vast, complex systems is no easy task.

“The structure of those networks can tell you quite a lot about how the systems work, but they’re far too big to analyze by just putting dots on a piece of paper and drawing lines to connect them,” said Mark Newman, an assistant professor of physics an

The ability to develop a form of communication that becomes an actual language is apparently innate, new University of Chicago research on the use of gestures among deaf children and experiments with adults shows.

Psychologist Susan Goldin-Meadow’s work with adults and children also shows which features of language seem to come more easily, and are therefore resilient, such as using order to convey who does what to whom. Her research also shows which characteristics are more difficult t

You should never use a pen, pencil or hard-tip marker to write on your CDs

That is among several recommendations made by computer scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), who sliced, diced and baked CDs and DVDs to see how long the digital information would survive.

Most CDs and DVDs will last 30 years or more if handled with care, but many factors can slash their longevity. Direct exposure to sunlight can do a great deal of damage both from

For his PhD thesis, the engineer, Jorge Teniente Vallinas, has developed a method for designing antennas used in satellites such as Hispasat. The PhD, at the Public University of Navarre, was awarded the second prize in the latest edition of the Rosina Ribalta Awards from the Epson Ibérica Foundation for the best PhD thesis in the field of Information and Communications Technology.

The aims of this doctoral thesis were, on the one hand, to establish the bases for the design of Gaussian prof

ESA PR 10-2004. A pioneering demonstration of communications between the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter and NASA’s Mars exploration rover, Spirit, has succeeded.

On 6 February, while Mars Express was flying over the area that Spirit is examining, the orbiter transferred commands from Earth to the rover and relayed data from the rover back to Earth.

“This was the first in-orbit communication between ESA and NASA spacecraft, and we have also created the first