Silver was invented about 5900 years ago.  Oldest silver coins were found in the Aegean Sea Islands and Aegean part of Anatolia, Turkey.  The Lydians are accepted as the inventors of money and they were using silver along with gold for printing coins.

1847 is accepted to be a milestone for the silver industry.  In this year, William Roger, Asa Roger and Simeon Roger successfully produced silver articles such as forks and spoons which opened a new era in silver production.

Interestingly, there are very few mine ores that contain silver as the main value.  Silver is almost always a “by product” in the extraction of other products.  About 75% of silver extraction is produced from the remainings of lead, zinc and copper ores.  About 25% of the total silver production in the world is from the ores which are mined only for the silver values.

For a more detailed article about this topic please visit the article of Mr. Thakur.

Cartoons are supposedly funny – They can tell you what you couldn’t do in “normal” way – I.e. You can’t say that someone is fat (well, you can, but it would offend that person or anybody overheard you.) In cartoon, you can depict someone fat as, well, fat (or very fat); you can also depict someone with crooked nose as a character who has a very large and crooked nose.

A knol by Professor Claes Johnson contains a great collection of cartoons that tell the truth about scientists and science.

Here’s one example taken from the knol:

The above is the cartoon by Gary Larson (“The Far Side”) – It’s hilarious is a smart way because it tells truths about science, which scientists are not allowed to express themselves (but they can in the form of cartoon.)

For more smart cartoons about science and scientists, please visit the knol.

To cut the chase of the bad and the ugly of Software Engineering books, here’s a very, very useful knol written by Jurgen Appelo, that list 100 best Software Engineering books.

To highlight from the 100-Software-Engineering-books list, here’s the Top 10 from the list:

1. Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction (2nd edition), by Steve McConnell.
2. Head First Design Patterns, by Elisabeth Freeman, etc.
3. Rapid Development, by Steve McConnell.
4. Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software (Addison-Wesley Professional Computing Series), by Erich Gamma.
5. Applied Cryptography: Protocols, Algorithms, and Source Code in C (2nd Edition), by Bruce Schneier.
6. Agile Software Development, Principles, Patterns, and Practices (Alan Apt Series), by Robert C. Martin.
7. Joel on Software: And on Diverse and Occasionally Related Matters That Will Prove of Interest to Software Developers, Designers, and Managers, and to Those Who, Whether by Good Fortune or Ill Luck, Work with Them in Some Capacity, by Joel Spolsky.
8. Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams (Second Edition), by Tom DeMarco, Timothy Lister.
9. The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition (2nd Edition), by Frederick P. Brooks.
10. Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code (Addison-Wesley Object Technology Series), by Martin Fowler.

To read the full list of Top 100 Software Engineering books, including how Juergen determine the books’ position in the Top 100 List, please visit Jurgen’s knol.

According to a knol written by Don Moyer, patent, on certain cases, can bring science ‘to life’ and offer benefits to promote the general welfare.

From the eyes of a patent agent, he explained that there are two weights to balance:

In one hand, patent can help research organisations, such as research universities, to get royalty income to support the university and push inventions further, faster.

In the other hand, the patented research tools and materials can increase cost and limit research.

How to balance?

The basic rule of thumbs, according to Don Moyer, is this:

Patents help businesses bring inventions that can improve and enhance health, education and research to the market – This good economic and moral sense is encouraged and Don Moyer, as a patent agent, even give discount fees for such inventions.

However, patent rights used by big corporations to drive revenue and profit beyond what is needed to bring the product to the market are not favored, as they will only drive costs up, hence retarding education, health and research, and the overall progress of science.

An excellent knol about the Theory of Knowledge by Leland Beaumont explains how the theory of knowledge provides answers to the important questions:

“How do you know?”, “How do you know?”, and “How do you know?”

Mr. Leland explained that there are several information sources that we normally acquire information from: evidence, experts, authority, estimates/forecasts, scientific methods, etc. – the sources are almost unlimited, in such a way that you can believe which knowledge items you want to believe.

The theory of knowledge, according to Mr. Leland’s knol, can guide us in deciding what to believe, what to ignore, what to question, and what we don’t know. It separates well-founded beliefs from assumptions, rumors, and myths.

For a more elaborative explanation, please visit his knol.

According to the knol by Guy Dickinson, the answer is yes.

Guy examined blogs from an educational perspective, as follow:

1. Research: Blogs act as a self-directed research, and the resulting knowledge can be utilised in a flexible and simple way.
2. Taxonomies: Blogs help bloggers to categorising their research efficiently and quickly.
3. Developing domain knowledge: Aggregating relevant knowledge will enhance educational development.
4. Recognising relationships within disparate data: Searching and relating data.
5. Collaborative learning: The commenting system of blogs creates a learning community.

Due to the blogs’ characteristics and structures, Guy concluded that blogs can aid us to learn things better and faster, as well as enhancing expertise:

1. The technical and social nature of weblogs enables them to be used in a number of pedagogically useful ways.
2. The technical infrastructure of weblogs assists knowledge gathering with the creation of taxonomies and the automatic display of domain knowledge from other websites.
3. weblogs also accelerate the development of expertise by assisting expert behaviour such as inferring previously unseen relationships between information and facilitating the reflection nature of learning.
4. weblogs can demonstrate, on a very simple level, emergent behaviour similar to that at the lower levels of attainment for students; inferring relationships between weblog entries and creating new relationships between information.

