The Geometry of Sound Visualized

Turn down your speakers … but not all of the way off. Now see what sound waves look like when they’re visualized and the geometric patterns they make. A little bit of history here.

(via Open culture)

Low frequency part (at 0:40) reminds me of this fried egg city, and high frequency part (at 1:52) reminds me of Christaller's network of central places. Probably, there is already an author using complexity theory to freak out on this stuff.


Related Link:

• Amazing Water & Sound Experiment

Music for the Weekend

Assorted Links on Segregation

1. The effect of segregation on economic growth
   
   
2. Global and local spatial indices of urban segregation
   
   
3. Some Notes on Schelling's Essay "On Letting a Computer Help with the Work
   
   
4. Countering urban segregation in Brazilian cities: policy-oriented explorations using agent-based simulation
   
   
5. The other great contribution of Thomas Schelling (that gave him the 2005 Nobel Prize)
   
   
6. Urban segregation as a complex system: an agent-based simulation approach (by Flavia Feitosa)
   
   
7. Interactive maps: How Racial Segregation Changed from 1970 to 2010 in the US ?

A spreadsheet to calculate congestion charge

For those interested in transport modelling and congestion pricing, here is a piece in Wired about Komanoff 's spreadsheet to calculate congestion charge. He has been working for three years now on the Balanced Transportation Analyzer, an Excel spreadsheet proposed to model every aspect of New York City transportation (I thank Fabio Storino for the pointer).

And here is a 15-minute video where Komanoff explains the whole idea of the project.

The spreadsheet is quite impressive as for the amount of input data it demands. However, I'm not familiarized with transport modelling, so I'm in no position to have an opinion on this spreadsheet. I'd rahter have some experts' opinions published in scientific journal assessing it.

ps. I confess though I asked myself: why 'Excel' ?!  This is too vintage.

Urban Picture

Hong Kong, by Romain Jacquet-Lagrèze.

Chart of the Day

A nice piece on The Economist covering India’s demographic challenge.

As some studies have pointed out, the key element in discussing the so called 'demographic dividend' of a country is education, and more education. And of course, in the end, education and aging are crucial for productivity levels.

[Image Credit: The Economist]

Media Exposure and Reproductive Behavior

Three papers discussing the effects of media exposure on reproductive behavior.

Ferrara et al (2008). Soap Operas and Fertility: Evidence from Brazil. IDB Working Paper Nº 533 *

Chong and La Ferrara (2010). Television and divorce: Evidence from Brazilian novelas. J. European Economic Association.

Westoff and Koffman (2011). The Association of Television and Radio with Reproductive Behavior. Population and Development Review.

*A  funny  curious finding: "the likelihood that the twenty most popular names chosen by parents for their newborns would include one or more names of the main characters of novelas aired that year was about 33 percent if the area where parents lived received the Globo signal and only 8.5 percent if it did not."

Related Links:

• Baby Deficit and Economic Crises
• Fertility Transition in Brazil
• Birth rate plummets in Brazil
• Updated: How Electricity, Development, and TV Reduce Fertility

Message of the Day

(via tudoaomesmotempoeagora)