Procrastinating Again? How to Kick the Habit: Scientific American
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=procrastinating-again

"Procrastination carries a financial penalty, endangers health, harms relationships and ends careers. “Procrastination undermines well-being on a wide scale,” notes psychologist Timothy A. Pychyl, director of the Procrastination Research Group at Carleton University in Ottawa. Nevertheless, recent work hints at potential upsides to this otherwise bad habit: perpetual foot-draggers seem to benefit emotionally from their trademark tactics, which support the human inclination to avoid the disagreeable." - Scientific American

Almost everyone occasionally procrastinates, but a worrisome 15 to 20 percent of adults routinely put off activities that would be better accomplished right away.

Although biology is partly to blame for foot-dragging, anyone can learn to quit

Procrastination can also stem from anxiety, an offshoot of neuroticism. Procrastinators postpone getting started because of a fear of failure (I am so worried that I will bungle this assignment), the fear of ultimately making a mistake (I need to make sure the outcome will be perfect), and the fear of success (If I do well, people will expect more of me all the time. Therefore, I’ll put the assignment off until the last minute, do it poorly, and people won’t expect so much of me).

It's a new year and many of us have started thinking about various resolutions: updating that resume, cleaning out the attic, starting that exercise routine. But the sad reality is that most of us will not follow through on these commitments, not because we're insincere, but because tomorrow is always a better time to get going. Procrastination is a curse, and a costly one. Putting things off leads not only to lost productivity but also to all sorts of hand wringing and regrets and damaged self-esteem. For all these reasons, psychologists would love to figure out what's going on in the mind that makes it so hard to actually do what we set out to do. Are we programmed for postponement and delay? Led by Sean McCrea of the University of Konstanz in Germany, an international team of psychologists wanted to see if there might be a link between how we think of a task and our tendency to postpone it. In other words, are we more likely to see some tasks

merely thinking about the task in more concrete, specific terms makes it feel like it should be completed sooner and thus reducing procrastination

The authors note that "merely thinking about the task in more concrete, specific terms makes it feel like it should be completed sooner and thus reducing procrastination."

"Even though all of the students were being paid upon completion, those who thought about the questions abstractly were much more likely to procrastinate--and in fact some never got around to the assignment at all. By contrast, those who were focused on the how, when and where of doing the task e-mailed their responses much sooner, suggesting that they hopped right on the assignment rather than delaying it."

It's a new year and many of us have started thinking about various resolutions: updating that resume, cleaning out the attic, starting that exercise routine. But the sad reality is that most of us will not follow through on these commitments, not because we're insincere, but because tomorrow is always a better time to get going.

portant implic

a lot of these i've seen before, but its pretty awe-inspiring to see them one after another...plus the comments have a bunch more!

Robot innovation continued its relentless advances during 2008. In this post we would like to showcase some of our favorite robots and robot videos of the last year or so.

Robot innovation continued its relentless advances during 2008. In this post we would like to showcase some of our favorite robots and robot videos of the last year or so. This review is heavily slanted to consumer robots and research robots. Perhaps in the future we can do a review of industrial robots. Given the sheer number of robots that are out there we know there will be several excellent robots that we have overlooked in this review. If you know of any really awesome robots or robot videos that we have missed please let us know and we will consider adding them to this post. So without further delay, lets take a look at some of the best robots and robot videos of 2008 (maybe some are from 2007 too), broken down by category: January 12th, 2009 | Published by Keith Kleiner in robotics

Robot innovation continued its relentless advances during 2008. In this post we would like to showcase some of our favorite robots and robot videos of the last year or so. (Singularity Hub)

news

"Marriage counsellors often see couples who believe that sex should always be perfect, and if someone is meant to be with you then they will know what you want without you needing to communicate it." Argh.

R

Watching romantic comedies can spoil your love life, a study by a university in Edinburgh has claimed.

"Rom-coms have been blamed by relationship experts at Heriot Watt University for promoting unrealistic expectations when it comes to love." Aha! I knew there were plenty of good reasons NOT to watch this type of movies :-) They found fans of films such as Runaway Bride and Notting Hill often fail to communicate with their partner.

Romantic comedies are bad for relationships. I knew it. Also -- a David Lynch movie is used as a control for a romantic comedy? Hee!

Totally supporting my hypotheses that Twilight is bad for people. :)

Talk notes from 1988: "The concept of radical novelties is of contemporary significance because, while we are ill-prepared to cope with them, science and technology have now shown themselves expert at inflicting them upon us. Earlier scientific examples are the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics; later technological examples are the atom bomb and the pill." The radical novelty of the automatic computer can be found in large numbers and digital (as opposed to analog) implementation: small changes, potentially big effects. Towards the final third this amazing talk becomes a bit uptight.

Edsger Dijkstra, the greatest computer scientist to never own a computer, hand wrote and distributed 'On the Cruelty of Really Teaching Computer Science'

Mexican Walking Fish!

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Strange and bizarre endangered animal species: mexican walking fish, coconut crab, giant salamander, bird eating spider, komodo, glass frog, kagu and more.

WOW. WOW.

Honeybees are found to interact with Quantum fields

How could bees of little brain come up with anything as complex as a dance language? The answer could lie not in biology but in six-dimensional math and the bizarre world of quantum mechanics.

Honeybees are found to interact with Quantum fields. wild. must read later.

"To some there is nothing so urgent that it cannot be postponed in favour of a cup of tea. Such procrastination is a mystery to psychologists, who wonder why people would sabotage themselves in this way. A team of researchers led by Sean McCrea of the University of Konstanz, in Germany, reckon they have found a piece of the puzzle. People act in a timely way when given concrete tasks but dawdle when they view them in abstract terms."

People act in a timely way when given concrete tasks but dawdle when they view them in abstract terms.

Repositorio de documentales científicos alojados en Youtube y otros sitios similares.

Interesting looking ebook. Give it a look.

For years, napping has been derided as a sign of laziness. We are "caught" napping or "found asleep at the switch". But lately it has garnered new respect, thanks to scientific evidence that midday dozing benefits both mental acuity and overall health. A slew of recent studies have shown that naps boost alertness, creativity, mood, and productivity in the later hours of the day.

Not sure if this is news, but it was news to me. I'm excited to see the new Corn Refiners Association's commercials disavowing this discovery. -Andrew Miller, SOAN 249

MONDAY, Jan. 26 (HealthDay News) -- Almost half of tested samples of commercial high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) contained mercury, which was also found in nearly a third of 55 popular brand-name food and beverage products where HFCS is the first- or second-highest labeled ingredient, according to... Leerlo!!!!

55% of samples!? z0MG!! I now have even more reasons not to eat this stuff. We have food-supply problems (Read "The Omnivore's Dilemma").

The Turritopsis Nutricula is able to revert back to a juvenile form once it mates after becoming sexually mature. Marine biologists say the jellyfish numbers are rocketing because they need not die. Dr Maria Miglietta of the Smithsonian Tropical Marine Institute said: "We are looking at a worldwide silent invasion."

if the word swarming were 'taking over'; I'd be worshipping my new tentacle overlords.

ok, this is curious: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/4357829/Immortal-jellyfish-swarming-across-the-world.html

So uh... time to figure out how they do that and sequence it into humans. Right?

In what sounds like the plot of a John Carpenter film, the Daily Telegraph reports that a village in Brazil might be populated by genetically altered twins created by notorious Nazi doctor Josef Mengele. .. "For years scientists have failed to discover why as many as one in five pregnancies in a small Brazilian town have resulted in twins – most of them blond haired and blue eyed," we read. "But residents of Candido Godoi now claim that Mengele made repeated visits there in the early 1960s, posing at first as a vet but then offering medical treatment to the women of the town."

The Boys from Brazil!

So, that's the reason. I wonder how many other experiments all those expat doctors conducted around here (and I mean *here*, as in I live a few Km from a known nazidoctor dwelling).

"Nobody knows for sure exactly what date Mengele arrived in Candido Godoi, but the first twins were born in 1963, the year in which we first hear reports of his presence," he said.

In a new book, Mengele: the Angel of Death in South America, the Argentine historian Jorge Camarasa, a specialist in the post-war Nazi flight to South America, has painstakingly pieced together the Nazi doctor's mysterious later years. After speaking to the townspeople of Candido Godoi, he is convinced that Mengele continued his genetic experiments with twins – with startling results. He reveals how, after working with cattle farmers in Argentina to increase their stock, Mengele fled the country after fellow Nazi, Adolf Eichmann, was kidnapped by Israeli agents. He claims that Mengele found refuge in the German enclave of Colonias Unidas, Paraguay, and from there, in 1963, began to make regular trips to another predominantly German community just over the border in Brazil – the farming community of Candido Godoi.

Sir David Attenborough has revealed that he receives hate mail from viewers for failing to credit God in his documentaries. In an interview with this week's Radio Times about his latest documentary, on Charles Darwin and natural selection, the broadcaster said: "They tell me to burn in hell and good riddance."

Telling the magazine that he was asked why he did not give "credit" to God, Attenborough added: "They always mean beautiful things like hummingbirds. I always reply by saying that I think of a little child in east Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball. The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs. I find that hard to reconcile with the notion of a divine and benevolent creator."

Attenborough is as great as his haters are tiny and useless.

because you LOVE him :P

"Sir David Attenborough has revealed that he receives hate mail from viewers for failing to credit God in his documentaries."

"...asked why he did not give "credit" to God, Attenborough added: "They always mean beautiful things like hummingbirds. I always reply by saying that I think of a little child in east Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball. The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs. I find that hard to reconcile with the notion of a divine and benevolent creator.""

Sir David Attenborough has revealed that he receives hate mail from viewers for failing to credit God in his documentaries. In an interview with this week's Radio Times about his latest documentary, on Charles Darwin and natural selection, the broadcaster said: "They tell me to burn in hell and good riddance." Telling the magazine that he was asked why he did not give "credit" to God, Attenborough added: "They always mean beautiful things like hummingbirds. I always reply by saying that I think of a little child in east Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball. The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs. I find that hard to reconcile with the notion of a divine and benevolent creator."

816 discussion

ScienceDaily (Jan. 29, 2009) —

ChairmanBruce:

2009 Will Be a Year of Panic

Intellectual property made sense and used to work rather well when conditions of production favored it. Now they don't. If it's simple to copy just one single movie, some gray area of fair use can be tolerated. If it becomes easy to copy a million movies with one single button-push, this vast economic superstructure is reduced to rags. Our belief in this kind of "property" becomes absurd.

good article

The key players are now all in place in Washington and in state governments across America to officially label carbon dioxide as a pollutant and enact laws that tax we citizens for our carbon footprints. Only two details stand in the way, the faltering economic times and a dramatic turn toward a colder climate. The last two bitter winters have led to a rise in public awareness that there is no runaway global warming. The public is now becoming skeptical of the claim that our carbon footprints from the use of fossil fuels is going to lead to climatic calamities.

The energy scale..kind of like circle of fifths

Scale representation of magnitude energy, usually in Earthquakes.

Researchers at the University of Rochester have shown that the human brain—once thought to be a seriously flawed decision maker—is actually hard-wired to allow us to make the best decisions possible with the information we are given.

Probability

This website contains a lot of good information, but it is not overwhelming, which makes it easy to read. Also, it has illustrations that help you to understand the theory of relativity. It is credible because it was written by a physicist and includes a photograph of him and personal information to confirm that he is an actual person.

This article is about realativity and the cosmos. It gives a background on the essense of gravity and the goes on to tell more about stars. I chose this site because I know that PBS is a trustworthy orgnaization.

this site seems to be very reliable. i chose it because it was one of the first links to come up as one of the most used by other students. it seems to be written by an expert as well.

Interactive visualizations based on the Eigenfactor™ Metrics and hierarchical clustering to explore emerging patterns in citation networks. A cooperation between the Eigenfactor Project (data analysis) and Moritz Stefaner (visualization).

Interactive visualizations based on the Eigenfactor™ Metrics and hierarchical clustering to explore emerging patterns in citation networks.

Blood type distribution shows a different, and more complex genetic history than so-called racial categories.

Preparing Humanity for Accelerating Technological Changes

La Universidad de la Singularidad:Silicon Valley, la cuna mundial de la alta tecnología, abrirá este verano la Universidad de la Singularidad, un centro académico único que, financiado entre otros por Google y la NASA, formará a los futuros líderes "para que identifiquen los grandes retos de la humanidad"

Preparing Humanity for accelerating technological change - Nasa & Google

"Singularity University, based on the NASA Ames campus in Silicon Valley, is an interdisciplinary university whose mission is to assemble, educate and inspire a cadre of leaders who strive to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies (bio, nano, info, AI, etc.), and apply, focus and guide these tools to address humanity’s grand challenges."

It's not a pretty picture: a never-ending stream of phone calls, e-mails, instant messages, text messages and tweets is part of an institutionalized culture of interruption, and makes it hard to concentrate and think creatively.

Studies show that information workers now switch tasks an average of every three minutes throughout the day. This degree of interruption is correlated with stress and frustration and lowered creativity.

"Paying attention isn't a simple act of self-discipline, but a cognitive ability with deep neurobiological roots — and this complex faculty, says Maggie Jackson, is being woefully undermined by how we're living. In Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age, Jackson explores the effects of "our high-speed, overloaded, split-focus and even cybercentric society" on attention. It's not a pretty picture: a never-ending stream of phone calls, e-mails, instant messages, text messages and tweets is part of an institutionalized culture of interruption, and makes it hard to concentrate and think creatively. Of course, every modern age is troubled by its new technologies. "The telegraph might have done just as much to the psyche [of] Victorians as the Blackberry does to us," said Jackson. "But at the same time, that doesn't mean that nothing has changed. The question is, how do we confront our own challenges?" Wired.com talked to Jackson about attention and its loss."

yes

The other important thing is to discuss interruption as an environmental question and collective social issue. In our country, stillness and reflection are not especially valued in the workplace. The image of success is the frenetic multitasker who doesn't have time and is constantly interrupted. By striving towards this model of inattention, we're doing ourselves a tremendous injustice.

Enter a narrow natural passageway that may lead to simply mind-boggling underground world - to get away from the depressing sights like these... Caves may lurk right under your feet: a fascinating and unexpected environment, which is often known only to spelunkers and dedicated Gollum-seekers.

Some of the cave and rock formations: - Flowstone (also known as a Bacon formation) - Cave Pearls - Soda Straws

Very insteresting site about biology simulation

This web resource presents an organized directory of cell and molecular animations, as well as a collection of original tutorials for life science professionals learning 3D visualization. The goal is to provide an efficient way for scientists and educators to browse and access existing animations for teaching and communication purposes.

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THE doctor who sparked the scare over the safety of the MMR vaccine for children changed and misreported results in his research, creating the appearance of a possible link with autism, a Sunday Times investigation has found.

Confidential medical documents and interviews with witnesses have established that Andrew Wakefield manipulated patients’ data, which triggered fears that the MMR triple vaccine to protect against measles, mumps and rubella was linked to the condition.

What a surprise...

save n share

share

23andMe, I know just three things about her: she's pregnant, she's married to Google's Sergey Brin, and she went to Yale. But after an hour chatting with her in the small office she shares with co-founder Linda Avey at 23andMe's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., I know some things no Internet search could reveal: coffee makes her giddy, she has a fondness for sequined shoes and fresh-baked

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$399 saliva test that estimates your predisposition for more than 90 traits and conditions ranging from baldness to blindness. The 600,000 genetic markers that 23andMe identifies and interprets for each customer are "the digital manifestation of you Now personal genotyping is available to anyone who orders the service online and mails in a spit sample.

TIME

Bill Maher's take on the current state of world religion.

What is WildEarth (WE)? WE is a new concept in wildlife TV. Everything you see is 100% LIVE and happening right now. Join us at 05h30 CAT (Central African Time) and 16h30 CAT for a LIVE presenter lead safari, where WE go in search of some of our favourite characters. WE also do a LIVE bush walk every weekday morning, visit the WEschedule for all the times and shows.

TV

Live webcam in Africa!

Wow!

Magenta ain't a colour dude

Magenta isn't a single color on the visible light spectrum: but it exists anyway. With diagrams.

Yes, Virginia, there is a magenta - Ars Technica

over 100 project ideas, tips and tricks for creating a winning presentation, and even a project timeline that encourages students to plan backwards from the date of the Science fair

offers ideas for science fair projects and experiments for kids

Læringsressource

science Resources siemens hands-on interactive education activities | shared by Dean Mantz 2009-02-20 05:40:28

ENGAGE AND AMAZE YOUR STUDENTS Teachers, engage and amaze your students. Here you'll find videos, tools and revealing hands-on activities for students in grades 4 through 6 to help reinvent your science class. New, original experiments with intuitive directions, materials lists and home extensions. Get started today.

Science resources for Amanda.

science

DIY Grow Lights | Popular Science

Frozen soap bubbles. How awesome is that?

via April B.

frozen bubbles

Top 25 days in computing history

fuel use by method of transportation. I like how 16 burgers = 1/2 gallon of gas.

fuel per passenger for 350 miles

Fuel use of various modes of transportation.

A nice graphic showing how much energy is needed for various different modes of transport. Cycling comes out best.

