Lucas Laursen

Website upgrade

LL — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 11:02:46 +0000

Just a quick note to announce that I’ve upgraded my website’s structure, about five years after I launched the first version with help from my friend Momchil, director of MTS Studios. This is the second major re-design and should make the site more accessible to users on mobile devices. It also reflects the growing diversity of my reporting, rather than trying to divide everything into ‘Science’ or ‘Travel and adventure.’ Those things seem to be converging for me lately, anyway.

I’ve been covering new ground, such as the developing world (from afar, so far…any editors want to send me on my next reporting trip?) and it’s hard to avoid writing about the financial crisis in Spain.

The website also includes my Twitter updates and a section where I’ll write in my own voice (I’m told that’s called a “blog”) rather than strictly re-posting stories published elsewhere. I imported to the blog some previous entries including posts from my excavation last summer at Clunia, the Great European Roadtrip, the Malaspina oceanographic expedition, and my Nature internship. That’s why subscribers may have received an email or RSS feed earlier today with a flood of old posts. From here on out posts in this section should return to the occasional pointer to highlights of my work or special adventures.

Look forward to your thoughts on the new site!

-Lucas

Blue Bacteria in Bloom

LL — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 11:51:19 +0000

On their own, cyanobacteria are tiny photosynthetic organisms floating in the sea. But when they join forces, linking together into chains and then mats by the millions, they can become a threat. Before long, the bacteria change the color of the sea’s surface and even soften the wind-tossed chop. One study of cyanobacteria, also known as blue-green algae, although they are not algae, predicted that rising sea temperatures could help the already widespread creatures expand their territory by more than 10 percent. Now researchers are asking whether mats of cyanobacteria might themselves affect local sea temperatures, thus creating a powerful feedback loop.

Read the rest of this news story in the April issue of Scientific American [html] [pdf]

The power of money

LL — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 04:53:33 +0000

HIGH-SPEED currency trading uses oodles of computing power to exploit short-lived price differences in international foreign-exchange markets. Jonathon Keats proposes an alternative: exploit the electrical differences between currencies to power a low-speed computer. In an exhibit which opens on April 12th at the Rockefeller Centre in New York Mr Keats, a concept artist (or, as he likes to call himself, an experimental philosopher), introduces the notion “electro-chemical arbitrage”. An engineer might call it a battery.

Read the rest of this post at The Economist’s Babbage blog: [html] [pdf]