Friday linkaround: Facebook Updates, Forecasting Snowfall, Dolphins

1) Facebook has begun rolling out changes to users' newsfeeds. If you haven't seen the new design yet, TechCrunch has a quick video about it. I'm kind of intrigued by this one, it looks like a nice update. What do you think?

2) I took Meteorology 101 as an undergrad at Penn State and that was a darn difficult course. Even though I find the graphs and assumed mastery of basic concepts challenging, I enjoy following UW prof Cliff Mass' weather blog. This nugget of info caught my eye in a post about forecasting snowstorms:

A rule of thumb is that you multiple the amount of liquid precipitation by ten to get the amount of snow (although that ratio can vary as well).    So if your storm total is off by .3 inches of precipitation, you could have an error of 3 inches of snow.  But an error in rain total of .3 inches would hardly be noticed.

That does make sense now that it's pointed out to me, but I hadn't conceived of it that way before.

3) Dolphins who are familiar with each other may call each other by "name"! How cool is that!?

It seems one dolphin can call another specifically by mimicking the distinct whistle of that other dolphin.

"These whistles actually turned out to be names. They're abstract names, which is unheard of in the animal kingdom beyond people," said Randall Wells, one of the authors of a new study on dolphin behavior[.]