Developer Blog

auf dieser flickr-group werden deine himmelsfotografien nach den abgebildeten sternbildern aufgelöst. kewl:)

The “blind astrometry server” is a program which monitors the Astrometry group on Flickr, looking for new photos of the night sky. It then analyzes each photo, and from the unique star positions shown it figures out what part of the sky was photographed and what interesting planets, galaxies or nebulae are contained within. Not only does the photographer get a high-quality description of what’s in their photo, but the main Astrometry.net project gets a new image to add to its storehouse of knowledge.

cool!

Crowd-sourced sky cataloguing.

An Activity Pack is a set of educational resources focused on a theme and packaged in a widget-format that you can embed in your own class or social media web page. Each pack includes links to PBS web sites and a set of activities by grade level.

Explore educational resources and activities from PBS with our library of Activity Packs. Each one focuses on a curricular theme and includes links to great PBS resources and supplemental activities

Another widget source from PBS and Dr. Valenza.

doodle away folks!

from Tracey Isidro

"This revelation, that Stone Age hunter-gatherers could have built something like Gobekli, is worldchanging, for it shows that the old hunter-gatherer life, in this region of Turkey, was far more advanced than we ever conceived - almost unbelievably sophisticated."

:O

Archaeologists worldwide are in rare agreement on the site's importance. 'Gobekli Tepe changes everything,' says Ian Hodder, at Stanford University.

For the old Kurdish shepherd, it was just another burning hot day in the rolling plains of eastern Turkey. Following his flock over the arid hillsides, he passed the single mulberry tree, which the locals regarded as 'sacred'. The bells on his sheep tinkled in the stillness. Then he spotted something. Crouching down, he brushed away the dust, and exposed a strange, large, oblong stone. The man looked left and right: there were similar stone rectangles, peeping from the sands. Calling his dog to heel, the shepherd resolved to inform someone of his finds when he got back to the village. Maybe the stones were important.

Scroll down to see the SS and the LA

I don't know how he did it, but it's pretty cool.

Six monster mirrors.

play children psychology parenting science ; Free, imaginative play is crucial for normal social, emotional and cognitive development. It makes us better adjusted, smarter and less stressed. ; KEY CONCEPTS: Childhood play is crucial for social, emotional and cognitive development. Imaginative and rambunctious “free play,” as opposed to games or structured activities, is the most essential type. Kids and animals that do not play when they are young may grow into anxious, socially maladjusted adults.

Free, imaginative play is crucial for normal social, emotional and cognitive development. It makes us better adjusted, smarter and less stressed By Melinda Wenner

Free, imaginative play is crucial for normal social, emotional and cognitive development. It makes us better adjusted, smarter and less stressed.

PLAY

"Free, imaginative play is crucial for normal social, emotional and cognitive development. It makes us better adjusted, smarter and less stressed."

What do one mathematician, one artist, and one musician all have in common? Are you interested in zen Buddhism, math, fractals, logic, paradoxes, infinities, art, language, computer science, physics, music, intelligence, consciousness and unified theories? Get ready to chase me down a rabbit hole into Douglas Hofstadter's Pulitzer Prize winning book Gödel, Escher, Bach. Lectures will be a place for crazy ideas to bounce around as we try to pace our way through this enlightening tome. You will be responsible for most of the reading as lectures will consist primarily of motivating the material and encouraging discussion. I advise everyone seriously interested to buy the book, grab on and get ready for a mind-expanding voyage into higher dimensions of recursive thinking.

As if I needed another reason to get 14 hours of sleep every night.

In the sleep-deprived, gruesome images produced 60 per cent more activity in the amygdala - a primitive, emotionally reactive part of the brain - than in well-rested people. // Evidence is growing that sleep - and dreaming, REM sleep, in particular - helps the brain to process memories. Disrupt this mechanism, and you could end up with psychological problems such as PTSD.

An intensive research effort over the last nine years has led to the decoding of much of the almost-obliterated Greek text. The results were more revolutionary than anyone had expected. The researchers have discovered that Archimedes was working out principles that, centuries later, would form the heart of calculus and that he had a more sophisticated understanding of the concept of infinity than anyone had realized.

To read.

"....The researchers have discovered that Archimedes was working out principles that, centuries later, would form the heart of calculus and that he had a more sophisticated understanding of the concept of infinity than anyone had realized."

IBM has announced it will lead a US government-funded collaboration to make electronic circuits that mimic brains. Part of a field called "cognitive computing", the research will bring together neurobiologists, computer and materials scientists and psychologists. As a first step in its research the project has been granted $4.9m (£3.27m) from US defence agency Darpa.

"The key idea of cognitive computing is to engineer mind-like intelligent machines by reverse engineering the structure, dynamics, function and behaviour of the brain."

IBM has announced it will lead a US government-funded collaboration to make electronic circuits that mimic brains. Part of a field called "cognitive computing", the research will bring together neurobiologists, computer and materials scientists and psychologists. As a first step in its research the project has been granted $4.9m (£3.27m) from US defence agency Darpa.

IBM has announced it will lead a US government-funded collaboration to make electronic circuits that mimic brains.

IBM will join five US universities in an ambitious effort to integrate what is known from real biological systems with the results of supercomputer simulations of neurons. The team will then aim to produce for the first time an electronic system that behaves as the simulations do. The longer-term goal is to create a system with the level of complexity of a cat's brain.

Software Run the Molecular Workbench to view activities or create your own. Curriculum Browse or search our database of curriculum materials for middle school through high school.

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2.23.2009. "Researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute recently solved the half-century-old mystery of a fish with tubular eyes and a transparent head. ..."

I know this has been linked to a million times already in the past week, but nobody told me there was a video of this guy swimming around!

They tracked the movement of 28 stars circling the centre of the Milky Way, using two telescopes in Chile. The black hole, said to be 27,000 light years from Earth, is four million times bigger than the Sun, according to the paper in The Astrophysical Journal. Black holes are objects whose gravity is so great that nothing - including light - can escape them.

There is a giant black hole at the centre of our galaxy, a 16-year study by German astronomers has confirmed. They tracked the movement of 28 stars circling the centre of the Milky Way, using two telescopes in Chile.

We're being sucked into a black hole! Oh noes! Or radiating out from one. ;^)

Good introduction to X-phi, as rediculous as it sounds.

Philosophers used to combine conceptual reflections with practical experiment. The trendiest new branch of the discipline, known as x-phi, wants to return to those days. Some philosophers don’t like it.

a new philosophy field? holy moly. really good read.

Philosophers used to combine conceptual reflections with practical experiment. The trendiest new branch of the discipline, known as x-phi, wants to return to those days. Some philosophers don’t like it

HelpNarrow the View Biology 2 matches Environmental Science 11 matches Geography 9 matches Geoscience 22 matches 13 matches General/OtherProblem Set 5 matches Classroom Activity 8 matches Lab Activity 14 ...

Peer Review für "Jedermann"

We intend for the peer-review web to do for scientific publishing what the world wide web has done for media publishing. As it becomes increasingly practical to evaluate researchers based on the reviews of their peers, the need for centralized big-name journals begins to diminish. The power is returned to those most qualified to give meaningful reviews: the peers.

GPeerReview attempts to makes it easy for authors to seek post-publication endorsements of their works. We provide the following tools: * A command-line tool to digitally sign endorsements (done and available). * A web-based version of the signing tool (about 70% done). * Client tools for analyzing endorsement graphs to establish credibility (in planning stages). * Additional tools to facilitate the running of endorsement organizations (in the brain-storming stages). * Tools for analyzing citation graphs (in the brain-storming stages).

All of the materials to create a podcast using NASA resources

images, audio to download and use to create student podcasts. Separated by grade levels, K-4, 5-8, 9-12.

Students can preview and download audio and video clips of astronauts performing work in space and on the ground. They can then use these clips to build their own podcast or similar audio/video project. Learning modules on the DIY Podcast page will be categorized by topic to assist students with creating projects about a subject of interest. Each subject module includes video and audio clips, images, helpful information and links to related resources.

Are you looking for a new approach to engage your students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics? NASA's Do-It-Yourself Podcast activity sets the stage for students to host a show that features astronauts training for missions, doing experiments in space or demonstrating equipment. We'll provide a set of audio and video clips along with photos and information about a space-related topic. You and your students may choose as many items as you want to include in your project and download them to your computer. Students may use the information we provide or conduct their own research to write a script for an audio or video production

Dvorak designed his layout in the 1930's without the aid of computers. It contains a couple annoying features that lead to common errors in my typing -- namely the placement of Y and B). Could a modern evolutionary algorithm and a huge input sample discover a better arrangement? I had to give it a try. The results surprised me!

Could a modern evolutionary algorithm and a huge input sample discover a better [keyboard layout]?

Using an experimental function & selection to discover a more efficient keyboard layout than Dvorak

Other layouts for a standard 3-row keyboard exist (as well as some interesting nonstandard arrangements). I have been using the Dvorak keyboard layout for about a year now. I like it a lot for my daily work, which involves a lot of typing. I used to feel a numbness of the backs of my hands after a long day with QWERTY, but I don't with Dvorak. And quantified measurements bear out its efficiency relative to QWERTY. (I acknowledge the argument that learning Dvorak also got me to type with the right fingers on the right keys, but I don't think that that's the whole story.) But Dvorak designed his layout in the 1930's without the aid of computers. It contains a couple annoying features that lead to common errors in my typing -- namely the placement of Y and B). Could a modern evolutionary algorithm and a huge input sample discover a better arrangement? I had to give it a try. The results surprised me!

According to Hogan, a physicist at Fermilab, GEO600 has stumbled upon the fundamental limit of space-time - the point where space-time stops behaving like the smooth continuum Einstein described and instead dissolves into "grains", just as a newspaper photograph dissolves into dots as you zoom in. "It looks like GEO600 is being buffeted by the microscopic quantum convulsions of space-time." If this doesn't blow your socks off, then Hogan has an even bigger shock in store: "If the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram."

"GEO600 has stumbled upon the fundamental limit of space-time - the point where space-time stops behaving like the smooth continuum Einstein described and instead dissolves into 'grains', just as a newspaper photograph dissolves into dots as you zoom in."

a real jurassic park would rule

"The Pyrenean ibex, a form of wild mountain goat, was officially declared extinct in 2000 when the last-known animal of its kind was found dead in northern Spain. Shortly before its death, scientists preserved skin samples of the goat, a subspecies of the Spanish ibex that live in mountain ranges across the country, in liquid nitrogen. ..." Dun dun dun.

Superb article on Space

article from New Scientist about the world being a hologram

According to Craig Hogan, a physicist at the Fermilab particle physics lab in Batavia, Illinois, GEO600 has stumbled upon the fundamental limit of space-time - the point where space-time stops behaving like the smooth continuum Einstein described and instead dissolves into "grains", just as a newspaper photograph dissolves into dots as you zoom in. (..) If this doesn't blow your socks off, then Hogan, who has just been appointed director of Fermilab's Center for Particle Astrophysics, has an even bigger shock in store: "If the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram."

A noise floor found in very small measurements means that our entire universe could be holographic. If true, this could have wide-ranging applications in space exploration, physics, computer science, philosophy, and other fields.

"The idea that we live in a hologram probably sounds absurd, but it is a natural extension of our best understanding of black holes, and something with a pretty firm theoretical footing. It has also been surprisingly helpful for physicists wrestling with theories of how the universe works at its most fundamental level."

Pessoas paralizadas conseguem se comunicar através de eletrodos conectados a um computador. Fantastico!

People who are completely paralyzed due to illness or trauma are getting help communicating with a new technology that connects their brains to a computer. Scott Pelley reports.

It might seem an idle pastime but academics have come up with a mathematical equation for why people procrastinate.

The psychologist, from the University of Calgary, has subsequently formed an equation for why people procrastinate, which began by studying 250 college students. The equation is U=EV/ID. The 'U' stands for utility, or the desire to complete a given task. It is equal to the product of E, the expectation of success, and V the value of completion, divided by the product of I, the immediacy of the task, and D, the personal sensitivity to delay. Prof Steel says procrastination is becoming a bigger issue because many more jobs are "self-structured", with people setting their own schedules. This means that people tend to postpone things with delayed rewards in favour of activities that offer immediate rewards. "Procastinators tend to live fro today rather than tomorrow. for short term gain for long term pain" he writes. Until now, psychologists have generally linked procrastination to perfectionists who avoid tasks rather than produce less than perfect products.

U=EV/ID

The equation is U=EV/ID.

Prof Piers Steel, a Canadian academic who has spent more than 10 years studying why people put off until tomorrow what they could do today, believes that the notion that procrastinators are either perfectionists or just lazy is wrong. Prof Steel, who admits to becoming distracted by computer games himself, argues in a new book that those prone to putting things off suffer from a vice of their own - impulsiveness.

Cool demo of sixth sense device at TED.

TED Talks This demo -- from Pattie Maes' lab at MIT, spearheaded by Pranav Mistry -- was the buzz of TED. It's a wearable device with a projector that paves the way for profound interaction with our environment. Imagine "Minority Report" and then some.

save

check out pic #16... amazing

via Nova Spivack: It doesn't simply return documents that (might) contain the answers, like Google does, and it isn't just a giant database of knowledge, like the Wikipedia. It doesn't simply parse natural language and then use that to retrieve documents, like Powerset, for example. Instead, Wolfram Alpha actually computes the answers to a wide range of questions -- like questions that have factual answers such as "What is the location of Timbuktu?" or "How many protons are in a hydrogen atom?," "What was the average rainfall in Boston last year?," "What is the 307th digit of Pi?," or "what would 80/20 vision look like?"

Wolfram Research introduces a search engine

TED presentation - Social media in the real world - minority report like

This demo -- from Pattie Maes' lab at MIT, spearheaded by Pranav Mistry -- was the buzz of TED. It's a wearable device with a projector that paves the way for profound interaction with our environment. Imagine "Minority Report" and then some.

TED Talks This demo -- from Pattie Maes' lab at MIT, spearheaded by Pranav Mistry -- was the buzz of TED. It's a wearable device with a projector that paves the way for profound interaction with our environment. Imagine "Minority Report" and then some.

Wearable interface of the future

*MUST* mouse over link :)

I know you may have already seen it... but I love love this one. ^_^

Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing 'look over there'

Mijn favoriete onderwerp, in cartoon.

Get up close and personal with your innards with these 15 amazing 3D-body shots. Almost all of the following images were captured using a scanning electron microscope (SEM), a type of electron microscope that uses a beam of high-energy electrons to scan surfaces of images. The electron beam of the SEM interacts with atoms near or at the surface of the sample to be viewed, resulting in a very high-resolution, 3D-image. Magnification levels range from x 25 (about the same as a hand lens) to about x 250,000. Incredible details of 1 to 5 nm in size can be detected. Max Knoll was the first person to create an SEM image of silicone steel in 1935; over the next 30 years, a number of scientists worked to further develop the instrument, and in 1965 the first SEM was delivered to DuPont by the Cambridge Instrument Company as the “Stereoscan.” Here you’ll experience the power of SEM in a journey of self-discovery that starts in your head, travels down through the chest and ends in the bowels of

:O

15 kaunista mikroskooppikuvaa ihmisen kehon sisältä.

NO WAY this is rad.

NASA, recession-style.

US Medical History Pictures

Archive of military medical photos.

fotos de uma múmia congelada em alta resolução

Fotografia do Ötzi.

A full site of scanned images from the iceman mummy

Scientists sailed out to have a closer look at the eruptions of an undersea volcano off the coast of Tonga in the South Pacific Ocean today.

ภาพถ่ายภูเขาไฟระเบิด ใต้น้ำ

Great pics of an underwater volcano erupting.

we have directed all of our energies and intelligence to inventing machinery that does nothing but increase the supply of information. As a consequence, our defenses against information glut have broken down; our information immune system is inoperable. We don't know how to filter it out; we don't know how to reduce it; we don't know to use it. We suffer from a kind of cultural AIDS.

You've now crossed the boundary into profound hypothermia. By the time your core temperature has fallen to 88 degrees, your body has abandoned the urge to warm itself by shivering. Your blood is thickening like crankcase oil in a cold engine. Your oxygen consumption, a measure of your metabolic rate, has fallen by more than a quarter...

by artist and medical student Satre Stuelke

Earth AcademicEarth academicearth.org

Thousands of video lectures from the world's top scholars. Academic Earth is an organization founded with the goal of giving everyone on earth access to a world class education.

The world is filled with sluggish spectacles. Watching them would be painful were it not for time-lapse photography, which can make those long stories short and remarkably entertaining. When a

via delicious home

<traaaf> http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/03/tenlapse.html

Short time lapse for science concepts

E-Books Directory is a daily growing list of freely downloadable ebooks, documents and lecture notes found all over the internet. You can submit and promote your own ebooks, add comments on already posted books or just browse through the directory and download anything you need.

So heres my trip to Chernobyl in pictures. The trip was booked with http://www.tourchernobyl.com. I just emailed info@tourkiev.com, and got in touch with the guy who runs the whole place, Sergei. Really, really helpful guy who talked me through the whole process and answered numerous dumbass emails i sent him. You can book everything through them, from the flights (cost me about 500 euro) to hotel (160 euro for 2 nights), to a pickup at the airport and dropoff when leaving ($40 each).

Discuss anything and everything gaming related here.

