Every time you undertake research, you are creating new knowledge about our world and, thus, new data. The challenge is now: How to store and manage all of this data for later reuse? NFDI is an initiative within Germany, put forward by the Joint Science Conference in late 2018 and backed financially by the federal … Continue reading “Research Data Goes Cloud”
Customer Targeting inside the Madrasa
When Ulugh Beg Madrasa was built in 1420, it soon became one of the educational centers of Central Asia, attracting astronomers, mathematicians and scholars from all over the Islamic world. Today it is one of the main tourist attractions in Samarkand. But maybe it’s due to this spirit of being a former educational institution, that … Continue reading “Customer Targeting inside the Madrasa”
Coming in from the Cold
I have to admit this country wasn’t on my bucket list. For sure, I had heard of it before from the media, but mostly in the context of political repression, censorship and sometimes also its cultural heritage stemming from the former silk road. But I didn’t even know where to locate Uzbekistan on the map, … Continue reading “Coming in from the Cold”
The Marginal Value of Time
Over the past couple of years I had the pleasure of meeting several highly ambitious high school students, for example undertaking early study (as I did), attending hackathons or even introducing themselves with the goal of founding a graphene startup. As much as these pupils are dedicated to their respective passion, they had to come … Continue reading “The Marginal Value of Time”
Sleeping Well in Times of Wakefulness
Since finishing high school (back then a time of rather high workload) I have been intrigued with sleeping multiples periods a day, so-called polyphasic sleep, which promises a serious increase in the amount of time being awake, i.e. that can be used productively. The idea is based on the observation, that toddlers and some animals … Continue reading “Sleeping Well in Times of Wakefulness”
The Long Tail Upside Down
On the one hand, long tail distributions (a fancy name for something like 1/x) are well studied in science when it comes to outliers. They demonstrate, that although outliers are very unlikely because the end of their distributions falls off relatively quickly, these distributions are also extremely long. Thus, the probability of extreme outliers is … Continue reading “The Long Tail Upside Down”
ProtonMail
An often heard mantra by privacy advocates, especially related to Facebook, is that if you’re not paying for the product, you ARE the product. That said and since it might not be the best idea to simply go with the email offered by your hosting provider it might be a good idea to look for … Continue reading “ProtonMail”
A Game-Changer for Future Education
Early study sometimes sounds too good to be true. So there are pupils who want to learn something of their own accord, who attend lectures at a university in their free time, and who voluntarily even take written examinations. Where can you find pupils like that?! The picture that most teachers in Germany have of … Continue reading “A Game-Changer for Future Education”
From Classroom into Lecture Hall
In 1999, one of the most exciting experiments in the modern promotion of gifted children was launched in Germany: Pupils in the upper grades of high school were given the opportunity to attend beginner’s lectures in mathematics even before they had covered the basics in school lessons. They would attend lectures during school hours together … Continue reading “From Classroom into Lecture Hall”
The Option for Life
We start right at the beginning of Cixin Liu’s novel Death’s End, when the theoretical physicist Yang Dong finds herself in the control room of a supercomputer facility. In former times it was meant to model particle collisions. But since the sophon block was put into action by the extraterrestrial Trisolarans, progress in fundamental physics … Continue reading “The Option for Life”