Fridaygram: Lady Ada Lovelace, evolving limbs, ancient labyrinth
By Scott Knaster, Google
Developers Blog Editor
This week we celebrated the 197th birthday of computing pioneer
Lady
Ada Lovelace with a nifty
Google Doodle.
Among other accomplishments, Ada is credited with publishing the
world's first algorithm
for use with
Charles Babbage’s
Analytical Engine.
Coincidentally, also this week we launched the latest
episodes in our
Women
Techmakers series on
Google
Developers Live. We're highlighting women who are making big social impacts through
their innovations in tech. Please check it out.
In other areas of science this week, researchers in Spain used zebra fish to test an idea
about
limbs
evolving from fins. The scientists ramped up the activity of a particular gene,
which caused the fish to produce rudimentary limbs instead of fins. This might be an
evolutionary clue about where our own arms and legs came from.
Finally, it looks like the mystery of line drawings in the Peruvian desert has been solved,
according to Clive Ruggles, who is an archaeoastronomer (which might be the coolest job title
ever) and archaeologist Nicholas Saunders.
Ruggles
says the drawings are a labyrinth, and "This labyrinth was meant to be walked, not
seen". Well said, and in that spirit, we hope you get out and take a walk of your own this
weekend, even if you don’t have an awesome ancient labyrinth nearby.
Each
Friday on this blog we skip our usual developer topics and offer interesting (we
hope) stuff that’s not directly related to writing code.
