The Google PageRank formula can be used to model changes to the structure of food webs in an eco-system.

Eco-systems often contain many different species which depend on each other in complex ways. Working out how population changes and extinctions affect the food web is difficult. But finding out which species are key predators and prey in these webs is vital if species or eco-systems are to be protected.

Nature reports how Google tool identifies linchpin species (2008-08-06).

Stefano Allesina is working on the reverse engineering of ecological networks, to work out “extinction risks”. He is using a modified version of Google’s Page Rank™ algorithm to model the relationships between species.

PageRankanalyses the connections between web pages to discover the importance of the pages. Allesina’s modifications allow him to model the importance of species by calculating their connectivity.

I wonder about how well the modelling works for eco-systems where the species – never mind their relationships – aren’t known in detail or even at all…?

Another Nature news item on the same day indicates that there are lots of viruses in the oceans which haven’t been discovered, and these viruses may play an important part in the life cycle of plankton (‘Virophage’ suggests viruses are alive).

Notes:

• For a technical paper on PageRank, which underpins the Google search engine: [PDF format] The $25,000,000,000 Eigenvector: The Linear Algebra Behind Google, Bryan, K., and Leise, T., in the education section of SIAM Review, August 2006.
• Allesina’s research institution: National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
• Image source: from project page - Reverse Engineering of Ecological Networks.

Try searching Cuil for itself.

Cuil isn’t self-aware!

And some other strange results… neither by popularity nor relevance.

Mirror mirror…I tried 10 pages of the results… Cuil won’t look at itself. Try searching Google for Cuil – the new search engine is top of the list!

The Explore by Category lists are a good idea. (I’ve expanded this one to show all it showed me.)

But what have French Breads or French Cuisine got to do with “cuil”? “Cuil.” is the abbreviation for “cuillère”, French for spoon. French cooking for this search is fascinatingly irrelevant!

Sadly, Cuil didn’t turn up the Irish Mythology (see yesterday’s entry) as a Category.

Looking for: cuil salmon- top result about Luxembourg-based life assurance group (abbrev CUIL) in the Irish Times from 2005… salmon?;

cuill salmon - only 5 of “742 results” are even shown, none relevant, and repeating the search returned only the worst – a spam word page, now out of “495 results”;

cuil salmon of knowledge- nothing found! Yet the Cuil has the story of its own name. And Google will return useful results on all of these.

The final indigity is a usability issue.

Searching on usability actually returns some really good results, and some helpful Categories with useful suggestions for related searches.

But if you’ve done your search in a small window in IE6 and you expand it, the black footer sticks in the window rather than moving itself to the bottom of the screen where it belongs. My image doesn’t exaggerate the problem – the black bar covers up search result text. (Poor CSS – Cascading Style Sheet – testing for different browsers.)

Poor results and usability issues. Google doesn’t have anything to worry about today.

But “what if” we imagine that Browse by Category improves? I doubt it’ll kill Google – Google surely has enough resources to implement its own browse. Perhaps this plus respect for privacy plus something we haven’t seen will at least give Google some competition?

Cuil‘s the new search engine on the block. Cuil claims it searches over 120 billion pages, “three times as many as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft”. Cuil says it uses relevancy, not just popularity.

Is it any good?

Cuil – pronounced “cool” – is an old Irish word for knowledge, with an interesting back story in Irish mythology about Fionn mac Cumhaill‘s thumb (in English, Finn mac Cuil) and the Salmon of Wisdom.

Barely 12 hours old, Cuil is still sucking its thumb, but not to good effect.

I tried searching on my current research topic: I get results I already know are irrelevant.

Better results for the vanity search on my own name, but they’re not grouped for relevancy in obvious ways. That’s obvious and relevant to what I think, of course.

Searching for a previous employer (a 6-word phrase)… nothing, unless I cut the last two words off. Bizarrely, one of the first 11 returns is a spam keywords page (pretending to have Sheena Easton lyrics) which contains the word “For” – just one of my keywords. Not exactly a precision search!

