ON THIS date in 1989 Tim Berners-Lee, a British physicist working at CERN, Europe’s particle physics laboratory, wrote a memo to his boss modestly entitled “Information Management: A Proposal”. Mr Berners-Lee proposed to develop a way to share information over a computer network. “A ‘web’ of notes with links (like references) between them is far more useful than a fixed hierarchical system,” he wrote. The rest is history.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2014/03/daily-chart-7?fsrc=rss

From today’s NYT:

Yuri Milner, the Russian entrepreneur, philanthropist and self-described “failed physicist” who made a splash two years ago when he began handing out lavish cash awards to scientists, announced Thursday that he was expanding the universe of his largess again: This time, he will begin handing out $3 million awards to mathematicians.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/14/science/3-million-prizes-to-go-to-mathematicians.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0

Three UBC ecologists who study the natural world at very different scales–from marine ecosystems, to plant and soil systems, to microbial communities–have been named fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). AAAS is the world’s largest general scientific society, and the publisher of the journal Science.

UBC’s Steven Hallam, John Klironomos and Daniel Pauly are among 388 members recognized by the AAAS today because of their “scientifically or socially distinguished efforts” to advance science or its applications. Six researchers at Canadian institutions are among the new fellows.

http://news.ubc.ca/2013/11/22/ubc-researchers-named-fellows-of-the-american-association-for-the-advancement-of-science/

Today back in 1887, patent #371,496 issued for the “comptometer,” the first adding machine “absolutely accurate at all times.” It was invented by Dorr Eugene Felt of Chicago; a model was constructed in 1884.

From MAA – On This Day in Math

Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator switched on at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland.

First computer “bug,” an actual moth caught in the machinery of the Harvard Mark II computer, logged at 15:45 hours.

More information about:
The First Computer Bug
Harvard Mark II

** From MAA math blog

In 1831 – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday%27s_law_of_induction

(From MAA blogs)

From Michael White’s blog – http://patentlibrarian.blogspot.ca/2013/08/uspto-adopts-pdf-for-patent-documents.html

The USPTO has adopted PDF as the default format for displaying patent documents from its databases, making it one of the last (if not last) of the major patent offices to switch to the world’s most popular document image format. Since 1998, viewing US patent documents obtained from the USPTO website required the use of a TIFF plugin such as alternaTIFF or interneTIFF.

The UBC Faculty of Applied Science and CMC Microsystems have opened an innovative new microsystems research lab called the Adaptive Microsystems Laboratory, or “AdaMist”. The facility is now part of the nation-wide Embedded Systems Canada (emSYSCAN) initiative.

emSYSCAN is a five-year project worth over $50 million, and involves more than 350 university researchers spread across 37 Canadian institutions. The emSYSCAN infrastructure shortens the microsystem development cycle, leading to rapid commercialization, publication, and training of highly qualified personnel within a national and international multidisciplinary research environment.

More information - https://www.ece.ubc.ca/news/201307/apsc-and-cmc-microsystems-open-new-adaptive-microsystems-lab