"A year later and millions of Americans are dead and the nation's infrastructure lies in tatters. The World Bank declares America a developing nation."

A fierce solar storm could lead to a global disaster on an unprecedented scale – it's time to heed the warnings

Interesting article from New Science describing how a "coronal mass ejection" from the Sun could melt down the electrical power gird. ".... Over the last few decades, western civilisations have busily sown the seeds of their own destruction. Our modern way of life, with its reliance on technology, has unwittingly exposed us to an extraordinary danger: plasma balls spewed from the surface of the sun could wipe out our power grids, with catastrophic consequences..." The article does offer a solution: upgrade the ACE solar satellite, to detect an electro magnetic surge and provide power grid operators with about 15 minutes to shut down their systems. The article does not discuss another possible option: stop building centralized power sources that demand increasingly massive power grids. Instead, concentrate on meeting energy needs using localized sources of power

tedliste

nice list

URL Speakers Name Short Summary

The entire Cosmos series, by Carl Sagan, for free on Hulu.

My all-time favorite TV series after the Sandbaggers. Carl Sagan, RIP.

freee

Carl Sagan. to quote scalzi: "the internet has justified its existence."

Show description: In 1980, the landmark series Cosmos premiered on public television. Since then, it is estimated that more than a billion people around the planet have seen it. Cosmos chronicles the evolution of the planet and efforts to find our place in the universe.

Show description: In 1980, the landmark series Cosmos premiered on public television. Since then, it is estimated that more than a billion people around the planet have seen it. Cosmos chronicles the evolution of the planet and efforts to find our place in the universe. Each of the 13 episodes focuses on a specific a

instruction on your kids

DTI is a variant of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) that can measure the structural integrity of the brain's white matter, which is made up of cells that carry nerve impulses from one part of the brain to another. The greater the structural integrity, the faster nerve impulses travel. >Personal Note: I worked with DTI during my internship at the MRRC (Magnetic Resonance Research Center) at Yale University. Our signals looked more similar to the second image except that we didn't have a 3d model extracted from the raw signal (the second one shows a raw DTI signal with an overlay of its 3d model representation).

The smarter the person, the faster information zips around the brain, a UCLA study finds. And this ability to think quickly apparently is inherited. The study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, looked at the brains and intelligence of 92 people. All the participants took standard IQ tests. Then the researchers studied their brains using a technique called diffusion tensor imaging, or DTI. Capturing Mental Speed DTI is a variant of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) that can measure the structural integrity of the brain's white matter, which is made up of cells that carry nerve impulses from one part of the brain to another. The greater the structural integrity, the faster nerve impulses travel. "These images really give you a picture of the mental speed of the brain," says Paul Thompson, Ph.D., a professor of neurology at UCLA School of Medicine. They're also "the most beautiful images of the brain you could imagine," Thompson says. "My daughter, who's 5, says they look like

Smart People Really Do Think Faster http://bit.ly/ey8Db So...that means all us twitter users are wicked smart [from http://twitter.com/AdamPieniazek/statuses/1375120864]

Inductive reasoning at it's finest.

In just over a day, a powerful computer program accomplished a feat that took physicists centuries to complete: extrapolating the laws of motion from a pendulum's swings. Developed by Cornell researchers, the program deduced the natural laws without a shred of knowledge about physics or geometry. The research is being heralded as a potential breakthrough for science in the Petabyte Age, where computers try to find regularities in massive datasets that are too big and complex for the human mind. (See Wired magazine's July 2008 cover story on "The End of Science.") "One of the biggest problems in science today is moving forward and finding the underlying principles in areas where there is lots and lots of data, but there's a theoretical gap. We don't know how things work," said Hod Lipson, the Cornell University computational researcher who co-wrote the program. "I think this is going to be an important tool." Condensing rules from raw data has long been considered the province of hu

“In just over a day, a powerful computer program accomplished a feat that took physicists centuries to complete: extrapolating the laws of motion from a pendulum's swings…”

In just over a day, a powerful computer program accomplished a feat that took physicists centuries to complete: extrapolating the laws of motion from a pendulum's swings. Developed by Cornell

5 Ways Your Brain Is Messing With Your Head. Who can you trust?!

Check this out

market for news that circumvents government control but, as we have found out, rumor mills like to fill inf

The Russian geneticist Dmitri Belyaev provided a very interesting potential explanation. Genetics at the time was preoccupied with easily measurable traits that could be passed on - if you bred dogs, you could pick the biggest puppies, breed them, and they would produce bigger dogs on average. Fine. But that is selection of a single simple trait, something that likely did not require that many genes to “switch” in order for the puppies to be bigger.

Well, designer pets for one. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the project ran into serious financial trouble in the late 1990s. They had to cut down the amount of foxes drastically, and the project survived primarily on funding obtained from selling the tame foxes as exotic pets. Imagine a menagerie of dwarf exotic animals, who crave human attention and form bonds with people. It would be obscenely profitable. And the out there thought for the day? We’re doing this to ourselves. We don’t encourage people to act aggressively all day to everyone they meet. We reward certain behaviours more than other behaviours. My unprovable conjecture? Humanity is selecting itself for certain behaviours, and the traits we think of as fundamentally human (loss of hair, retention of juvenile characteristics relative to primates) are a side effect of this self-selection.

Dmitri Belyaev foxes

via rp

Bonnie Bassler discovered that bacteria "talk" to each other, using a chemical language that lets them coordinate defense and mount attacks. The find has stunning implications for medicine, industry -- and our understanding of ourselves.

bacteria communicate with each other and can tell self from other

Jared Diamond, professor of geography at UCLA, received the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction in 1998 for Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. In 1999, he received the National Medal of Science. His most recent book is Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2004). Professor Diamond argues that religion has encompassed at least four independent components that have arisen or disappeared at different stages of development of human societies over the last 10,000 years.

From Kottke

just in case you happen to go back in time and want to be awesome

http://www.kjemi.uio.no/publikum/popularkjemi/egg/

Äggkokning med hjälp av Kjemisk institutt UiO

cooking the perfect egg: lay eggs in cooking water and use the time-generator to get the time.

Wie man ein Ei kocht.

Selezionare la circonferenza (?) dell'uovo), come si vuole il tuorlo, la temperatura a cui è, a quanti metri sul livello del mare ci troviamo...

While there are many great lectures here, this is still the lecture format (i.e., sage on the stage), which is not a model of teaching/learning but a mode of performance.

Some promising recommendations here.

http://delicious.com/popular/education

Great teachers know that learning doesn’t stop as soon as you graduate from college. Teachers learn from their experience, from their colleagues, from their students, and any number of other resources. If you are a teacher looking for ways to expand your knowledge base, here are 100 free lectures you can watch to help facilitate some of that learning.

"A handful of scientists think that these ultra-marathoners are using their bodies just as our hominid forbears once did, a theory known as the endurance running hypothesis (ER)."

running animals to death

In tests where 15 subjects ran and walked on pressure-sensitive treadmills, Lieberman and Rolian found that toe length had no effect on walking. Yet when the subjects were running, an increase in toe length of just 20 percent doubled the amount of mechanical work, meaning that the longer-toed subjects required more metabolic energy, and each footfall produced more shock.

Running deer to death ...

The endurance running hypothesis, the idea that humans evolved as long-distance runners, may have legs thanks to a new study on toes.

But a handful of scientists think that these ultra-marathoners are using their bodies just as our hominid forbears once did, a theory known as the endurance running hypothesis (ER). ER proponents believe that being able to run for extended lengths of time is an adapted trait, most likely for obtaining food, and was the catalyst that forced Homo erectus to evolve from its apelike ancestors. Over time, the survival of the swift-footed shaped the anatomy of modern humans, giving us a body that is difficult to explain absent a marathoning past.

Endurance running hypothesis

And now, in 2009, a new kind of browser search engine called Wolfram|Alpha is about to appear. The other day I talked to Stephen on the phone for about two hours, and he demonstrated some of Wolfram|Alpha’s powers via a web-conferencing hook-up. In the following, I’ll be paraphrasing his words, based on my notes, my memory, and an audio recording of our conversation.

Stephen Wolfram

Wolfram|Alpha can pop out an answer to pretty much any kind of factual question that you might pose to a scientist, economist, banker, or other kind of expert. The exciting part is that you’re not just looking up pages on the web, you’re getting new information that’s generated by computations working from the known data. Wolfram says the response can be so speedy because, “We’ve found that, of all the things science can compute, most take a second or less.”

"... Wolfram|Alpha can pop out an answer to pretty much any kind of factual question that you might pose to a scientist, economist, banker, or other kind of expert. The exciting part is that you’re not just looking up pages on the web, you’re getting new information that’s generated by computations working from the known data. Wolfram says the response can be so speedy because, “We’ve found that, of all the things science can compute, most take a second or less.” ..." [Accessed Tuesday, 14th April, 2009]

earth compared to other stars and galaxies

Feeling small

So you've gone back in time with just a gun, a few clips and your pants. What now? This is what. [Topatoco via Buzzfeed - Thanks Audrius!]

Just in case. :)

what happens when and what you need(ed) to know/discover when

una imagen casi hipnotica que hace que uno vea todo muy raro luego de verlo 10 minutos

via kottke.org

from New Scientist

Info-graphic: consumption of key resources, estimated number of years before exhaustion. Many between 5 and 40 years.

Thrust enhancers, roll bars, microchips...the $20 billion running - shoe industry wants us to believe that the latest technologies will cushion every stride. Yet in this extract from his controversial new book, Christopher McDougall claims that injury rates for runners are actually on the rise, that everything we've been told about running shoes is wrong - and that it might even be better to go barefoot...

An interesting article that (almost) concludes: running shoes (Nikes, Reeboks, etc) are a self-sustaining industry that don't improve performance or prevent injuries, and running shoes could actually be hurting. Now I know why I suck at my Saturday morning runs - I need to go barefoot :-)

interesting twitters

NASA's Cassini spacecraft is now a nearly a year into its extended mission, called Cassini Equinox (after its initial 4-year mission ended in June, 2008). The spacecraft continues to operate in good health, returning amazing images of Saturn, its ring system and moons, and providing new information and science on a regular basis. The mission's name, "Equinox" comes from the upcoming Saturnian equinox in August, 2009, when its equator (and rings) will point directly toward the Sun. The Equinox mission runs through September of 2010, with the possibility of further extensions beyond that. Collected here are 24 more intriguing images from our ringed neighbor.

dfggggggggggggggggggdysyeeydysdysdydsydsydydsdddddddddddd

Wiki-style site that is intended to develop into a large store of useful mathematical problem-solving techniques.

On PBS Video, award-winning national programming and locally produced shows are just a click away. Watch your favorite shows and catch the episodes you may have missed, all on your schedule. Click "Share" to send your favorites to friends and post to social networks, and purchase your own copy by clicking "Own It."

Full length PBS videos!

Flash version of Apples scrolling magic thingy.

PBS

What really happened to Russia's missing cosmonauts? An incredible tale of space hacking, espionage and death in the lonely reaches of space.

Midnight, 19 May 1961. A crisp frost had descended on Turin’s city centre which was deserted and deathly silent. Well, almost. Two brothers, aged 20 and 23, raced through the grid-like streets (that would later be made famous by the film The Italian Job) in a tiny Fiat 600, which screamed in protest as they bounced across one cobbled piazza after another at top speed. The Fiat was loaded with dozens of iron pipes and aluminium sheets which poked out of windows and were strapped to the roof. The car screeched to a halt outside the city’s tallest block of flats. Grabbing their assorted pipes, along with a large toolbox, the two brothers ran up the stairs to the rooftop. Moments later, the city’s silence was rudely broken once more as they set to work: a concerto of hammering, clattering, sawing and shouting. Suddenly, an angry voice rang out; the man who lived on the floor below leant out of the window and screamed: “Will you stop that racket, I’m trying to sleep!” One of the young me

What really happened to Russia's missing cosmonauts? An incredible tale of space hacking, espionage and death in the lonely reaches of space. FT233 Midnight, 19 May 1961.

I can haz higher IQ?

Instead of seeing a single series of items like the one above, test-takers saw two different sequences, one of single letters and one of spatial locations.

Find N-Back test on web

About this talk JoAnn Kuchera-Morin demos the AlloSphere, a new way to see, hear and interpret scientific data. Dive into the brain, feel electron spin, hear the music of the elements ... and detect previously unseen patterns that could lead to new discoveries. About JoAnn Kuchera-Morin Composer JoAnn Kuchera-Morin is the director of the Center for Research in Electronic Art Technology (CREATE) at UC Santa Barbara. Full bio and more links

JoAnn Kuchera-Morin demos the AlloSphere, a new way to see, hear and interpret scientific data. Dive into the brain, feel electron spin, hear the music of the elements ... and detect previously unseen patterns that could lead to new discoveries.

JoAnn Kucnera-Morin: Tour the AlloSphere, a stunning way to see scientific data

The impression I formed of the M.B.A. experience was that it involved taking two years out of your life and going deeply into debt, all for the sake of learning how to keep a straight face while using phrases like “out-of-the-box thinking,” “win-win situation,” and “core competencies.”

Taylorism vs. Mayoism: Both management theories fail.

Most of management theory is inane, writes Mathew Stewart, the founder of a consulting firm. If you want to succeed in business, don’t get an M.B.A. Study philosophy instead. [Atlantic Magazine, June 2006]

This was on the del.icio.us Popular Booksmarks list. I've only read the first paragraph, but I am finding myself inclined to agree with the general thrust of this article. To be read in full later.

The scene: A rigorous intro-level survey course in biology, history, or economics. You're the instructor, and students are crowding the lectern, pleading for study advice for the midterm. If you're like many professors, you'll tell them something like this: Read carefully. Write down unfamiliar terms and look up their meanings. Make an outline. Reread each chapter. That's not terrible advice. But some scientists would say that you've left out the most important step: Put the book aside and hide your notes. Then recall everything you can. Write it down, or, if you're uninhibited, say it out loud. Two psychology journals have recently published papers showing that this strategy works, the latest findings from a decades-old body of research. When students study on their own, "active recall" — recitation, for instance, or flashcards and other self-quizzing — is the most effective way to inscribe something in long-term memory.

That old study method still works, researchers say. So why don't professors preach it?

The Boston Globe

an interesting article about baby's brain

Pretty sophisticated visualization. Lots of data, lots of layers.

doodling makes you smarter!

More doodles of infinite awesomeness. Love!

"[The] team asked 40 people to listen to a recording containing the names of people and places. Afterwards the people wrote down the names they could remember. While listening, half of the test subjects were also required to shade in shapes on a piece of paper. Afterwards, they remembered one-third more names than test subjects who didn't doodle while listening. "

Doodling improves concentration

A look at some of the flawed thinking that prompts people who believe in certain non-scientific concepts to advise others who don't to be more open-minded. music © QualiaSoup Category: Education Tags: open-mindedness pseudoscience paranormal supernatural contradiction anecdotal evidence prejudice close-mindedness fallacious thinking

A look at some of the flawed thinking that prompts people who believe in certain non-scientific concepts to advise others who don't to be more open-minded.

It's a safe guess that somewhere at Merck today someone is going through the meeting minutes of the day that the hair-brained scheme for the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine was launched, and that everyone who was in the room is now going to be fired.

comparison among planets and stars, cool picture

Ok. Now I feel small. Start at the top of the image and work your way down. http://is.gd/sgZ4 [from http://twitter.com/teachernz/statuses/1516861582]

Really makes you understand, you're really not that important

Leonardo of Pisa was born around 1170 AD in (of course) Pisa, Italy. While not quite as famous as some other Italian or Ninja Turtle Leonardos, we do have a lot to thank him for. His most notable contribution to your life is probably found on the top row of your keyboard. While traveling through North Africa, Leo discovered that the local number system of 0-9 was far superior than the obscure combination of X’s, V’s and I’s the Romans had invented a millennium earlier to confuse later generations of elementary school students. Leonardo brought this number system to Europe and eventually we invented Sudoku with it.

If you’re feeling the pinch in your paycheck, you may or may not feel comfortable going back to school right now, even if it can help your career prospects in the long run. You can, however, visit iTunes U for free access to helpful courses that will enlighten you to the state of the economy, inspire you to start your own business, and give you a little more perspective on what you should be doing with your money. Economic Principles Review the basics of economics here. 1. What’s the point of economics?: Learn why the study of economics is still relevant today. [University of Cambridge] 2. Microeconomic Analysis: Learn all about resource allocation and price determination in this course. [UC Berkeley] 3. Trade and Economics: This lecture will teach you all about the role of trade in economics. [CSIS] 4. Principles of Macroeconomics: This lecture will help you understand the principles of macroeconomics. [Rose State College] 5. Statistics: This course teaches the funda

Entrepreneur Lectures from Oxford

(PhysOrg.com) -- Prime numbers have intrigued curious thinkers for centuries. On one hand, prime numbers seem to be randomly distributed among the natural numbers with no other law than that of chance. But on the other hand, the global distribution of primes reveals a remarkably smooth regularity. This combination of randomness and regularity has motivated researchers to search for patterns in the distribution of primes that may eventually shed light on their ultimate nature.

May 2009. Luque, Lacasa on Generalised Benford's Law.