However, the real problem is the number of times I see, “We didn’t find any results for …”. Just not enough capacity to handle the enquiries?

Here’s an expert view… Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land, formerly of Search Engine Watch, isn’t impressed: Cuil Fast Test – Relevancy Isn’t A Google Killer.

I like the idea that they don’t collect information about your searches, according to Cuil’s Privacy statement. Much like I’m not impressed with websites wanting to collect information about me when I ask for a train time (fortunately those days seem to have passed).

… we do not collect any personally identifiable information, period. We have no idea who sends queries: not by name, not by IP address, and not by cookies…. Your search history is your business, not ours.

Nice idea, but how about the searches?!

(Michael Arrington of TechCrunch seems to be the breaking news - Cuil Exits Stealth Mode With A Massive Search Engine- yet there’s no comment beyond what you can find on Cuil’s site.)

Merged Books – two best-selling titles for the price of one.

But who’s got the catalogue?

Found on Miss Cellania‘s Merged Books page (via Neatorama‘s Merged Books). Miss C says thanks to Ken, but where did Ken get them? A challenge for an idle few minutes.

Available from a joke archive dated May 6, 1999 -more than eight years ago! - which says the titles are from a “Washington Post Invitational: Readers were asked to combine the works of two authors and provide a suitable blurb.” The one quoted above was second runner-up. Each title is attributed to its creator. [It's a very, very long archive page. Search inside it for "prince".]

There’s also a later, short archive elsewhere, which says they’re from a ”Washington Post Literary Contest”, which was linked to – no quotes – in another blog in September 2006. Nearly two years ago. (I couldn’t find anything on the Washington Post‘s site.)

Strangely, the list on Miss C’s has some on it which aren’t on the joke archive, and the latter (or earlier) has some which Miss C’s doesn’t.

So where did Ken get his from?

Apart from finding some of the titles and blurbs funny, this is an(other) example of how information changes or gets lost in transmission, however unintentionally. Would any of the competition contributors care? Should it matter? An exercise for the gentle reader!

Meanwhile, a couple more I liked, from one or other list.

“2001: A Space Iliad” – The Hal 9000 computer wages an insane 10-year war against the Greeks after falling victim to the Y2K bug.

“The Silence of the Hams” – In this endearing update of the Seuss classic, young Sam-I-Am presses unconventional foodstuffs on his friend, Hannibal, who turns the tables.

Machiavelli’s The Little Prince: the merged book cover - my pastiche reinterpretation, 15th July 2008, of the covers of The Prince and The Little Prince, both on Wikipedia, reworked title text in Lucida Handwriting. The Wikipedia pages identify the owners of the original cover art.

The short answer: Anyone can use it. It’s not an official symbol. It’s gained use by popular appeal.

Is it worth using? That’s an entirely different question…

How did this whole thing start?

I’ve yet to find the first recorded use. Unlikely that I will! Anyone help out? It got a boost from TreeHugger’s Take Action Eco-Tip in Email Signature: Help us Start a Meme! (2007-03-12). From the comments there, it seems likely both text and image were around for a while before, as the tip only mentions starting a meme by,

Add the following lines to your email signature: “Eco-Tip: Printing emails is usually a waste. Make this tip go viral, add it to your email signature.” There’s an optional third line for the really devoted TreeHugger fans: “For more eco-tips, visit www.TreeHugger.com”.

What’s the fuss?

Seems this is one of those little things that can spark a big argument, more than once, and one which doesn’t have a clear outcome. For a good read, complete with insults try Hey, You Condescending Jerk, No One Prints Emails Anyway (2008-02-01), at TechCruch, a generally well-respected tech industry site. For another, shorter trip round the same, see Painted green (2008-02-16). Or an honest self-appraisal from someone who does print, Don’t Print (undated?). Or the News & Observer‘s article ‘Don’t print’ eases e-mail senders (2008-03-02), which manages not to come to any conclusions.

