Can the EPA Report Yet?

Here at Compose[d] we appreciate science and freedom of information. Being that so many of us are technologists, we think that it’s only important and necessary to speak up when science and open information is infringed upon. To that point, lost in the latest news cycle is the fact that our national scientists are still prohibited from posting to the world about factual information on official government channels.

So, at least in regards to the EPA, we’ve put together a quick tool using one of our own products to monitor when they can post again (sadly as of this post it’s now 11 days and counting where an official government agency is censored from posting relevant and factual information on their channels). Let’s hope that we can hear from the agency in charge of keeping our air clean, our water safe, and the all around environmental health of our nation. Because without any of it, none of is would be able to do the things we do for a living, or enjoy this great country in our free time. In the meantime, you can check to see if the EPA can report at http://cantheepa.report

What Really Killed the Dinosaurs?

According to a new theory dinosaurs may have become extinct because of how long it took for them to hatch. The study used fossilized dinosaur teeth from embryos to gage a time frame of six months, as opposed to other birds which  lasts from 11-85 days. In order to acquire this number, scientists used CT scans of “von Ebner” line patterns on the fossilized teeth. These patterns are similar to tree rings and happen to be present in all animals. Due to this long incubation, the dinosaur eggs were exposed to predators and environmental disturbances and simultaneously was linked to their extinction.

 

 

Annotator.JS

What does it do?

As the name might suggest, this is a JavaScript library that allows users to annotate webpages. The days of bookmarking a webpage and inevitably forgetting what you were thinking at the time seem distant now. However, Annotator doesn’t come in the form of a browser plugin, instead it is included on a webpage and will require some setup.

With Annotator you can make notes for you and a group of others or only yourself–really, it’s pretty customizable.

 

I will update this blog post this weekend when I have a live demo for show.