“New insights and concepts coming from nonlinear science, such as multiplicative processes, help us to look at prime numbers from a different perspective. According to this focus, it becomes significant that even today it is still possible to discover unnoticed hints of statistical regularity in such sequences, without being an expert in number theory. However, the most significant issue in this work is not to unveil this pattern in primes and Riemann zeros, but to understand the reason and implications of such unexpected structure, not just for number theoretical issues but, interestingly, for other disciplines as well. For instance, these results deepen our understanding of correlations in systems composed of many elements.”

(PhysOrg.com) -- Prime numbers have intrigued curious thinkers for centuries. On one hand, prime numbers seem to be randomly distributed among the natural numbers with no other law than that of chance. But on the other hand, the global distribution of primes reveals a remarkably smooth regularity. This ...

“Imagine that you have $1,000 in your bank account, with an interest rate of 1% per month,” Lacasa said. “The first month, your money will become $1,000*1.01 = $1,010. The next month, $1,010*1.01, and so on. After n months, you will have $1,000*(1.01)^n. Notice that you will need many months to go from $1,000 to $2,000, while to go from $8,000 to $9,000 will be much easier. When you analyze your accounting data, you will realize that the first digit 1 is more represented than 8 or 9, precisely as Benford's law dictates. This is a very basic example of a multiplicative process where 0.01 is the multiplicative constant. “Physicists have shown that many processes in nature can be modeled as stochastic multiplicative processes, where the previously constant value of 0.01 is now a random variable and the data equivalent to the money of our latter example is another random variable with an underlying distribution 1/x. Stochastic processes with such distributions are shown to follow BL....”

holy shit

Information about artifical itelligence

read later

eriments in an fMRI machine. Carolyn says she will be participating in the sc

Cho chweet: "Footage of these experiments is poignant, as the kids struggle to delay gratification for just a little bit longer. Some cover their eyes with their hands or turn around so that they can’t see the tray. Others start kicking the desk, or tug on their pigtails, or stroke the marshmallow as if it were a tiny stuffed animal."

Summary of EQ, delayed gratification studies.

The secret of self-control. People who are able to delay gratification appear to be more successful in life.

The secret of self-control.

study of success and happiness or the lack of same

Illustration of why curveballs seem to suddenly drop.

Optical illusion

Our illusions suggest that the perceived “break” may be caused by the transition from the central visual system to the peripheral visual system. Like a curveball, the spinning disks in the illusions appear to abruptly change direction when an observer switches from foveal to peripheral viewing.

"the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people.” “What we do,” Vaillant concluded, “affects how we feel just as much as how we feel affects what we do.”

how it works

"&quot;There is no time for celebration when we fix a cable,&quot; Rennie says. &quot;There is lots of pressure from cable owners to move quickly. They are losing revenue.&quot;" そんなに頻繁に切れてるのかぁ… (いや、確かにそうだけど)

"For the past five years, John Rennie has braved the towering waves of the North Atlantic Ocean to keep your e-mail coming to you. As chief submersible engineer aboard the Wave Sentinel, part of the fleet operated by U.K.-based undersea installation and maintenance firm Global Marine Systems, Rennie--a congenial, 6'4", 57-year-old Scotsman--patrols the seas, dispatching a remotely operated submarine deep below the surface to repair undersea cables."

The Beast

Como ufuncionan los cables submarinos por internet

Pull up the wrong undersea cable, and the Internet goes dark in Berlin or Dubai. See our animated infographics of how the web works!

to be read

Brain research can help us craft spaces that relax, inspire, awaken, comfort, and heal. By Emily Anthes.

on Vimeo — pretty frickin' cool!

Time lapse video of night sky as it passes over the 2009 Texas Star Party in Fort Davis, Texas. The galactic core of Milky Way is brightly displayed. Images taken with 15mm fisheye lens.

Time lapse video of night sky as it passes over the 2009 Texas Star Party in Fort Davis, Texas. The galactic core of Milky Way is brightly displayed. Images taken with 15mm fisheye lens.

On Monday, May 11, after months of delays and preparation, NASA's Space Shuttle Atlantis launched from the Kennedy Space Center on the final servicing mission to the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. The seven crew members left Florida for low Earth orbit at 2:01 pm, for a scheduled 11-day mission, including 5 days of Extra-vehicular activity (EVAs) to work on the Hubble. So far the repairs appear to be going very well - the final EVA is scheduled for today, and the landing planned for May 22nd. I was fortunate enough to attend the launch at Banana Creek viewing area, and wish to extend my gratitude to all the people at NASA.

Twitter, Adderall, lifehacking, mindful jogging, power browsing, Obama’s BlackBerry, and the benefits of overstimulation.

In Defense of Distraction

If I didn't write this sentence, most of my friends who started to read this article would quickly lose focus and start scanning it.

This is pretty awesome. It's a plain-English explanation of what rules should have to apply to any literary use of time travel, given what we know about space-time. "Time travel isn’t magic; it may or may not be allowed by the laws of physics — we don’t know them well enough to be sure — but we do know enough to say that if time travel were possible, certain rules would have to be obeyed." I was, of course, reading these rules and thinking of LOST, which, by my count, seems to play by all the rules expect maybe number three (but, in their defense, if you don't have some visual cue to the audience that time travel just happened, how would they ever know? I understand that it would happen in the real world, but you kind of need the flashing light as a storytelling device). Great read.

0. There are no paradoxes. 1. Traveling into the future is easy. 2. Traveling into the past is hard — but maybe not impossible. 3. Traveling through time is like traveling through space. 4. Things that travel together, age together. 5. Black holes are not time machines. 6. If something happened, it happened. 7. There is no meta-time. 8. You can’t travel back to before the time machine was built. 9. Unless you go to a parallel universe. 10. And even then, your old universe is still there.

Like Rule 0.

I love how smart everyone wants to act in the comments.

As one of Olivia Judson’s biggest fans, I feel honored and a bit giddy to be filling in for her. But maybe I should confess up front that, unlike Olivia and the previous guest writers, I’m not a biologist, evolutionary or otherwise. In fact, I’m (gasp!) a mathematician. One of the pleasures of looking at the world through mathematical eyes is that you can see certain patterns that would otherwise be hidden. This week’s column is about one such pattern. It’s a beautiful law of collective organization that links urban studies to zoology. It reveals Manhattan and a mouse to be variations on a single structural theme. The mathematics of cities was launched in 1949 when George Zipf, a linguist working at Harvard, reported a striking regularity in the size distribution of cities. He noticed that if you tabulate the biggest cities in a given country and rank them according to their populations, the largest city is always about twice as big as the second largest, and three times as big as th

One of the pleasures of looking at the world through mathematical eyes is that you can see certain patterns that would otherwise be hidden. This week’s column is about one such pattern. It’s a beautiful law of collective organization that links urban studies to zoology. It reveals Manhattan and a mouse to be variations on a single structural theme. [...] These numerical coincidences seem to be telling us something profound. It appears that Aristotle’s metaphor of a city as a living thing is more than merely poetic. There may be deep laws of collective organization at work here, the same laws for aggregates of people and cells.

Why elephants and cities have the same basic infrastructure

"For instance, if one city is 10 times as populous as another one, does it need 10 times as many gas stations?"

Uncovering our earliest ancestor. How the discovery of Ida, a 47 million year old fossil, is rewriting our history.

A major documentary film on Ida and her place in our history.

Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor How the discovery of Ida, a 47 million year old fossil, is rewriting our history

One of the most significant scientific discoveries in recent memory!

Jeff Hawkins

Jeff Hawkins kertoo aivotutkimuksen teorianmuodostuksesta sekä esittelee parhaan kuulemani älykkyyden määritelmän. Kiva kuullaa miestä, kun on aikoinaan lukenut tämän saman hänen kirjastaan.

Treo creator Jeff Hawkins urges us to take a new look at the brain -- to see it not as a fast processor, but as a memory system that stores and plays back experiences to help us predict, intelligently, what will happen next.

TED talk - currently no theory about how brain works because there is not framework for the theory - The framework is memory and prediction not behavior and computational ability.

PC Plus is the UK's premier technology magazine, bringing you all the latest news, reviews, features, tutorials and more.

A decision making tool that helps you organize your thoughts.

Decision Making College Major Career Jobs Web site Let Simon Decide is a decision-making application intended to walk you through important decisions one step at a time. (lifehacker)

Decision Making College Major Career Jobs

finally, someone seems to be working toward secularism in a quiet, reasonable and unsensationalist way

The Reason Project is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit foundation devoted to spreading scientific knowledge and secular values in society. The foundation draws on the talents of prominent and creative thinkers in a wide range of disciplines to encourage critical thinking and erode the influence of dogmatism, superstition, and bigotry in our world.

A Non-Profit Dedicated to Reason. Created by Sam Harris.

Don't let the cats get to your head.

Kevin Lafferty is a smart, cautious, thoughtful scientist who doesn't hate cats, but he has put forth a provocative theory that suggests that a clever cat parasite may alter human cultures on a massive scale.

Research has shown that women who are infected with the parasite tend to be warm, outgoing and attentive to others, while infected men tend to be less intelligent and probably a bit boring. But both men and women who are infected are more prone to feeling guilty and insecure.

mit Online Course Materials education tolearn

During the summer of 2007, Gödel, Escher, Bach was recorded especially for OpenCourseWare. Below are links to the videos, along with breakdowns of the video content.

comment on the issue of fairness in teaching elementary physics

‘About 6-7 years ago, I was in a philosophy class at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (good science/engineering school) and the teaching assistant was explaining Descartes. He was trying to show how things don't always happen the way we think they will and explained that, while a pen always falls when you drop it on Earth, it would just float away if you let go of it on the Moon. My jaw dropped a little. I blurted "What?!" ’

WoW!!! Outstanding.

Scientific Designs

openmindedness

Virtual Body Site in both Spanish and English

An online resource that provides a virtual tour of the human body.

Einstein's General Theory of Relativity - Stanford lectures

Good lesson in video form. Each 1:30 hours.

Aula em inglês

Theory of Relativity Lectures by Stanford on Youtube

On the evening of March 31st, 2009, Tim Tevebaugh was driving home from work east of Craigmont in the southern Idaho Panhandle (see map below). Across the rolling hay fields, Tim saw a very unusual phenomenon. The snow rollers that he took pictures of are extremely rare because of the unique combination of snow, wind, temperature and moisture needed to create them. They form with light but sticky snow and strong (but not too strong) winds. Some snow rollers are formed by gravity (i.e. rolling down a hill), but in this case, the snow rollers were generated by the wind. These snow rollers formed during the day as they weren't present in the morning on Tim's drive to work.

This is so cool, like tumbleweeds, only snow

Snow rollers.

weirdness... natural rolled up snow. It looks like what happens when I try to make a snowman.

Weird weather

email to anderson

Look at this! Cool!

Snow Rollers

this bookmark brought from the different place.

really good stories about the future. unique content

This may be a source (past, present, and future) of good material to challenge the assertions of what it means to be human.

Blog about singularity, nanotech, AI and all that good sf stuff.

A cure for blindness using stem cells ?

Impressive results

"[T]hree patients had their sight restored in less than a month by contact lenses cultured with stem cells." Holy shit.

Stem Cell Contact Lenses Cure Blindness in Less Than a Month http://bit.ly/KBWEw #feedly [from http://twitter.com/jjjunk/statuses/2038716228]

EYESIGHT HEALED WITH STEMCELLS

mathematics environment video

links to other videos

Parallelism and Hyperbolic geometry in models that are crotcehed

kindergarten for adults...play tanks (rather than think tanks)

Granted, hindsight is 20/20, but some awfully strange substances have been used for pharmaceutical purposes in the past -- and some might argue, continue to be used today. Here are some vintage advertisements touting items that we might balk at taking today.

Eye-opening. Great graphics.

referência de embalagens antigas

architectural conjecture :: urban speculation :: landscape futures

A project proposing to build a 6,000 km wall across the Sahara to stop desertification using bacteria which solidify sand into sandstone and could be used almost like a giant 3d printer. The future is here.

Larsson's project deservedly won first prize last fall at the Holcim Foundation's Awards for Sustainable Construction held in Marrakech, Morocco. One of the most interesting aspects of the project, I think, is that this solidified dunescape is created through a particularly novel form of "sustainable construction" – that is, through a kind of infection of the earth. In other words, Larsson has proposed using bacillus pasteurii, a "microorganism, readily available in marshes and wetlands, [that] solidifies loose sand into sandstone," he explains.

Lo scherzo dell'anno. I cubetti di ghiaccio con le Mentos dentro da mettere dentro la Coca-Cola.

ZOMG I must try this...Mentos Time Bomb...freeze Mentos in ice cubes, then give to friend in Coke http://bit.ly/9ej5R [from http://twitter.com/waltpsu/statuses/2077554320]

Content Type: text/html; charset=utf-8, size: 31,650 bytes

You've seen the YouTube clips demonstrating the riotous effect of dropping Mentos into Diet Coke. Why not turn the fizzy fun into an epic party prank of your own? Here's our recipe for a little cocktail we call the Manhattan Project.

computer simulation software

Great website for showing GTT concepts

Something to think about when you wonder if you “see” reality.

So we’re forced to realize a very interesting conclusion. The wavelength of a photon certainly reflects a color – but we cannot produce every color the human eye sees by a single photon of a specific wavelength. There is no such thing as a pink laser – two lasers must be mixed to produce that color. There are “real” colors (we call them pure spectral or monochromatic colors) and “unreal” colors that only exist in the brain.

While we consider this rather trivial today, at the time you’d be laughed out of the room if you suggested this somehow illustrated a fundamental property of light and color. The popular theory of the day was that color was a mixture of light and dark, and that prisms simply colored light. Color went from bright red (white light with the smallest amount of “dark” added) to dark blue (white light with the most amount of “dark” added before it turned black).

"Tricks work only because magicians know, at an intuitive level, how we look at the world," says Macknik, lead author of the paper. "Even when we know we're going to be tricked, we still can't see it, which suggests that magicians are fooling the mind at a very deep level." By reverse-engineering these deceptions, Macknik hopes to illuminate the mental loopholes that make us see a woman get sawed in half or a rabbit appear out of thin air even when we know such stuff is impossible. "Magicians were taking advantage of these cognitive illusions long before any scientist identified them," Martinez-Conde says.

GReader: Magic and the Brain: Teller Reveals the Neuroscience of Illusion http://ow.ly/5xUu [from http://twitter.com/ChipRiley/statuses/1725035126]

Retweeting @copyblogger: Penn & Teller Reveal the Neuroscience of Illusion - http://is.gd/vRUV [from http://twitter.com/apoorvgadwal/statuses/1698147950]

""People take reality for granted," Teller says shortly before stepping onstage. "Reality seems so simple. We just open our eyes and there it is. But that doesn't mean it is simple." For Teller (that's his full legal name), magic is more than entertainment. He wants his tricks to reveal the everyday fraud of perception so that people become aware of the tension between what is and what seems to be. Our brains don't see everything—the world is too big, too full of stimuli."

RT @diannagraf: RT @drtiki Want to get ahead? Sleep in http://bit.ly/Op41P @JonathanStrahan don't get up before me in Tas, that's just wrong [from http://twitter.com/meika/statuses/1665793930]

"Smug early birds take note: Night owls actually have more mental stamina than those who awaken at the crack of dawn, according to new research."

RT @jontybrook: Finally! Science confirms that late sleepers are more productive: http://ping.fm/KqtBS (via @tferriss) &lt;- YAY! [from http://twitter.com/danphilpott/statuses/1715473753]

This is an interesting article, but it leaves way too many gaps. Does it measure productivity by hours awake?

Science & Nature

space game

Good for my unit on the heavens

These Grades K - 5 links are set up by various content/curriculum areas.

– Grades K - 5 - Oak Street Elementary School - Plattsburgh City School District - organised into subject areas.

science aging health weird genetics news

there's something more than meets the eye, here.

The overall pattern is a spiral shape because our brain likes to fill in missing bits to a pattern. Even though the stripes are not the same color all the way around the spiral , the overlapping spirals makes our brain think they are. The very fact that you have to examine the picture closely to figure out any of this at all shows just how easily we can be fooled.

Richard Wiseman comes one of the best color optical illusions I have ever seen.

うわあああこの緑と青、同じ色だって

increible

Photos of a volcanic eruption, and also of a "dark molecular cloud" in outer-space.

wow.

Awesome photos of an eruption in progress from the ISS. Also includes a bit about a "blank spot" in the night sky where a dense cloud about 500 light years away blocks light from reaching us.

from International Space Station

By Eddie Wrenn Last updated at 7:46 PM on 25th June 2009

Porqué hay 60 minutos en una hora.

The Big Picture - News Stories in Photographs from the Boston Globe

Excellent resource especially for Homeschoolers

Muchas direcciones para famosos viajes virtuales a museos, ciudades, etc...