In my opinion, blogging does offer you a unique opportunity to share what you know. As you share, you are actually learn and develop yourself even more and better, due to the information you’ve researched to create blog posts.

So, my conclusion is, if you want to have a better understanding in a subject, blog on it.

To learn more, please visit Guy’s knol.

Image by cambodia4kidsorg.

International Space Portal, a portal knol by Sebastien Requier, list many interesting knols on the space-related science and technologies.

The open collaboration knol is already a home of dozens of space-related knols, in many topics, such as space travel, space research, astronomy and planetary, space engineering, and other space-related topics.

There are general rules to follow, such as titling and language translator uses. The rules are meant to ensure flow and uniformity of the portal’s knols – this will aid readers to better read the content inside.

Sebastien’s attempt to gather space-related knols and standardise the knol layout are plausible and I see this portal is one of the portal knols that will grow well, beyond others.

If you are space enthusiast and want to read or contribute, please make sure you have Sebastien’s knol bookmarked for future reference.

Image by Savannah Grandfather.

Not only the most known, but also the most interesting theories The theory that one of the implementations change the face of the world – nuclear bombs – something that Einstein would regret inventing the theories.

A knol by Jack Sarfatti, Ph.D about the Theories of Relativity explores Einstein’s background story on the relativity theories, as well as the implementation of the theories, such as understanding the relativity of gravity, complementing and enriching the theory of gravity that Newton invents.

Mr. Sarfatti elaborates the background of theories of relativity, explaining that many doubt that Einstein himself invent the special relativity. Many suspect that the theories are invented by his wife or others.

There is a large claque of cranks on the Web who try to demean Einstein’s genius by saying that his wife Mileva really invented special relativity or that Poincare, Fitzgerald and Lorentz did.

Despite the speculations about Einstein’s theories of relativity, the theories themselves has been ground-breaker that days, as well as today.

One example I found interesting about the theories of relativity, is that its relation with the Newton’s theory of gravity, explained in Hawking’s The Universe in a Nutshell.

Hawking explained in his book that if the earth were flat, it’s either the apple fell on Newton’s head because of gravity or because Newton and the earth’s surface accelerate upward.

This equivalents between acceleration and gravity didn’t seem to work for a round earth. The undermining idea is that people has to be at a constant distance in Newton’s idea on gravity. Einstain invented the theory that the equivalence would work it the geometry of spacetime was curved and not flat – thus the theory of relativity in gravity was born.

Applications of the theories of relativity in gravity – with the curved time and space Einstein proposed, are found in our daily life. One prominent example: The zero gravity in space explorations.

There are many interesting ideas, both for physics enthusiasts and for general public.

The theories of relativities are everlastingly be the base theories to develop technologies for the benefit of mankind – not only to destroy it.

Image by Marcin Wichary.

Carbon needs to be managed because everything we do that involve energy always leave carbon footprints. This includes office buildings.

Carbon footprint is a measure of the amount of carbon dioxide produced by a person, organization or state in a given time.
Source: en.wiktionary.org/wiki/carbon footprint

Office buildings and the commuting office workers are leaving carbon footprints. Carbon management in office buildings will always result in efficiency and a more greener office operation.

Randall McMullan wrote a knol about energy use and carbon management, with a focus on the carbon management.

According to Randall, in the UK, 40 to 50 per cent of primary energy national consumption is used by buildings, such as heating, lighting and electricity. Therefore, managing carbon in buildings through energy efficiency is a very important move.

Managing carbon will require buildings to source energy from renewable sources, such as solar, wind and hydro, as well as to use energy efficient equipments and methods to save energy.

If you think your office energy expenses are too high, please consider visiting Randall’s knol to understand the basics of carbon management in buildings.

You can also consider visiting the Energy and Environmental Building Association (EEBA) to learn more on green building and Inhabitat to learn about sustainable design trends.

Why capitalism exist and prevail?

I found a clue from an unexpected place – science.

I have read this knol by Professor Claese Johnson about the direction of time, and found out that the knol helps me better understand about many issues in the world today – capitalism, recession, force majeurs, etc.

In a layman’s term, the direction of time talks about the basic principle of life – why are things irreversible and why time moves forward, not backward.

The answer: the turbulence doesn’t allow that. Again, in a layman’s term, the turbulence needs the time to move forward and irreversible to keep the universe ‘balance’.

Turbulence is viewed as a battle between construction and destruction – creating and destroying. This is how the nature works – crashing wave to the shore, is one example – if a tsunami is big enough for you, what would it be if the build up wave never being ‘destroyed’ by natural force?

Back to topic – capitalism.

Professor Johnson explain about the existence of capitalism this way:

This is how a capitalistic economy works: Income differences tend to increase by mobility in space, skill and knowledge, but differences are not allowed to become arbitrarily large through control by progressive taxes, interest rates, limitations of work hours et cet intended to decrease difference. We understand that this control is necessary; a completely free capitalistic system collapses.

You see, turbulence is needed to keep the ‘free economy’ under control. In my opinion, communism fails because it tried to handle the turbulence – it can’t be handled.

So, the next statement – recession will end, more sooner than later, because the battle of construction and destruction is, well, needed. I bet on it.