Fridaygram: RISE Awards, reluctant shipworms, countdown timer
By +Scott Knaster, Google Developers Blog
Editor
Every year the
Google
RISE (Roots in Science and Engineering) Awards are given to non-profit educational
programs around the world. The awards help open up
access
to programs in computer science and technology for underrepresented groups in
K-12.
Last year, 30 RISE Awards were granted to organizations in Nigeria, Argentina, New Zealand,
Germany, Liberia, and
many
more locations.
Applications
for this year’s awards are open until September 30th. If you’re involved with an
educational group, you might want to look into it. An award could inspire someone and help
change lives.
From RISE awards to the ocean’s rise, scientists have studied why wooden shipwrecks off
western Antarctica seem much better preserved than those in most other areas. The answer may
be that
shipworms that devour
wooden ships don’t like it there. A
strong
current plus a confluence of cold and warm waters seem to discourage the
ship-eaters. A Swedish team tested this by placing wooden planks and whale bones underwater
for more than a year. The wood was well-preserved, while some other
really
cool-looking worms feasted on the whale bones. Following this research, scientists
now hope they can find a
long-sought
shipwreck in the area.
Finally, we want to tell you about (yet another) small, cool, handy feature in Google Search
you might not have noticed: it’s a timer. If you need to count down time, just go to a Google
Search box and type
timer
60 seconds or something similar. You’ll see a timer that you can stop and
restart, and even an optional alarm. Now you can remember that it’s time to do that thing,
even if you forgot what it was.
Fridaygram
always shows up on Friday, so reading old ones
feels a little like time travel, although there is no Google Time Machine yet. And
speaking of time, we wish Debian a happy 20th birthday
today.