Opis działania różnych silników

論文によれば当初1万枚の画像データベースで試した時には生成画像の品質は失望させられるものだったが、データベースを200万枚まで増やすと品質が飛躍的に向上したという。Web上にアップされる画像の総数は日々増加しているのだから（Flickrへの投稿画像は昨年30億枚を突破している）

2007年のSIGGRAPHで、アメリカ・カーネギメロン大学のJames HaysとAlexei A. Efrosが発表した、画像内に映り込んだ所望のオブジェクトを排除し、違和感の無い画像を生成するシーン補完技術。Web上の画像から対象となる画像の類似画像を検索し、その画像で隠蔽領域を完全に置き換えることで違和感の無い補完画像を生成するというもの。出来上がった画像に違和感を感じない。恐ろしい…

すげー。。。。

すごいこれ。

普通に凄い

Publishing

When incremental change doesn't cut it. "It’s true that stupidity and malevolence do sometimes play a role in the disruption of industries. But in the first part of this essay I’ll argue that even smart and good organizations can fail in the face of disruptive change, and that there are common underlying structural reasons why that’s the case. That’s a much scarier story.""The problem is that your newspaper has an organizational architecture which is, to use the physicists’ phrase, a local optimum. Relatively small changes to that architecture - like firing your photographers - don’t make your situation better, they make it worse.""The only way to get from one organizational architecture to the other is to make drastic, painful changes."An early sign of impending disruption is when there’s a sudden flourishing of startup organizations serving an overlapping customer need...organizational architecture is radically different..."

about scientific publishing disruption, and disruption in general

Scientific publishers should be terrified that some of the world’s best scientists, people at or near their research peak, people whose time is at a premium, are spending hundreds of hours each year creating original research content for their blogs, content that in many cases would be difficult or impossible to publish in a conventional journal. What we’re seeing here is a spectacular expansion in the range of the blog medium. By comparison, the journals are standing still.

The answer is "Yes".

hm...

May be the ultimate weekend killer.

http://sptnk.org/ ContemporaryCulture

prettymuch anything jonathan harris touches is pretty interesting.

Sixty Symbols - Physics and Astronomy [Fine Structure Constant] [Schrödinger's cat] [Frequency]

video science curious

Although It has taken homo sapiens several million years to evolve from the apes, the useful information in our DNA, has probably changed by only a few million bits. So the rate of biological evolution in humans, Stephen Hawking points...

But we are now entering a new phase, of what Hawking calls "self designed evolution," in which we will be able to change and improve our DNA.

a poop-torial

One way scientists learn about animals is by studying their poop -- also called “scat” or "dung." Let’s look at some animal poop and see if you can guess who left it behind.

win

The math people catalog EVERYTHING.

top 50 des animaux les plus degueu

Evolution sometimes go in weird directions...

As the Weekend Edition math guy, I spoke to Scott Simon and told him the body mass index fails on 10 grounds:

So very awesome at striking down one of the worse medical myths in current society. Everyone should read this.

"A group of Spanish researchers reported today in Science that they may have stumbled upon a substance that could become the ultimate memory-enhancer. The group was studying a poorly-understood region of the visual cortex. They found that if they boosted production of a protein called RGS-14 (pictured) in that area of the visual cortex in mice, it dramatically affected the animals' ability to remember objects they had seen. Mice with the RGS-14 boost could remember objects they had seen for up to two months. Ordinarily the same mice would only be able to remember these objects for about an hour. The researchers concluded that this region of the visual cortex, known as layer six of region V2, is responsible for creating visual memories. When the region is removed, mice can no longer remember any object they see."

Imagine if you could look at something once and remember it forever. You would never have to ask for directions again. Now a group of scientists has isolated a protein that mega-boosts your ability to remember what you see.

nifty!

Real articles. Funny subjects.

News: The University of Melbourne

Surfing the net at work for pleasure actually increases our concentration levels and helps make a more productive workforce, according to a new University of Melbourne study. Dr Brent Coker, from the Department of Management and Marketing, says that workers who engage in ‘Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing’ (WILB) are more productive than those who don’t. “People who do surf the Internet for fun at work - within a reasonable limit of less than 20% of their total time in the office - are more productive by about 9% than those who don’t,” he says.

Motore di ricerca google Scholar

google

ricerca bibliografica

minori

science technology

Memristors... The 6th missing basic electronic factor..

Bio computers

リンク/まとめ

読者の皆さんの中には、「論文」と聞くと身構えてしまう方も多いのではないでしょうか？ 論文というと、書くのも読むのも大変で何だか小難しいことが書いてあるもののように思えるものです。それどころか、「論文とは縁がない」「プログラムがすべてだ」と思う方もいるかもしれません。しかし、ある特定分野の技術や研究を詳しく知るためには、論文は手軽で確実な情報源です。

"興味のある論文でも、なかなか読みにくいものは、電車などの移動中に読むのも発想が広がる良い方法です。便利な睡眠薬になるかもしれませんが……。"

online games re ecology, recycling, oceans, etc.

Environment Games

games to help Oscar the otter protect his environment

Collection of interactive SMART Board games for educators on PBS KIDS. Students will enjoy participating in these collaborative, fun and engaging experiences, while exploring curriculum from trusted programs such as Curious George, Super Why and Arthur. Like our programs, all of our games are age-appropriate and vetted by educators.

this is a very good tol to have in your classroom.

Nw1AS.jpg (JPEG-kuva, 950×848 kuvapistettä)

ganzfeld procedure, inverted binoculars painkiller, rubber hand illusion, pinocchia illusion, purkinje lights

This is the collest thing ever !!

Intereactive web site recreating the Apollo 11 mission.

Relive in real time

Cool! ditch the shoes

OK this is funny! If you wear flipflops it's less likely you will injure your foot!

To Run Better, Start by Ditching Your Nikes

Cat purrs train humans

I suspected this all along posted July 13 2009

free computer science books online in PDF format

eso

Classic lectures on physics. Bill Gates funded. Now available for free with captions, notes, etc.

Remembering Apollo 11

Fotos impresionantes...

"Systems on the edge of chaos are said to be in a state of "self-organised criticality". These systems are right on the boundary between stable, orderly behaviour - such as a swinging pendulum - and the unpredictable world of chaos, as exemplified by turbulence... Brain scans used to map the connections between regions of the human brain discovered that they form a "small-world network" - exactly the right architecture to support self-organised criticality. Small-world networks lie somewhere between regular networks, where each node is connected to its nearest neighbours, and random networks, which have no regular structure but many long-distance connections between nodes at opposite sides of the network. Small-world networks take the most useful aspects of both systems. In places, the nodes have many connections with their neighbours, but the network also contains random and often long links between nodes that are very far away from one another. It's the perfect compromise."

Do ideas sometimes pop into your head from, it seems, nowhere? Yes, and it’s because your brain actually operates on the edge of chaos. In fact, your brain is like a pile of sand, but don't worry: that's why it has such remarkable powers

Feynman lectures series at Microsoft's Project Tuva

Richard Feynman lectures

The neurological assessment of the benefits of swearing. Also, researchers found that when we swear too much, the words lose the power of emotion.

Times Online

Some of the most entertaining, informative and mind-blowing science videos on the web come from the TED conference. Here are five.

Some of the most entertaining, informative and mind-blowing science videos on the web come from the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference. Here are five.

Some of the most entertaining, informative and mind-blowing science videos on the web come from TED – the Technology, Entertainment, Design conference. Challenged to give the “talk of their lives,” the world’s top scientists and science communicators have been dazzling audiences – many of whom are thought leaders, trend-setters and entertainers – for years now. Most of the best talks are now freely available on the internet, but sifting through hundreds of video clips to find the real gems can be hard going.

via http://habrahabr.ru/blogs/popular_science/65236/

BBC NEWS | Technology | Artificial brain '10 years away' http://nm14b.tk [from http://twitter.com/stevepuma/statuses/2802534611]

a newly invented technology for an artificial brain will be available in the market 10 years away.

Blue Brain project says within 10 years we can have a fully functional replica of the human brain.

Content Type: text/html

Turned up on oursignal.com ...

Computers are evolving – literally. While the tech world argues netbooks vs notebooks, synthetic biologists are leaving traditional computers behind altogether. A team of US scientists have engineered bacteria that could solve complex mathematical problems faster than anything made from silicon.

Content Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

RT @zaibatsu: Bacterial computers can crack mathematical problems fast than most computers http://su.pr/1DwpiJ [from http://twitter.com/lekahe/statuses/2856248758]

Bacteria Computer! Wa-ow!

Moore's Law is one of the few Moira threads we've teased out in our short history in the technium. There must be others. Most of the technium's predetermined developments remain hidden, not yet uncovered, by tools not yet invented. But we've learned to look for them. Searching, we can see similar laws peeking out now. These "laws" are reflexes of the technium that kick in regardless of the social climate. They too will spawn progress, and inspire new powers and new desires as they unroll in ordered sequence. Perhaps these self-governing dynamics will appear in genetics, or in pharmaceuticals, or in cognition. Once a dynamic like Moore's Law is launched and made visible, the fuels of finance, competition, and markets will push the law to its limits and keep it riding along that curve until it has consumed its physical potential.

"abstract thinking makes it easier for people to form surprising connections between seemingly unrelated concepts"

blah blah

I just don't know why they put up with the way men look http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article6727710.ece [from http://twitter.com/JacksonATL/statuses/2917669057]

Scientists have found that evolution is driving women to become ever more beautiful, while men remain as aesthetically unappealing as their caveman ancestors.

"The researchers have found beautiful women have more children than their plainer counterparts and that a higher proportion of those children are female. Those daughters, once adult, also tend to be attractive and so repeat the pattern." In my opinion, nowhere did they say there were any kind of studies done to analyze images of women from ancient past (as if such images could even be considered to be accurate), compare them to images of modern women, and determine that modern women are objectively more beautiful. Not to mention that beauty is subjective anyway. The whole article is deeply unscientific.

Women are getting more beautifu

Psychology

Why is this no big surprise? "EVER wondered why the pundits who failed to predict the current economic crisis are still being paid for their opinions? It's a consequence of the way human psychology works in a free market, according to a study of how people's self-confidence affects the way others respond to their advice."

good stuff

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/17-08/st_best worst 1 wired 2 wiredwired 3

1 Sea mammal blowhole. Any animal that spends appreciable time in the ocean should be able to extract oxygen from water via gills. Enlarging the lungs and moving a nostril to the back of the head is a poor work-around. 2 Hyena clitoris. When engorged, this "pseudopenis," which doubles as the birth canal, becomes so hard it can crush babies to death during exit. 3 Kangaroo teat. In order to nurse, the just-born joey, a frail and squishy jellybean, must clamber up Mom's torso and into her pouch for a nipple. 4 Giraffe birth canal. Mama giraffes stand up while giving birth, so baby's entry into the world is a 5-foot drop. Wheeee! Crack. 5 Goliath bird-eating spider exoskeleton. This giant spider can climb trees to hunt very mobile prey. Yet it has a shell so fragile it practically explodes when it falls? Well, at least it can produce silk to make a sail. Oh, wait — it can't!

Cool calendar using paper capilarity to mark the dates.

Ink calendar

DarkHalf|zz

the auditory illusions are interesting!

New Scientist's guide to the simple techniques that will uncover the inner workings of your grey matter

"Bobby McFerrin demonstrates the power of the pentatonic scale, using audience participation, at the event "Notes & Neurons: In Search of the Common Chorus", from the 2009 World Science Festival, June 12, 2009."

Using the audience at the event "Notes & Neurons: In Search of the Common Chorus".

awesome

Maira Kalman: "Everything is invented. Language. Childhood Careers. Relationships. Religion. Philsophy. The Future. They are not there for the plucking."

useful.

While there is no surefire on-the-spot way to sniff out dissemblers, there are some helpful tactics for uncovering untruths. Liars often give short or one-word responses to questions, while truth tellers are more likely to flesh out their answers. A liar provides fewer details & uses fewer words than an honest person, and talks for a smaller percentage of the conversation. Liars are often reluctant to admit ordinary storytelling mistakes. When honest people tell stories, they may realize partway through that they left out some details and would unselfconsciously backtrack to fill in holes. They also may realize a previous statement wasn't quite right, and go back and explain further. Liars, on the other hand, "are worried that someone might catch them in a lie and are reluctant to admit to such ordinary imperfections,"

Reid Technique

Liars often give short or one-word responses to questions, while truth tellers are more likely to flesh out their answers. According to a 2003 study by DePaulo, a liar provides fewer details and uses fewer words t

Everyone stretches the truth a little. Here's what to look for (and how not to get found out).

Amazing!

interesting, useful tips on presenting

Sharing: Who says technical presentations can&#39;t be engaging?: People often ask if technical or scien.. http://tinyurl.com/my7trw [from http://twitter.com/mfubib/statuses/2450508055]

People often ask if technical or science-related presentations can be as compelling as presentations covering other less technical topics.

"Failure to spend the [presentation] time wisely and well, failure to educate, entertain, elucidate, enlighten, and most important of all, failure to maintain attention and interest should be punishable by stoning. There is no excuse for tedium."

Light can be stopped and restarted?

i don't understand how cooling Na helps stop light - or what the "signature" encoded in the light is ...

Harvard brainiac Lene Hau uses Bose-Einstein condensates to "freeze" light, stopping it and effectively storing it as matter.

Annotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.news.harvard.edu%2Fgazette%2F2007%2F02.08%2F99-hau.html

Simply stop eating during the 12-16 hour period before you want to be awake. Once you start eating again, your internal clock will be reset as though it is the start of a new day.  Your body will consider the time you break your fast as your new "morning." For example, if you want to start waking up at 2:00 am, you should start fasting between 10:00 am or 2:00 pm the previous day, and don't break your fast until you wake up at 2:00 am. Make sure you eat a nice healthy meal to jumpstart your system. Another example: If you are travelling from Los Angeles to Tokyo, figure out when breakfast is served in Tokyo, and don't eat for the 12-16 hours before Tokyo's breakfast time.

ေန႔နဲ႔ည မွားေနရင္ ဒီလိုလုပ္ပါ။ ဒါေပမဲ့ ကၽြန္ေတာ့္အတြက္ေတာ့ မွားေသးတယ္ :P

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Via Marignal Revolution (it has a blog)

What do you think are the odds that you will die during the next year? Try to put a number to it — 1 in 100? 1 in 10,000? Whatever it is, it will be twice as large 8 years from now. This startling fact was first noticed by the British actuary Benjamin Gompertz in 1825 and is now called the “Gompertz Law of human mortality.”

canal deciencia y tecnologia

Gritは知性とは関係のない「やり抜く力」。「1つのことに集中する」のが重要。引き出すには「よく頑張った」と取り組み方をほめる。「頭のよさ」ほめるとあきらめがち

「やればできる」は「やる」が大事なんだね。教え方も変えていかなきゃ。

"個人の中に挑戦的な課題を「やり抜く力」があるというのが Grit の考え方"

Por que exercícios não emagrecem. Uma argumentação sobre a total inutilidade dos exercícios sobre o emagrecimento.

Calories calories calories. People are forgetting to count.

The basic problem is that while it's true that exercise burns calories and that you must burn calories to lose weight, exercise has another effect: it can stimulate hunger. That causes us to eat more, which in turn can negate the weight-loss benefits we just accrued. Exercise, in other words, isn't necessarily helping us lose weight. It may even be making it harder.

Whether because exercise makes us hungry or because we want to reward ourselves, many people eat more — and eat more junk food, like doughnuts — after going to the gym.

!! digital information을 세번쩨 replicator로 규정. 그런데 그것이 copy,mutation,natural selection을 모두 충족하는가? 글쓴이에 의하면 현재의 컴퓨터들은 웹 상에서, 인간의 통제를 벗어나 스스로 복제하고, 정보를 수집하며, 편집하고, 뭐..그런말을 하는데.. / / mutation은 없고 summary만 있을뿐 아닌가? 그리고 natural selection은 혹시 virus에 의한것을 말하는가? 그렇다면 너무 유치하고.. 검색순위 상단에 오르는 것을 말한다면 그것은 인간에 의한것인데?

There's a new type of evolution going on and it may not be to our liking, says Susan Blackmore

Memes are a new kind of information - behaviours rather than DNA - copied by a new kind of machinery - brains rather than chemicals inside cells. This is a new evolutionary process because all of the three critical stages - copying, varying and selection - are done by those brains. So does the same apply to new technology?

Way cool 3-D video explanation of deep field sky photography via Hubble...

Sputnik Observatory is a New York not-for-profit educational organization dedicated to the study of contemporary culture. We fulfill this mission by documenting, archiving, and disseminating ideas that are shaping modern thought by interviewing leading thinkers in the arts, sciences and technology from around the world. Our philosophy is that ideas are NOT selfish, ideas are NOT viruses. Ideas survive because they fit in with the rest of life. Our position is that ideas are energy, and should interconnect and re-connect continuously because by linking ideas together we learn, and new ideas emerge.

Nuovo progetto per parlare di cultura contemporanea

hyperthymestic syndrome,

This piece blew my mind.

Researchers had never found a subject with a perfect memory — then along came Jill Price.

a mulher que não esquece nada

The woman remembers dates to the day. Amazing. But know few quizzers who can do the same.

Well worth the read http://bit.ly/J9ctr [from http://twitter.com/JacksonATL/statuses/3385969448]

If humans are seeking machines, we've now created the perfect machines to allow us to seek endlessly. This perhaps should make us cautious.

Seeking. You can't stop doing it. Sometimes it feels as if the basic drives for food, sex, and sleep have been overridden by a new need for endless nuggets of electronic information. We are so insatiably curious that we gather data even if it gets us in tr

Hee hee hee

It is possible to successfully fend off a zombie attack, according to Canadian mathematicians. The key is to hit hard and hit often.