For some startling facts on paper used for printing, see before printing this email (2008-05-05). And for an amusing counter-claim – can anyone check the costs? – consider The dangers of using the email forward button and how you can save the environment.

So… to use or not to use?

Lots of people really do print emails (not even considering attachments). Because: they can’t read them properly on screen; they’ve been emailed a meeting agenda; they don’t carry a laptop every where; it’s easier to write notes on paper than an email; they read print faster than on screen; there’s some rule in their office about having a paper copy of everything; they’re not sure that electronic stuff really won’t get destroyed too easily. We’re a long way from the paperless office!

Printing emails uses paper, ink and electricity. So anything that helps remind people not to print emails may be a good thing. Colour printing costs more than black and white; perhaps we shouldn’t use this symbol or text in green! Especially where you’ve got a printer that automatically prints in colour, just because there’s something in colour to print. And don’t type it in bold, that uses more ink. (Does it use enough extra for that to really mean anything?)

But the symbol and text then costs more to print for every printed page it appears on. How could this possibly be studied and costed? On a local – personal or organisation basis – or global scale? How much direct effect has the symbol had – pages not printed? Do people really print emails just because there’s a message saying, please don’t? Does it cost less overall to print the email than read it on screen?

Is it a bandwagon? Guilt reduction? Smug factor?

Probably all of those for someone or other. But it’s got people talking about the issue. Some companies are even doing something about informing staff not to print. Perhaps they’re even training people in eco-aware office practice! If that works it way through supply chains, surely a plus.

I don’t use a signature on any email, beyond name or contact details when needed. Because I don’t think it will change this behaviour of the people I email, it’ll just seem preachy. I don’t include witty or worthy sayings either.

If you’re going to put something on your emails, how about this:

If you need to print this email or any attachments, reuse and recycle the paper.

Or why not use some the excellent alternatives from Green Signature Drafts, one has over 1,000 characters (which will mean something later). This article (2007-03-29) was quoted in the US national press! See the follow ups for links.

And why not change the message every now and again. I certainly don’t read bits of messages that look like the sender doesn’t care: like sign-up to email service XYZ.

Get your own symbol

Pretty much anyone using Windows has it. The symbol itself – a tree and winding road – comes from Microsoft’s Webdings font, released in 1997 with Internet Explorer 4. (There’s a page about the minor update of Webdings, with a little more history. It forms part of the “Community” characters in the font.

Using Word, PowerPoint (in a text box), etc.: Insert > Symbol ; change the font to Webdings; locate the symbol in the pane of characters; select it and insert into your document. Change the text colour to whatever seems appropriate, though green is an obvious choice! However, before you change the colour, read the printing issues above and below.

If you want some HTML to cut and paste into emails, try this:

<font color="#006600" face="Webdings" size="+3">P</font><font color="#006600"> <strong>Please consider the environment before printing this email.</strong></font>

(The quote marks should all be ordinary double quotes, and don’t respell color as colour.)

The code is from The Doc’s Blog, Please consider the environment before printing this email (2007-05-06), but anyone can use this as it’s very standard. If you prefer it inblack, change the numbers to “#000000″.

Sometimes the symbol gets replaced with (uppercase) “P”. This means you don’t have the font installed, or the application your viewing it in doesn’t know what to do with the webdings font. Some people replace it with an image, though much smaller than the one above! Gets round the non-printing problem, but does mean the recipient has to be willing to accept images in their email.

If you want an image, and can’t be bothered to make your own…

Image	Description	File Size
	green JPG	1,046 bytes
	green GIF	98 bytes
	black JPG	734 bytes
	black GIF	98 bytes

What are the numbers for? I was curious about how much effect the text and images have on the length of the message – which increases its transmission costs. For the text symbol it’s 56 bytes, excluding the message. 1 byte = 1 text character, so that’s around 10 words. So the tiny, blurry GIFs are worse than the HTML. And the better quality JPGs are equivalent to adding nearly 1,000 characters to the text. Give or take a few, this shows that a picture is worth 170 words!

