Author: ana

about me

Categories
in china

on beijing air pollution, 2 weeks ago


“Beijingers were warned to stay indoors on Thursday as pollution levels across the capital hit the top of the scale, despite repeated assurances by the government that air quality was improving.
“This is as bad as it can get,” a spokeswoman for the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau told AFP.

“Level five is the worst level of air pollution. This is as bad as it has been all year.”

According to the bureau’s website, 15 out of the 16 pollution monitoring stations in urban Beijing registered a “five” for air quality rating.

The main pollutant was suspended particulate matter, which is usually attributed to coal burning and automotive exhaust.

“Old people and young children should reduce outdoor activities and protect their health,” the spokeswoman said.

The Beijing Evening News warned residents not to do their morning exercises on Friday as pollution levels were likely to linger over the capital until a cold front moved in and blew some of the bad air away later in the day.

A lack of wind in the capital over recent days has led to a heavy cover of smog trapping in the pollutants, the paper said.
By nightfall, the pollution was still horrendously thick.

Beijing’s air quality is routinely rated among the worst in the world by international agencies such as the United Nations and the World Bank, with rampant coal burning, regular dust storms and a growing number of cars cited as the main reasons.

The head of the government’s information office, Cai Wu, told reporters on Thursday that Beijing’s environment was improving and they should have “full confidence” that the Olympics would be pollution free. ”

hard to believe, mr. wu… !

(from physorg.com, image by princess pie on flickr – the image is from february 2007.)

Categories
geek

poor postman pat!

did you know the most common name for a city in the world is “oktjabrskij”? or that there are 11 cities named “springfield” in the usa, and another 11 named “clinton”? :)

here’s a ranking of the top-20 most frequent names of cities, freshly squeezed from postcrossing‘s database (might not be totally accurate):

City name      Country     Total of cities    
Oktjabrskij Russia 23
Springfield USA 11
Clinton USA 11
Pervomajskij Russia 11
Neustadt Germany 9
Madison USA 8
Hidalgo Mexico 8
Komsomolskij Russia 8
Washington USA 8
Lebanon USA 8
Shāhpur India 8
Dmytrivka Ukraine 7
Kamenka Russia 7
Auburn USA 7
Burlington USA 7
Greenville USA 7
Viişoara Romania 7
Áyios Dimítrios Greece 7
Troickoje Russia 7
Farmington USA 7

impressive redundancy if you ask me, but then again, except maybe a couple of countries, all the others on this list are pretty big… perhaps they just ran out of imagination?

anyway, there you go: one more reason never to forget the zip code! 8-)

Categories
links and ideas photography

terrazo: views of mexico city

terrazo: views of mexico city is a photo exhibition by pablo lopez that was until recently on sasha wolf gallery, ny.

some samples of the photos are up on the exhibition website, and what a sight they are. the city seems to run immense through hills and valleys, evergrowing and yet strangely quiet and still, in the distance of these images.

via notcot, a long time ago.

Categories
foooood just life links and ideas

the grass is always greener…

last thursday i ate my first francesinha in a smoke-free café. and let me tell you, it tasted really good. my sincere thanks to all the portuguese smokers out there who are playing by the (new) rules – i appreciate it. :)

ad by tbwa for the world tobacco free day.

Categories
geek just life

mr. cook, we have a problem.

when i failed to join the air force and had to choose another career, i picked informatics, journalism and astronomy, all in the same application form – that’s how clueless i was towards my future. in the end, informatics won, and 7 years later, here i am, still clueless but with an engineering degree! :)
every now and then, on the most improbable situations, the informatics/mathematics part comes in handy, like for instance (and ironically) when i have to fly.

here’s the formal definition of a common problem, known as packing. the next time your mom tells you to stop procrastinating on your packing duties, you can properly explain her how hard that is – and hopefully delay the task a little longer!

  • you have n kinds of items, 1 through n. each item j has a value (sentimental or of importance) pj and a weight wj. the maximum weight one can carry in the suitcase is c, and according to british airways, c=23 kgs.
  • the number of each kind of item in the suitcase, xj, is restricted to zero or one (for simplicity purposes).
  • mathematically the problem can be formulated as:
    maximize \sum_{j=1}^n p_j x_j.
    subject to \sum_{j=1}^n w_j x_j \le c, \quad \quad x_j = 0\;\mbox{or}\;1, \quad j=1,\dots,n.

this is called a 0-1-knapsack problem, which is known to be a np-complete problem. np stands for non-deterministic polynomial time… and that translates into “very hard & time-consuming problem”.

another np-complete problem is called bin packing, which consists of neatly placing different volumes in as less bins as possible. no time-efficient solution has been discovered for these problems.

so there you go. combine the two and you have packing! :D

(and now, back to the suitcases…)

ps – images from wikipedia, more on the subject here.
ps2 – who was stephen cook?