IBM research about presentation of graphs with color

Bowloftoast sez, "This is a short animation that takes the viewer through a progressive description of all (and all possible) dimensions, up to and including the 10th. It is an elegant introduction to the fundamentals of string theory and a mind-blowing toe-dip into the pool of the metaphysical."

One of the most revolutionary (and simple) inventions EVER in our history. He launched this only a few months ago, but you can be SURE that this will change the world dramatically.

Sistema que permite filtrar agua, eliminando bacterias y virus. Filtro de 20 nanometros.

I plan to use this video to inspire my students to be problem solvers. Prelude to the "We Can Change the World Challenge," maybe?

best science visualization video os 2009

Jump to: navigation, search The Dancing Plague (or Dance Epidemic) of 1518 was a case of dancing mania that occurred in Strasbourg, France (then part of the Holy Roman Empire) in July 1518. Numerous people took to dancing for days without rest, and over the period of about one month, most of the people died from heart attack, stroke, or exhaustion.

"The Dancing Plague (or Dance Epidemic) of 1518 was a case of dancing mania that occurred in Strasbourg, France (then part of the Holy Roman Empire) in July 1518. Numerous people took to dancing for days without rest, and over the period of about one month, most of the people died from heart attack, stroke, or exhaustion."

Potential models for zombie outbreaks.

PDF

Zombies are a popular figure in pop culture/entertainment and they are usually portrayed as being brought about through an outbreak or epidemic. Consequently, we model a zombie attack, using biological assumptions based on popular zombie movies. We introduce a basic model for zombie infection, determine equilibria and their stability, and illustrate the outcome with numerical solutions. We then refine the model to introduce a latent period of zombification, whereby humans are infected, but not infectious, before becoming undead. We then modify the model to include the effects of possible quarantine or a cure. Finally, we examine the impact of regular, impulsive reductions in the number of zombies and derive conditions under which eradication can occur. We show that only quick, aggressive attacks can stave off the doomsday scenario: the collapse of society as zombies overtake us all.

Hah thats a good one very interesting.

This is Oxygen, produced at the Ringling College of Art + Design as my thesis for the department of Computer Animation. As a recent graduate, I am hoping this film along with a number of effects I have done for other students will help me get a job doing vfx for film, tv, or games. Visit my website at http://particleart.com to see my reel and (not quite so fantastic as this) other work!

fun cartoon about oxygen - tells difft properties of elements

Genius

bacon welders

Thanks EMone

@ryanbaldwin that was just amazing! Breakfast will never be the same again! [via tonyarkles] http://tr.im/iVsr [from http://twitter.com/wafflessh/statuses/1530175526]

Amazing. Prosciutto as a thermal lance.

Get Adobe Flash player

Space Panorama - Zoom in and out!

Career analyst Dan Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don't: Traditional rewards aren't always as effective as we think. Listen for illuminating stories -- and maybe, a way forward.

Videos of the Ishikawa Komuro Lab's high-speed robot hand performing impressive acts of dexterity and skillful manipulation. However, the video being passed around is slight on details. Meanwhile, their video presentation at ICRA 2009 (which took place in May in Kobe, Japan) has an informative narration and demonstrates additional capabilities. I have included this video below, which shows the manipulator dribbling a ping-pong ball, spinning a pen, throwing a ball, tying knots, grasping a grain of rice with tweezers, and tossing / re-grasping a cellphone!

High-Speed Robot Hand Demonstrates Dexterity and Skillful Manipulation

A High-Speed Robot Hand Demonstrates Dexterity and Skillful Manipulation.

The tweezer grasp is great.

visual and audio mind benders

A great article. Every thing is perception. i beleive in it

Review of Biocentrism in the Discover magazine

The farther we peer into space, the more we realize that the nature of the universe cannot be understood fully by inspecting spiral galaxies or watching distant supernovas. It lies deeper. It involves our very selves.

Technology help

Traffic jams are sometimes caused by drivers&#039; competitive behavior. In certain situations the actions of a single driver can lessen traffic congestion or even erase a traffic jam completely.

Traffic jams are sometimes caused by drivers' competitive behavior. In certain situations the actions of a single driver can lessen traffic congestion or even erase a traffic jam completely.

Two scientists suggest that depression is not a malfunction, but a mental adaptation that brings certain cognitive advantages

"Two scientists suggest that depression is not a malfunction, but a mental adaptation that brings certain cognitive advantages"

Wyom

Simply Complicated Apparel

Interesting, LONG article about the placebo effect. I always liked the thought that your mind has the power to heal you. Or if you are in a negative mood, sometimes just saying positive things can alter your feelings.

Placebos have long been used to control for the effects of taking *any* medicine. However, now those effects seem to be getting stronger... Fascinating.

"It's not that the old meds are getting weaker, drug developers say. It's as if the placebo effect is somehow getting stronger."

Mida Beecher avastas, miks see tähtis on ja kuidas edasi, kui platseeboefekt ise näib tugevamaks muutuvat?

"mini movies" that you can download - and guess what, they have the .swf extension on them. Which of course means that you can right-click on them to download. Then open up Notebook and click on "Insert" and "Flash File". Browse to where you downloaded the movie. Now the little movie will play right off of the Notebook page for you.

Short, free, dynamic video clips to show a variety of math (mostly algebra and geometry) concepts. A good supporting resource.

multiple dimensions 10D

The 3D world of solid objects and limitless space is something we accept with scarcely a second thought. Time, the fourth dimension, gets a little trickier. But it's when we start to explore worlds that embody more – or indeed fewer – dimensions that things get really tough.

like the ten dimensions video...but words!

Thinking about dimensions other than the three we're used to can rattle one's mind. That's why it's usually left to stoned conversationalists and theoretical physicists. To help the rest of us navigate flatland, fractal landscapes, and hyperspace, New Scientist put together a concise and fun tour titled "Beyond Space and Time."

We don't have any trouble coping with three dimensions – or four at a pinch. The 3D world of solid objects and limitless space is something we accept with scarcely a second thought. Time, the fourth dimension, gets a little trickier. But it's when we start to explore worlds that embody more – or indeed fewer – dimensions that things get really tough.

Humans don’t always make the most rational decisions. As studies have shown, even when logic and reasoning point in one direction, sometimes we chose the opposite route, motivated by personal bias or simply "wishful thinking." This paradoxical human behavior has resisted explanation by classical decision theory for over a decade. But now, scientists have shown that a quantum probability model can provide a simple explanation for human decision-making - and may eventually help explain the success of human cognition overall.

Need to read more carefully; till then, count me as skeptical

LOL. The first few sentences made me think of Busemeyer, even before he was mentioned.

The Coin Flip: A Fundamentally Unfair Proposition?

ไฟฟ้า ไร้สาย

Eric Giler wants to untangle our wired lives with cable-free electric power. Here, he covers what this sci-fi tech offers, and demos MIT's breakthrough version, WiTricity -- a near-to-market invention that may soon recharge your cell phone, car, pacemaker.

Looking under my desk at all the bloody cables, this is definitely something that I am waiting for. Let's hope it comes to the Mac devices before it comes to those sucky PCs

TED Talks Eric Giler wants to untangle our wired lives with cable-free electric power. Here, he covers what this sci-fi tech offers, and demos MIT's breakthrough version, WiTricity -- a near-to-market invention that may soon recharge your cell phone, car, pacemaker.

adieu fils et prises

So it takes about 25 kilobits — 3.2 kbytes — of data to code for a virus that has a non-trivial chance of killing a human.

VIEW ALL

Conventional contact lenses are polymers formed in specific shapes to correct faulty vision. To turn such a lens into a functional system, we integrate control circuits, communication circuits, and miniature antennas into the lens using custom-built optoelectronic components. Those components will eventually include hundreds of LEDs, which will form images in front of the eye, such as words, charts, and photographs. Much of the hardware is semitransparent so that wearers can navigate their surroundings without crashing into them or becoming disoriented. In all likelihood, a separate, portable device will relay displayable information to the lens’s control circuit, which will operate the optoelectronics in the lens.

ふむふむ

お金をインセンティブにすると、効率とかクオリティが落ちることがある。

この成功報酬的な動機付け―If Then式に「これをしたら これが貰える」というやり方は、状況によっては機能します。しかし多くの作業ではうまくいかず、時には害にすらなります。

wow

Thought you'd be interested in this photo. Fred Page

Gullibility on the rise? Count me in!

2009-08-24

Saturday 05 September 2009 | Health News feed | All feeds

Science ponders 'zombie attack'

If zombies actually existed, an attack by them would lead to the collapse of civilisation unless dealt with quickly and aggressively.

If zombies actually existed, an attack by them would lead to the collapse of civilisation unless dealt with quickly and aggressively. That is the conclusion of a mathematical exercise carried out by researchers in Canada. They say only frequent counter-attacks with increasing force would eradicate the fictional creatures. The scientific paper is published in a book - Infectious Diseases Modelling Research Progress. In books, films, video games and folklore, zombies are undead creatures, able to turn the living into other zombies with a bite. But there is a serious side to the work. In some respects, a zombie "plague" resembles a lethal, rapidly spreading infection. The researchers say the exercise could help scientists model the spread of unfamiliar diseases through human populations.

my favorite part is when they have to explain that the one prof put a '?' in his legal name.

Software Carpentry is an intensive introduction to basic software development practices for scientists and engineers

Some notes on software carpentry

Even if you can't beat the system, there are some cunning ways to tilt the odds in your favour

książka Darwina - animacja rozwoju ksiazki

A visualization of Charles Darwin's edits and additions to On the Origin of Species over the course of six editions. Created using Processing. (via MeFi)

"Help to make sense of the Daily Mail’s ongoing effort to classify every inanimate object into those that cause cancer and those that prevent it."

Help to make sense of the Daily Mail’s ongoing effort to classify every inanimate object into those that cause cancer and those that prevent it.

Things the Daily Mail says cause cancer - via Adam Cherry

Help to make sense of the Daily Mail’s ongoing effort to classify every inanimate object into those that cause cancer and those that prevent it

9

More about 9 than you really wanted to know.

"Not only does the date look good in marketing promotions, but it also represents the last set of repeating, single-digit dates that we'll see for almost a century (until January 1, 2101), or a millennium (mark your calendars for January 1, 3001), depending on how you want to count it." (il ne faut rien exagérer, il y aura le 10/10/2010, puis le 11/11/2011, puis le 12/12/2012 et après, oui, il faudra attendre un bon moment)

"A new type of solar panel using human hair could provide the world with cheap, green electricity, believes its teenage inventor."

A new type of solar panel using human hair could provide the world with cheap, green electricity, believes its teenage inventor. Milan Karki, 18, believes he has found the solution to the developing world's energy needs.

Team of scientists find more than 40 previously unidentified species in remote volcanic crater

Wow, I'm even more jealous of my boy, who's off hiking in PNG with his family.

A team of scientists from Britain, the United States and Papua New Guinea found more than 40 previously unidentified species when they climbed into the kilometre-deep crater of Mount Bosavi and explored a pristine jungle habitat teeming with life that has evolved in isolation since the volcano last erupted 200,000 years ago. In a remarkably rich haul from just five weeks of exploration, the biologists discovered 16 frogs which have never before been recorded by science, at least three new fish, a new bat and a giant rat, which may turn out to be the biggest in the world.

best.space.pics.evr

60 second science podcasting. Discusses current science issues in just 1 minute. A great conversation starter!

科学美国人的有声资源，文件较小，配合杂志一起，会有很大收获，考托福必听内容

podcasts

Is it you pachamama?

I'm not actually sure what this is -- links to a bunch of related NPR stories, I guess. But it looks interesting.

More than half of adult Americans report they have had a spiritual experience that changed their lives. Now, scientists from universities like Harvard, Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins are using new technologies to analyze the brains of people who claim they have touched the spiritual — from Christians who speak in tongues to Buddhist monks to people who claim to have had near-death experiences. Hear what they have discovered in this controversial field, as the science of spirituality continues to evolve.

More than half of adult Americans report they have had a spiritual experience that changed their lives. Now, scientists from universities like Harvard, Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins are using new technologies to analyze the brains of people who claim they have touched the spiritual &mdash; from Christians who speak in tongues to Buddhist monks to people who claim to have had near-death experiences. Hear what they have discovered in this controversial field, as the science of spirituality continues to evolve.

"...according to a Gallup poll conducted in February, only 39 per cent of Americans believe in the theory of evolution."

This article raises a few questions for me: 1) Only 39% of Americans believe in evolution? 2) Are we sure the only (or main) reason the movie isn't being picked up is because of the controversy? Could it just not be a good movie or economically viable?

No US film distribution of Charles Darwin film bio

"Jeremy Thomas, the Oscar-winning producer of Creation, said he was astonished that such attitudes exist 150 years after On The Origin of Species was published. "That's what we're up against. In 2009. It's amazing," he said. "The film has no distributor in America. It has got a deal everywhere else in the world but in the US, and it's because of what the film is about. People have been saying this is the best film they've seen all year, yet nobody in the US has picked it up."

(11th September 2009)

Charles Darwin film

A British film about Charles Darwin has failed to find a US distributor because his theory of evolution is too controversial for American audiences, according to its producer.

For $150 these MIT students took a balloon 17.5 miles high into the uppermost parts of the stratosphere and returned 5 hours later some 20 miles away from the launch site.

FAA

RT @brysongilbert: Seriously you guys, the Hubble Space Telescope is the most expensive desktop wallpaper generator ever. http://is.gd/366xA [from http://twitter.com/midnighthaircut/statuses/3886344955]

Lehrer is interested in the historic dichotomy between "emotional" decision-making and "rational" decision-making and what modern neuroscience can tell us about these two modes of thinking. One surprising and compelling conclusion is that people who experience damage to the parts of their brain responsible for emotional reactions are unable to decide, because their rational mind dithers endlessly over the possible rational reasons for each course of action. The Platonic ideal of a rational being making decisions without recourse to the wordless gut-instinct is revealed as a helpless schmuck who can't answer questions as basic as "White or brown toast?"

Seriously - the most AWESOME SHIT EVER! Wireless Power Motha Fucker!

Eric Giler wants to untangle our wired lives with cable-free electric power. Here, he covers what this sci-fi tech offers, and demos MIT's breakthrough version, WiTricity -- a near-to-market invention that may soon recharge your cell phone, car, pacemaker.

Noticias de última generación.

news from research universities

Unresolvable

A new study suggests that people from different cultures might read facial expressions differently.

A new study suggests that people from different cultures read facial expressions differently. East Asian participants in the study focused mostly on the eyes, but those from the West scanned the whole face. In the research carried out by a team from Glasgow University, East Asian observers found it more difficult to distinguish some facial expressions.

HMS FACIAL EXPRESSIONS, EMOTIONS As I was reading Lewis, et al., I remembered this recent study report on facial expressions. This study directly refutes the claims of Ekman reported on pp 39-40 and points up a bias in the Lewis text against cultural explanations. Obviously as an anthropologist, I am not sympathetic to a pure biology approach to love, but I still find Lewis et al. compelling. Does it matter than one small piece of their evidence has been proven empirically to be false?

东方人和西方人表达感情时候都差别──西方人用整张脸。而东方人都眼神更为精妙

would LOVE to do this

Ever taken a picture of a cough? Not just somebody coughing. No, we mean the actual air currents as they’re being expelled. Well, they just did it at Penn State, thanks to the magic of schlieren photography.

Schlieren Photography: How to Photograph the Invisible

This game may be of interest to science teachers who need students to memorize the Periodic Table.

Web 2.0 version of Tetris Periodic Table

science chemistry periodic game periodic table tetris

Tetris-style Periodic table game.

Guide falling elements into the correct place in the periodic table.

Much of the brain is still mysterious to modern science, possibly because modern science itself is using brains to analyze it. There are probably secrets the brain simply doesn't want us to know. But by no means should that stop us from tinkering around in there, using somewhat questionable and possibly dangerous techniques to make our brains do what we want. We can't vouch for any of these, either their effectiveness or safety. All we can say is that they sound awesome, since apparently you can make your brain...

For this year's list, we walked right past the usual suspects and went looking for trouble. We wanted radicals, heretics, agitators—big thinkers with controversial, game-changing propositions. We found a prison reformer who wants to empty jails, an economist who thinks foreign aid hurts more than it helps, and a military theorist who believes the US should launch preemptive cyberattacks, right now.

A mental health nurse's comic about schizophrenia.

A comic about schizophrenia.

Very well done.

コンピューターサイエンスの教科書

全部読みたい

A rare textile made from the silk of more than a million wild spiders goes on display today at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

This page contains web-based projects created by students at the University of Richmond in partial fulfillment of the requirements for teacher licensure in the state of Virginia. For more than 12 years we have been creating, revising and maintaining these materials as educational resources for teachers across the United States and the world. On this page you will find links to WebQuests and WebUnits. A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented lesson format in which most or all the information that learners work with comes from the web. A WebUnit is a series of topical pages written specifically for elementary age students. Each title is followed by the date of the project's creation or significant revision. They are categorized by subject and grade level.

From the University of Richmond.

Συμπαθητική εισαγωγή στην στατιστική

Carl Sagan - 'A Glorious Dawn'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSgiXGELjbc <--- awesome

A musical tribute to two great men of science. Carl Sagan and his cosmologist companion Stephen Hawking present: A Glorious Dawn - Cosmos remixed. Almost all samples and footage taken from Carl Sagan's Cosmos and Stephen Hawking's Universe series.

