Desert visions

Tunnel visions

What advice would you give to someone who is considering a career in science? It is important not to shy away from addressing big questions. This will require actively seeking interdisciplinary knowledge, and developing collaborative skills. It is also important to integrate well in the scientific community, and participate in community efforts (such as reviewing manuscripts and grants). If you...

Allied Visions

The Book of Visions 2000 – Visions of the Wireless World

Mobile communication systems and the Internet are key technologies for the development of the information society, in which access to applications and services of high quality is provided in a seamless manner so that the user is not aware of the nature of the underlying network technologies. Wireless systems beyond 3G will contribute to the implementation of such a user-friendly communication p...

Visions and Re-Visions of Charles Joseph Minard

Charles Joseph Minard is most widely known for a single work-his poignant flowmap depiction ofthe fate ofNapoleon's GrandArmy in the disastrous Russian campaign of 1812. In fact, Minard was a true pioneer in thematic cartography and in statistical graphics; he developed many novel graphic forms to depict data, always with the goal to let the data "speak to the eyes." This article reviews Minard...

Visions of rationality Valerie

Firefighters predict how fires will progress from cues such as smoke and roof 'sponginess' 1 , while peahens use the elabo-rateness of peacocks' tails to infer their fitness before deciding whether to mate with them 2. The cues on which organisms base their inductive inferences are typically uncertain: the old adage aside, sometimes there's no smoke even where there's fire. How do people make i...