Who does it belong to?

I don’t know what the intellectual property rights position is on using a symbol derived from a font. As it’s in general use, it would probably be hard for anyone to attempt to control it, and most likely pointless.

When is a symbol not a symbol?

For those interested in typography, in the context of a typeface/font, it’s not a character or symbol, it’s a glyph.

This entry is part of the Infomancy Eco-Symbols Series.

I expect to get back to regular blogging by the end of June. Meanwhile, from time to time, … perhaps something.

Say “R R R” and you sound like a barking sea lion!

Once the expression the 3 Rs just stood for “Reading, Writing, Arithmetic”. A catchy little slogan to capture the three important things to learn at school, the 3Rs have long caused either confusion or the opportunity for kids to laugh iRonically at ‘rents’ and teachers’ rules.

Not anymore. Educators take liberties with them, including upgrades to the 4 Rs. Business people have found uses for them too. And there are a few others just to make sure the letter doesn’t feel rejected, not last of which is the eco-friendly slogan.

A diversionary story of changing times, reflected in one letter…

People really do ask, What are ‘the three Rs’? (EduQnA), although they seem to miss the oddness of worrying about educational standards whilst being unable to spell themselves. (Read it, you’ll see!) The obvious, traditional, “life skills” answers were sometimes used to limit aspirations, and sometimes to set the basics to aspire beyond.

But there’s a world beyond the obvious.

The 3Rs make it into interstate humor apparently told by Montanans about North Dakotans: “In North Dakota schools, the 3Rs are reading, writing and the road to Billings.” It wouldn’t be surprising if this was told in other forms elsewhere, perhaps more surprising if it isn’t.

Remind, Redirect, Recap (.doc) as part of classroom management or Role Model, Reinforce and Redirect in counselling, behaviour management or as training technique.

California 3 Rs Project – Rights, Responsibility and Respect – “A program for finding common ground on issues related to religious liberty and the First Amendment in public schools”.

The Other 3 Rs: Reasoning, Resilience and Responsibility Project, American Psychological Association. “Experts have identified reasoning, resilience and responsibility as key problem solving skills that, when learned, can benefit student achievement and general life success strategies. The prevailing view among scientists is that teachers can teach these skills and students can learn them.” (Project Goals)

Along with Teaching the Three R’s, a Montessori teacher recommends teaching three leadership abilities: Respect, Responsibility and Resourcefulness.

Two films: Readin’, ‘Ritin’ an’ ‘Rithmetic (1912), a comedy short, and Readin’, ‘Ritin’, ‘Rithmetic (1926), a college melodrama about the “college athlete who must prove the hard way that he is good enough to marry the professor’s daughter”.

The Reading, Ranting & Recipes blog, which gives you exactly one carefully measured piece of each. Or the book review blog, 3Rs BookReviews, no sign of ‘rithmetic there, it’s the “Real Reader Review”.

For football (soccer) fans, there’s Ronaldo, Rivaldo and Ronaldinho (from EduQnA), three very highly respected players from Brazil – and there’s a fourth R from there too!: Romario, Ronaldo, Rivaldo and Ronaldinho.

And a couple, also in EduQnA, feature revolvers – for the American gun lobby or disaffected youth in equal measure.

But just one website manages to offer some sort of solution to the original basic skills issue: Links to Sites for Readin’, ‘Ritin’, ‘Rithmetic, etc.

Little Kids Rock: Ready For The Four Rs? Readin’, Ritin’, Rithmetic, Rock! about the Little Kids Rock music programme.

Reading, Writing, Arithmetic and Ritalin is an education commentary that slides across topics – terrorism, violent video games, death education classes, drug (ab)use, child suicide, anti-depressants, and finally Ritalin. There may be truths in what Betty Freauf writes for News With Views, but there’s a lack of evidence from this “researcher specializing in education”, and some of what she does use is 23 years old. My choice of phrase for the most irony is, “We don’t literally cut off heads in America today …”, missing as it does what they do use in (some of) the States. Instead it might have been titled “Reading, Writing, Arithmetic and ex-Republicans”.