Auto-tune the Sagan! (A geektacular trance remix of Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking.)

HD video from the edge of space, courtesy of a weather balloon rigging.

amateur Hi-Def Video from The Edge of Space

Neuroscience

amazine composite time-spread exposure of the panoramic heavens. Wow!

An amazingly huge photo of the night sky, predominated by the Milky Way.

Written for President Nixon, just in case the Apollo 11 astronauts were marooned on the Moon's surface

speech written for case that Aldrin and Armstrong were to stay stranded on the moon

"Columnist and presidential speechwriter Bill Safire was one of only three non-disloyal Jews President Nixon could name. Here is the speech he drafted for Nixon to read in case the Apollo 11 Astronauts became stranded on the moon!"

Free Computer Science Courses - Free Science and Video Lectures Online!

Galerie d'images d'Hubble

Ardi instead shows an unexpected mix of advanced characteristics and of primitive traits seen in much older apes that were unlike chimps or gorillas (interactive: Ardi's key features). As such, the skeleton offers a window on what the last common ancestor of humans and living apes might have been like.

Scientists today announced the discovery of the oldest fossil skeleton of a human ancestor. The find reveals that our forebears underwent a previously unknown stage of evolution more than a million years before Lucy, the iconic early human ancestor specimen that walked the Earth 3.2 million years ago. The centerpiece of a treasure trove of new fossils, the skeleton—assigned to a species called Ardipithecus ramidus—belonged to a small-brained, 110-pound (50-kilogram) female nicknamed "Ardi." (See pictures of Ardipithecus ramidus.) The fossil puts to rest the notion, popular since Darwin's time, that a chimpanzee-like missing link—resembling something between humans and today's apes—would eventually be found at the root of the human family tree. Indeed, the new evidence suggests that the study of chimpanzee anatomy and behavior—long used to infer the nature of the earliest human ancestors—is largely irrelevant to understanding our beginnings.

Scientists today announced the discovery of the oldest fossil skeleton of a human ancestor. The find reveals that our forebears underwent a previously unknown stage of evolution more than a million years before Lucy, the iconic early human ancestor specimen that walked the Earth 3.2 million years ago.

Steve Fielding recently asked the Obama administration to reassure him on the science of man-made global warming. When the administration proved unhelpful, Mr. Fielding decided to vote against climate-change legislation. If you haven't heard of this politician, it's because he's a member of the Australian Senate. As the U.S. House of Representatives prepares to pass a climate-change bill, the Australian Parliament is preparing to kill its own country's carbon-emissions scheme. Why? A growing number of Australian politicians, scientists and citizens once again doubt the science of human-caused global warming.

The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. -- 13 times the number who authored the U.N.'s 2007 climate summary for policymakers.

Huge blob of Arctic goo floats past Slope communities http://ow.ly/hoim [from http://twitter.com/KaylinQ/statuses/2662205830]

IT'S NOT OIL: No one in the area can recall seeing anything like it before.

Arctic Goo. (via @djsaki) http://www.adn.com/2835/story/864687.html [from http://twitter.com/vitaminjeff/statuses/2674016789]

Nobody knows for sure what the gunk is, but Petty Officer 1st Class Terry Hasenauer says the Coast Guard is sure what it is not. "It's certainly biological," Hasenauer said. "It's definitely not an oil product of any kind. It has no characteristics of an oil, or a hazardous substance, for that matter. "It's definitely, by the smell and the makeup of it, it's some sort of naturally occurring organic or otherwise marine organism."

I, for one, welcome our new cubic gelatinous overlords.

Susan Blackmore: Consciousness Paul Broks: What should I do? David Buss: Overcoming irrationality Robert Cialdini: Over-commitment Marilyn Davidson: Lost opportunities Elizabeth Loftus: Nightmares Paul Ekman: Death and forgiveness Sue Gardner: Dark places Alison Gopnik: Parenthood Jerome Kagan: Methodological flaws Stephen Kosslyn: Satiators and addicts Ellen Langer: Optimism David Lavallee: Sporting rituals Chris McManus: Beauty Robert Plomin: Nature, nurture Mike Posner: Learning difficulties Stephen Reicher: Who am I? Steven Rose: The explanatory gap Paul Rozin: Time management Norbert Schwarz: Incidental feelings Martin Seligman: Self-control Robert Sternberg: Career masochism Richard Wiseman: Wit

The email edition of the British Psychological Society's Research Digest has reached the milestone of its 150th issue. That's over 900 quality, peer-reviewed psychology journal articles digested since 2003. To mark the occasion, the Digest editor has invited some of the world's leading psychologists to look inwards and share, in 150 words, one nagging thing they still don't understand about themselves. Their responses are by turns candid, witty and thought-provoking. Here's what they had to say:

Psychologist writes about what they don't understand about themself

Artikel med länksamling där ett antal personer på 150 ord ska beskriva "one nagging thing" de inte förstår med sig själva.

"The email edition of the British Psychological Society's Research Digest has reached the milestone of its 150th issue. That's over 900 quality, peer-reviewed psychology journal articles digested since 2003. To mark the occasion, the Digest editor has invited some of the world's leading psychologists to look inwards and share, in 150 words, one nagging thing they still don't understand about themselves." Via Mind Hacks.

the Digest editor has invited some of the world's leading psychologists to look inwards and share, in 150 words, one nagging thing they still don't understand about themselves. Their responses are by turns candid, witty and thought-provoking. Here's what they had to say:

this is good to hear.

When things don’t add up, the mind goes into high gear.

Studie: Absurditäten rütteln die Sinne wach.

This is really interesting.

Ein weiteres Stück in der Infographics-Sammlung. Ist aber auch ziemlich nice.

huge images showing all space missions

beautiful image of where the last 50yrs of space exploration have gone. nice picture

ne thing is for sure. It seems the debate about what is causing global warming is far from over. Indeed some would say it is hotting up.

"The UK Met Office says that warming is set to resume"

Dutch scholar claims that "bara" in the first sentence of the Bible does not mean create, but separate: thus no creatio ex nihilo. Instead, earth and many of its elements (waters, sea monsters) already existed. God created humans and animal life, but not the earth itself. If true, this would be interesting because it would remove, e.g., the seeming conflict with classical cosmology (cf. Aristotle) and other early, as well as possibly later doctrines.

veeery interesting

He's the separator!

bullet instant liquification is crazy

1 million fps Slow Motion video of bullet impacts

Slow Motion video of bullet impacts made by Werner Mehl from Kurzzeit.

@invisiblea: "Video of bullets hitting things shot at 1million fps http://bit.ly/1AO4Ak Amazing" (from http://twitter.com/invisiblea/status/4758274906)

Other version of the video has a better soundtrack Be sure to see my other videos of more slow motion bullet impacts! Slow Motion video of bullet impacts mad...

No seriously this is awesome.

Hi everyone,This is a quick instruction guide on creating a fiber-optic starfield ceiling. The stars have a very natura...

this is -SO- on the to do list!! you have NO idea!!

Wow, what an amazing map, I wouldn't have expected that there had been as many missions as that!

Lovely

Hyvä video optisista harhoista.

TED Talk, fascinating as always...

TED presentation on optical illusions - explanation that they are not failures of the senses, but simply the brain taking empirical and historical data it has gathered from other experiences that have been useful and analyzing data it receives. TL;DR - information has only the meaning we give it.

Why crazy clouds form the way they do.

Nubes extrañas y sus principios físicos subyacentes

got your head in the clouds http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/clouds/ [from http://twitter.com/wild_gift/statuses/4502481301]

Shows real life uses of all the elements in the periodic table

what elements are used for

Avicennia marina

بهترین عکسهای میکروسکپی درخلال 35 سال گذشته در اینجا گردآوری شده اند

Imagens de coisas que, ainda que estejam a nossa frente, não conseguimos enxergar

Wired Science | Wired.com Beautiful microscopic photos!!!

"35 Years of the World’s Best Microscope Photography"

An estimated 7,000 languages are being spoken around the world. But that number is expected to shrink rapidly in the coming decades. What is lost when a language dies? In 1992 a prominent US linguist stunned the academic world by predicting that by the year 2100, 90% of the world's languages would have ceased to exist.

Historic Polar Images illustrating polar exploration from the nineteenth century onwards, from the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge.

digitisation project

Historic Polar Images

Lovely site with polar images

The Scott Polar Research Institute in the University of Cambridge holds a world-class collection of photographic negatives illustrating polar exploration from the nineteenth century onwards. Freeze Frame is the result of a two-year digitisation project that brings together photographs from both Arctic and Antarctic expeditions.

RT @NMHS_Principal: Hotscience interactive activities from NOVA http://bit.ly/2VlZuv Cool stuff! [from http://twitter.com/MrTRice_Science/statuses/4978995851]

nova interactives archive

If you’ve ever felt like you go a little cross-eyed after taking a peek at an optical illusion, then you know they can be a pretty intense phenomenon. What your eyes perceive when looking at one of these images is actually a visual illusion; you see

@mobilebooks Simply Scheme: Introducing Computer Science http://url4.eu/dPaG [from http://twitter.com/sbepstein/statuses/4986924979]

Saturn at equinox Checking in with NASA's Cassini spacecraft, our current emissary to Saturn, some 1.5 billion kilometers (932 million miles) distant from Earth, we find it recently gathering images of the Saturnian system at equinox. During the equinox, the sunlight casts long shadows across Saturn's rings, highlighting previously known phenomena and revealing a few never-before seen images. Cassini continues to orbit Saturn, part of its extended Equinox Mission, funded through through September 2010. A proposal for a further extension is under consideration, one that would keep Cassini in orbit until 2017, ending with a spectacular series of orbits inside the rings followed by a suicide plunge into Saturn on Sept. 15, 2017. (previously: 1, 2, 3). (23 photos total)

Incredible Beautiful. Saturn at equinox. Anybody else wanna join NASA right now?

"People remember things better, longer, if they are given very challenging tests on the material, tests at which they are bound to fail. In a series of experiments, they showed that if students make an unsuccessful attempt to retrieve information before receiving an answer, they remember the information better than in a control condition in which they simply study the information."

People remember things better, longer, if they are given very challenging tests on the material, tests at which they are bound to fail. In a series of experiments, they showed that if students make an unsuccessful attempt to retrieve information before receiving an answer, they remember the information better than in a control condition in which they simply study the information. Trying and failing to retrieve the answer is actually helpful to learning.

"People remember things better, longer, if they are given very challenging tests on the material, tests at which they are bound to fail. In a series of experiments, they showed that if students make an unsuccessful attempt to retrieve information before receiving an answer, they remember the information better than in a control condition in which they simply study the information. Trying and failing to retrieve the answer is actually helpful to learning. It’s an idea that has obvious applications for education, but could be useful for anyone who is trying to learn new material of any kind."

Reminded me that asking questions BEFORE reading the chapter is a better way to prepare students for learning.

Greetings citizen scientists, budding biohackers, and backyard explorers! We think you'll find the Make: Science Room a fun and useful resource. We hope you'll use it as your DIY science classroom, virtual laboratory, and a place to share your projects, hacks, and laboratory tips with other amateur scientists. Your Make: Science Room host is Robert Bruce Thompson, author of Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments: All Lab, No Lecture. (Make: Books, 2008) and Illustrated Guide to Forensics Investigations: Uncover Evidence in Your Home, Lab, or Basement (not yet published). We'll be drawing material from these titles first, but will soon branch out into biology, astrononmy, Earth sciences, and other disciplines. We'll be adding lots of material on a regular basis, so check back often. For more info on the site, see Introducing the Make: Science Room.

Make Magazine

I'd like to apologize in advance for the shameless, horrible egg puns that I'm inevitably going to shell out over the course of this story.

chess

One Simple Mental Exercise to improve your Mind Power — Chess Blog

What we actually know about software development, and why we believe it’s true.

Several useful statistics on what drives programmer performance and causes software projects to fail.

great images from microscopes from around the world

This graph helps grasping the infinte smallness of bacteries, molecules ..

On of those "Power of 10" zooms, but for biologicals.

Here's your answer... pretty cool.

Univertv.ru – это открытый образовательный портал! Здесь вы можете: посмотреть образовательные фильмы на различные темы; побывать на лекциях в ведущих российских и зарубежных вузах; посетить престижную научную конференцию или научно-популярную лекцию по интересующему вас вопросу; в разделе «Школа» – увидеть лучшие образцы преподавания сложных школьных тем.

Bucky Balls

Looks good.

Free videos from Bob Marley to Albert Einstein on topics from Arts and Archaeology to Quantum Physics and Zoology

Coming soon a free university. We are currently in development enter your email address below to be notified when we enter open beta.

Yet another reason to avoid the middle of the grocery store. (via @seldo)

Eating a diet high in processed food increases the risk of depression, research suggests. What is more, people who ate plenty of vegetables, fruit and fish actually had a lower risk of depression, the University College London team found.

food inc.

The more we study dolphins, the brighter they turn out to be. By Anuschka de Rohan

@tommorris: "Oh my, justification at last: http://is.gd/4Pdl0" (from http://twitter.com/tommorris/status/5493288033)

I like this

'A grumpy person can cope with more demanding situations than a happy one because of the way the brain "promotes information processing strategies".'

In a bad mood? Don't worry - according to research, it's good for you.

n "promotes information processing strategies". Negative moods trigger more attentive, careful thinking, paying greater attention to the external world Professor Joe Forgas He asked volunteers to watch different films and dwell on positive or negative events

save

wow, one of the best ever sets

Vybrané detaily struktur povrchu - zdroj NASA. Via V. Vančura(twitter)

Reconnaissance

The Big Picture - News Stories in Photographs from the Boston Globe

Collected here is a group of images from HiRISE over the past few years, in either false color or grayscale, showing intricate details of landscapes both familiar and alien, from the surface of our neighboring planet, Mars. I invite you to take your time looking through these, imagining the settings - very cold, dry and distant, yet real

It is amazing how easy it is to sail through a Computer Science degree from a top university without ever learning the basic tools of software developers, without ever working on a team, and without ever taking a course for which you don’t get an automatic F for collaborating. Many CS departments are trapped in the 1980s, teaching the same old curriculum that has by now become completely divorced from the reality of modern software development.

To learn to program effectively you need to work collaboratively on projects with other people.

Notable site!

Some interesting videos and camera tricks explored.

Series of Six videos on people who abuse science by calling it paranormal because they don't know the difference. Or often used by scammers who pretend to have "powers".

Compulsive must watch video. Recorded for mainstream British TV and now released on the Internet.

"Clusters of happy and unhappy people are visible in the network, and the relationship between people’s happiness extends up to three degrees of separation (for example, to the friends of one’s friends’ friends). People who are surrounded by many happy people and those who are central in the network are more likely to become happy in the future. Longitudinal statistical models suggest that clusters of happiness result from the spread of happiness and not just a tendency for people to associate with similar individuals. A friend who lives within a mile (about 1.6 km) and who becomes happy increases the probability that a person is happy by 25% (95% confidence interval 1% to 57%). Similar effects are seen in coresident spouses (8%, 0.2% to 16%), siblings who live within a mile (14%, 1% to 28%), and next door neighbours (34%, 7% to 70%). Effects are not seen between coworkers. The effect decays with time and with geographical separation."

Nature vs Nurture

David Brooks on why genius is created through deliberate practice.

"The key factor separating geniuses from the merely accomplished is not a divine spark. It’s not I.Q., a generally bad predictor of success, even in realms like chess. Instead, it’s deliberate practice. Top performers spend more hours (many more hours) rigorously practicing their craft."

I'm working on a big 9-minute follow-up to "Learning to Fly", but it won't be ready till next summer. Meantime, here are some shots from my trip in August to California's White Mountains and Yosemite, all shot on the Canon 5D2. These are sequences from my first film - "Southwest Light" - currently in production. If anyone happens to know a good producer or production company who might be willing to help shepherd this film to completion next Fall, I would really appreciate an introduction. Much thanks!

This brilliant timelapse video captures the Milky Way and countless shooting stars travelling across the sky over Yosemite and the White Mountains, California.

.. timelapse video captures the Milky Way & countless shooting stars travelling across the sky over Yosemi...

The differences between rational thinking and intelligence.

Is George W. Bush stupid? It's a question that occupied a good many minds of all political persuasions during his turbulent eight-year presidency. The strict answer is no. Bush's IQ score is estimated to be above 120, which suggests an intelligence in the top 10 per cent of the population. But this, surely, does not tell the whole story. Even those sympathetic to the former president have acknowledged that as a thinker and decision-maker he is not all there. Even his loyal speechwriter David Frum called him glib, incurious and "as a result ill-informed".

The Oatmeal

Boom!

Kolmiulotteista mandelbrot-vaahtoa.

the Real 3D Mandelbrot Fractal

fractals en 3D

RT @bbcnews An extract found in the curry spice tumeric can kill off cancer cells, lab scientists have shown. http://bit.ly/3QyGDP [from http://twitter.com/miquimel/statuses/5216067233]

* Why MIT switched from Scheme to Python

Documentary Films

Another archive of documentary films avaialbe for free

from tracy hudson

New observations from three different spacecraft return what has been called "unambiguous evidence" of water across the surface of the moon. via @Macht_Nichts on Twitter.