Actually, guns in schools isn’t a joke, Reading, Writing, Arithmetic… and Lockdowns, Paul Helmke, October 2007.

And somewhere along the way, there is something worth reading – Four Rs: Basic Training for Success – readin’, ’ritin’, ’rithmetic, and rhetoric for program managers of any kind – by Wayne Turk in Defense AT&L: September-October 2006.

The phrase appears in a 1920s children’s song – although it must be much older than this; listen to “School Days, School Days:

School days, school days
Dear old golden rule days
Readin’ and ‘ritin’ and ‘rithmetic
Taught to the tune of the hickory stick

Aberdeen Schools 3Rs Project (PPP/PFI) – “Reorganise, Renovate, Rebuild” , the 3Rs Project is the first step in the regeneration of Aberdeen City Council’s schools estate (2007, Scotland). (Oops, it just sounded more like Business than Education.)

A little responsibility would probably help too!

Image sources: (1) South American female sea lion Chappie performs at Shinagawa Aquarium in Tokyo, Japan BBC; (2) Discarded fishing net around the neck of an Australian Fur Seal, Royal Melbourne Zoo, found on Diving Through Debris, Voyage of the Odyssey.

Not sure how I finished with a point I wasn’t looking for… all down to imagining ”R R R”. Rest & Relaxation (R&R) might have been an easier route.

Jyotsna Kotian of Alok Industries Limited, an Indian textile company , commented on my EU Eco-labelarticle asking for some guidance on how to apply. Although I can’t give legal advice, at least I can point them in the right direction. Alok’s Environment, Health and Safety Policy commitments are straightforward and significant. Good Luck to them.

That lead to me correcting a big mistake (that I made) in that article, The EU Eco-label: flowering across Europe.

Two more sites for Recycling Symbols for Print and Web Designers.

Another Finnish site for the Nordic Ecolabel Swan: Scandinavian co-operation.

Edits to the tags to make them more consistent and to connect articles together, particularly Agenda 21. This led in turn to adding more content to Eco-Schools, to reflect its importance as a programmme fitting into Local Agenda 21.

This entry updates parts of the Infomancy Eco-Symbols Series.

Perhaps as more people write about ecological issues, the tags will help link more articles together.

This list is based on ecolabel in the GEMET Thesaurus(Eionet) and ecolabel on OmegaWiki, with additions as I discover them. Eionet is the European Environment Information and Observation Network. GEMET is their GEneral Multilingual Environmental Thesaurus.

I am making the information in the Table available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

If you know of any more translations, comment please!

This entry is part of the Infomancy Eco-Symbols Series.

The Green Coast Award is for beaches in Wales and Ireland which meet EC bathing water quality standards and provide a natural, unspoilt environment, meaning that “the special character of such a beach may not be compatible with the level of infrastructure and intensive management generally associated with more urban, traditional seaside resort beaches”.

The Green Coast Award fills a gap left by the Blue Flag Programme. Like the Blue Flag, the Green Coast Award has clear objectives and community involvement in coastal management.

The Green Coast Award is part of the Clean Coasts project, which includes Coastcare, which offers volunteers involvement in environmental preservation and improvement of coastlines.

The Clean Coasts project is managed by Keep Wales Tidy and An Taisce, the National Trust for Ireland. It is partly funded by EU Interreg IIIA. The introduction of the Green Coast Award was sponsored by the Green Sea Partnership.

The Green Sea Partnership – Partneriaeth Môr Glas – doesn’t appear to have an official webpage. It was set up in 1996 as an informal partnership of over 40 public, private and voluntary organisations committed to safeguarding and enhancing the coastal environment of Wales.

This entry is part of the Infomancy Eco-Symbols Series.