Die Internetgeschichte BEBILDERT.

gesamtentwicklung, sehr gute zahlen, erste social media erwähnung, blogs, webseiten etc.

Wirklich guter Überblick über die Geschichte des Internet

2012 el FIN?

A lovely visual analysis of the "Mayan calendar" issue.

NASA果然强大的

Historic Timeline on our Quest for New Worlds (Interactive)

Fly Stick Van de Graaff Levitation Wand - Wand with built-in battery powered Van de Graaff generator allows you to control and levitate the included mylar shapes

cat site

Great infographic - cats have some pretty awesome powers.

Researchers at Princeton University recently made a remarkable discovery about the brains of rats that exercise. Some of their neurons respond differently to stress than the neurons of slothful rats...

rats that had exercised, even if they had received the oxidizing chemical, were relatively nonchalant under stress. When placed in the unfamiliar space, they didn’t run for dark corners and hide, like the unexercised rats. They insouciantly explored. The “cells born from running,” the researchers concluded, appeared to have been “specifically buffered from exposure to a stressful experience.” The rats had created, through running, a brain that seemed biochemically, molecularly, calm.

NASA.gov

Impressive movie special effects aside, Dec. 21, 2012, won't be the end of the world as we know.

Nasa verspricht: Wir werden 2013 erleben.

Other researchers have looked at how exercise alters the activity of dopamine, another neurotransmitter in the brain, while still others have concentrated on the antioxidant powers of moderate exercise. Anxiety in rodents and people has been linked with excessive oxidative stress, which can lead to cell death, including in the brain. Moderate exercise, though, appears to dampen the effects of oxidative stress. In an experiment led by researchers at the University of Houston and reported at the Society for Neuroscience meeting, rats whose oxidative-stress levels had been artificially increased with injections of certain chemicals were extremely anxious when faced with unfamiliar terrain during laboratory testing. But rats that had exercised, even if they had received the oxidizing chemical, were relatively nonchalant under stress. When placed in the unfamiliar space, they didn’t run for dark corners and hide, like the unexercised rats. They insouciantly explored.

C'est toujours impressionnant.

The Big Picture - News Stories in Photographs from the Boston Globe

Amazing.

scientific road trip with kids, amazing, time dilation, Project GRE²AT: Photo Tour http://bit.ly/Iv2Bd [from http://twitter.com/meika/statuses/2158854078]

"Does gravity really alter time and can this weird phenomenon be detected with a family road trip experiment?" -- via Jed Parsons

"we were able to detect and measure the effects of relativistic time dilation compared to atomic clocks we left at home." [via kenglass]

n September 2005 (for the 50th anniversary of the atomic clock and 100th anniversary of the theory of relativity) we took several cesium clocks on a road trip to Mt Rainier; a family science experiment unlike anything you've seen before. By keeping the clocks at altitude for a weekend we were able to detect and measure the effects of relativistic time dilation compared to atomic clocks we left at home. The amazing thing is that the experiment worked! The predicted and measured effect was just over 20 nanoseconds.

Experimentally proving relativity by taking atomic clocks up higher in elevation (to increase speed due to Earth's spin being different). A family vacation with three kids.

TED Talks At Serious Play 2008, astrophysicist George Smoot shows stunning new images from deep-space surveys, and prods us to ponder how the cosmos -- with its giant webs of dark matter and mysterious gaping voids -- got built this way.

"PASADENA, California -- NASA and Microsoft Corp. of Redmond, Wash., have collaborated to create a Web site where Internet users can have fun while advancing their knowledge of Mars. Drawing on observations from NASA's Mars missions, the "Be a Martian" Web site will enable the public to participate as citizen scientists to improve Martian maps, take part in research tasks, and assist Mars science teams studying data about the Red Planet...." ☺☼☺ ( Mars.Jpl.Nasa.gov)

Welcome to the Be A Martian! website. If you use an assistive technology, we care about your experience on this site. If you have improvements to suggest, email BeAM.Access@jpl.nasa.gov

Age of virtual exploration and the human-robotic partnership

"Deep in the bowels of the internet, I came across an exhaustive list of interesting Wikipedia articles by Ray Cadaster. It’s brilliant reading when you’re bored, so I got his permission to post the top 50 here."

BrainpopJr.

Provides educational movies for K-3 students. Homework Help, leveled quizzes, games and activities for kids. Exceptional resource for teachers and homeschools.

Perhaps the most damaging revelations – the scientific equivalent of the Telegraph’s MPs’ expenses scandal – are those concerning the way Warmist scientists may variously have manipulated or suppressed evidence in order to support their cause.

In the past year, researchers have developed technology that makes it possible to use thoughts to operate a computer, maneuver a wheelchair or even use Twitter — all without lifting a finger. But as neural devices become more complicated — and go wireless — some scientists say the risks of “brain hacking” should be taken seriously.

scientists say the risks of “brain hacking” should be taken seriously.

you know...we really should call it 'Ghost-hacking'...

RT @wiredscience: The next target for hackers could be your brain. http://is.gd/1svMA [from http://twitter.com/reinikainen/statuses/2557678128]

Computer security for prosthetics http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/07/neurosecurity/ [from http://twitter.com/JacksonATL/statuses/2621731930]

Weird. This was my advice to undergrads, although not in science...

Approach to getting broad understanding of topics you don't understand that well

Blog post/article on how to set your self up to be able to improve your learning ability.

yeah, amen in so many ways. It's harder and takes longer (the biggest problem), but immersion (in combination with good memory) is by far the only way to learn things. It's how I learnt to spell (and that's now slipping: the other aphorism is "use it or lose it")

Note that the title above isn’t “how to learn everything”, but “how to learn about everything”. The distinction I have in mind is between knowing the inside of a topic in deep detail — many facts and problem-solving skills — and knowing the structure and context of a topic: essential facts, what problems can be solved by the skilled, and how the topic fits with others. This knowledge isn’t superficial in a survey-course sense: It is about both deep structure and practical applications. Knowing about, in this sense, is crucial to understanding a new problem and what must be learned in more depth in order to solve it. The cross-disciplinary reach of nanotechnology almost demands this as a condition of competence.

A Harvard Psychiatrist Explains Zombie Neurobiology

Planet In Action is a fun website that features three games based on Google Earth. All three games utilize Google Earth imagery and navigation. The three games are Ships, Places, and Moon Lander. In "Places" you navigate, from a helicopter view, five popular places including the Grand Canyon. In "Ships" you become the captain of a fleet of ships to navigate famous ports of call. And in "Moon Lander" you take control of the Apollo 11 moon lander and guide the "Eagle" to touch-down.

Google Earth interactive games including moon landing and ships. Require Google Earth plugin

When it comes down to actually choosing targets, men choose the modelesque. Someone like roomtodance above gets nearly 5 times as many messages as a typical woman and 28 times as many messages as a woman at the low end of our curve. Site-wide, two-thirds of male messages go to the best-looking third of women. So basically, guys are fighting each other 2-for-1 for the absolute best-rated females, while plenty of potentially charming, even cute, girls go unwritten. ....the most salient of which is that the average-looking woman has convinced herself that the vast majority of males aren’t good enough for her, but she then goes right out and messages them anyway.

This week we will be confronting a fact that, by definition, haunts the average online dater: no matter how much time you spend polishing your profile, honing your IM banter, and perfecting your message introductions, it’s your picture that matters most.

Posted by angela

Yawn It’s one of the best things you can do for your brain.

It’s one of the best things you can do for your brain.

"My advice is simple. Yawn as many times a day as possible: when you wake up, when you’re confronting a difficult problem at work, when you prepare to go to sleep, and whenever you feel anger, anxiety, or stress. Yawn before giving an important talk, yawn before you take a test, and yawn while you meditate or pray because it will intensify your spiritual experience."

Listattuna hyviä avaruuteen liittyviä saitteja.

Few topics interest me more than space. Though I'll admit that I don't know nearly as much as I would like, it has always been my goal to learn about the universe. I bet I'm not alone. That's why I'm sharing this list of 18 space sites. They all offer something neat. And they're all informative.

3.5 centuries of science in an interactive timeline

A brit tudományos akadémia 2010-ben ünnepli alapításának 350. évfordulóját, ebből az alkalomból egy időszalagon elhelyezve számos történelmi jelentőségű publikációját hozta nyilvánosságra. - *http://ow.ly/HbMZ

Interactive Science TimeLine

Our hopelessly compromised scientific establishment cannot be allowed to get away with the Climategate whitewash, says Christopher Booker.

Best yet!

A brief description on how one senator beleives that the idea of greenhouses gases endangering our environment is a hoax, and our envirnment is really in no danger.

John Rennie (Chefredakteur), Scientific American: Evidence for human interference with Earth's climate continues to | John Rennie, der seit 15 Jahren Chefredakteur bei SciAm ist, geht darin kompakt aber umfassend auf sieben Argumente ein, die man immer wieder findet: 1. CO2 ist nur ein Spurengas, kann gar nichts am Klima ändern; bzw. der Menschenanteil ist zu klein | 2. Der "hockey stick", der den Temperaturanstieg zeigt, ist widerlegt, außerdem war es im Mittelalter wärmer | 3. Seit 10 Jahren ist die Erde nicht wärmer geworden | 4. Sonne oder kosmische Strahlung sind die Ursache der Erwärmung | 5. Klimatologen haben sich verschworen um die Wahrheit zu verstecken | 6. Klimatologen sind nur geldgeil/wollen Achtung | 7. Technologische Anwendungen wie Geoengineering wären viel effektiver als CO2-Reduzierung

a partial list of the contrarians' bad arguments and some brief rebuttals of them

"a partial list of the contrarians' bad arguments and some brief rebuttals of them."

Being NOTES and SLIDES on a talk given at PLAYFUL 09, concerning CHARLES BABBAGE, HEATH ROBINSON, MENACE and MAGE

'...slightly larger than the Crab Nebula. And that is pretty awesome.'

Photos of abandoned Manhattan Project facilities

out experiencing a sense of awe at what was accomplished. The scientific, engineering, managerial, labor, and logistical challenges that were met and overcome are separately impressive but, taken together, simply astonishing. It is all the more incredible that this was done in

Eureqa is a software tool for detecting equations and hidden mathematical relationships in your data. Its primary goal is to identify the simplest mathematical formulas which could describe the underlying mechanisms that produced the data. Eureqa is free to download and use. Below you will find the program download, video tutorial, user forum, and other and reference materials.

"Eureqa is a software tool for detecting equations and hidden mathematical relationships in your data."

Eureqa is a software tool for detecting equations and hidden mathematical relationships in your data. Its primary goal is to identify the simplest mathematical formulas which could describe the underlying mechanisms that produced the data. Eureqa is free to download and use.

It's just what I've always wanted! Thank you!

Uses GA to discover the most likely equation behind your pile of data. Very pretty.

Is it the beginning of the Asimov's psychohistory ? Ted Talks: http://bit.ly/1CBp #TED [from http://twitter.com/LoXD/statuses/1470242301]

Once he stated as a premise that people are rational I kindda lost interest. Everybody CAN be rational, but not everyone is rational and definitely not all of the time. Just like his example, some people sometimes revert to being like 2 years old.

TED Talks Bruce Bueno de Mesquita uses mathematical analysis to predict (very often correctly) such messy human events as war, political power shifts, Intifada ... After a crisp explanation of how he does it, he offers three predictions on the future of Iran.

"Mitra’s team wanted to find out what would happen if an isolated bird raised his own colony. As expected, birds raised in soundproof boxes grew up to sing cacophonous songs. But then scientists let the isolated birds give voice lessons to a new round of hatchlings. They found that the young males imitated the songs — but they tweaked them slightly, bringing the structure closer to that of songs sung in the wild. When these birds grew up and became tutors, their pupils’ song continue to conform, with tweaks. After three to four generations, the teachers were producing strapping young finches that belted out normal-sounding songs."

A very cool study, and a well-written article.

via http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/08/can-culture-be-genetically-encoded-new-research-says-yes.html

GReader: Culture May Be Encoded in DNA [feedly] http://ow.ly/58hy [from http://twitter.com/ChipRiley/statuses/1700727055]

Knowledge is passed down directly from generation to generation in the animal kingdom as parents teach their children the things they will need to survive. But a new study has found that, even when the chain is broken, nature sometimes finds a way. Zebra finches, which normally learn their complex courtship songs from their fathers, spontaneously developed the same songs all on their own after only a few generations.

Melkweg panoramafoto (C) ESODe Europese Zuidelijke Sterrenwacht (ESO) heeft de eerste foto gepubliceerd binnen het GigaGalaxy Zoom project. Het is een panoramafoto, 800-miljoen pixels groot, van de sterrenhemel zoals die te zien is vanaf de grote ESO-telescopen in Chili. Het samengestelde panorama van de sterrenhemel bestaat uit 1200 afzonderlijke opnamen. Op de GigaGalaxy Zoom website kun je inzoomen op de foto. De Melkweg staat in het midden. Het GigaGalaxy Project is opgezet in het kader van het Internationaal Jaar van de Sterrenkunde (IYA2009). De komende weken worden nog twee panoramafoto's online gezet.

"reveals the full sky as it appears with the unaided eye from one of the darkest deserts on Earth, then zooms in on a rich region of the Milky Way to reveal three amazing, ultra-high-resolution images of the night sky that online stargazers can zoom in on and explore in an incredible level of detail."

天の川全景のパノラマ via WIRED VISION http://wiredvision.jp/news/200909/2009091522.html

Citizen journalism digs deep into whether LA vegan restaurants actually are vegan

eat from a manufacturer in Taiwan. It’s produced for the Taiwanese and Chinese vegetarian market then re-labeled for export, often to the USA. I do know of times when things have been labelled incorrectly, but I do my best to make sure that what they send me is what they say it is.”

Operation Pancake tests food from vegan restaurants around LA - and discovers some disturbing stuff about processed food from Taiwan in the followup.

Operation Pancake: Undercover investigation of LA vegan restaurants

May 26, 2009 The Difference Between An Amateur, A Scientist, And A Genius

"An amateur is full of wonder and speculation, tinkering towards the truth but suffering from a lack of knowledge and idleness; he's not even sure if someone else has already made these discoveries. "Is this a worthwhile pursuit?" A scientist performs experiments to confirm or disprove a hypothesis, and in that way he grinds out the truth. A genius has three abilities, which are actually the union of amateur and scientist: 1. to know the state of the art, what is known and what is not known. 2. To be able to think "out of the box". 3. To be disciplined enough to concentrate on the tedium of a formal investigation of his wondrous speculations."

The old sayings "success is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration" or "90% of anything is just showing up" really speak not to the necessity of work, but to the point that most ideas are mediocre and it doesn't matter. Diligent application can make almost anything a success.

An amateur is full of wonder and speculation, tinkering towards the truth but suffering from a lack of knowledge and idleness; he's not even sure if someone else has already made these discoveries. "Is this a worthwhile pursuit?" A scientist performs experiments to confirm or disprove a hypothesis, and in that way he grinds out the truth. A genius has three abilities, which are actually the union of amateur and scientist: 1. to know the state of the art, what is known and what is not known. 2. To be able to think "out of the box". 3. To be disciplined enough to concentrate on the tedium of a formal investigation of his wondrous speculations.

http://tinyurl.com/mancyg

"A genius has three abilities, which are actually the union of amateur and scientist: 1. to know the state of the art, what is known and what is not known. 2. To be able to think "out of the box". 3. To be disciplined enough to concentrate on the tedium of a formal investigation of his wondrous speculations."

source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8398451.stm

Open GeoScience | British Geological Survey (BGS)

A free service where you can view maps, download photographs and other information. Use OpenGeoscience material free-of-charge for non-commercial private study, research and educational activities. Explore OpenGeoscience Explore the six OpenGeoscience sections: Data, Education, Maps, Pictures, Reports and Software. via @madgestar

Free data : British Geological Survey (BGS)

Open Geoscience is a free service from the British Geological Survey where you can view maps (up to 1:50,000), download photographs and other information. Use OpenGeoscience material free-of-charge for non-commercial private study, research and educational activities.

A free service where you can view maps, download photographs and other information.

"A free service where you can view maps, download photographs and other information. Use OpenGeoscience material free-of-charge for non-commercial private study, research and educational activities"

News from UC Berkeley

In a study recently accepted for publication by the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, scientists at UC Berkeley's Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute and the School of Public Health report that normal 9- and 10-year-olds differing only in socioeconomic status have detectable differences in the response of their prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that is critical for problem solving and creativity.

EEGs show brain differences between poor and rich kids

By Robert Sanders, Media Relations | 02 December 2008

Need to calculate the area of a circle, volume of cube quick? Check here to find a cacluator.

freeonlinecalculator.net

Science for parents of primary kids - UK government website.

Found on Giulio's Copenhagen climate conference blog

an excellent, important infographic

A very nice looking graphical summary of the claims and counter-claims of global warming skeptics and the scientific consensus response to all the denier's claims. Very nice bit of work.

Beautiful multi-band images of the Milky Way

for video giving instructions, see http://blog.chromoscope.net/2009/12/what-is-the-chromoscope/

שבי להחלב באורכי גל שונים

What's blue and white, squiggly and suddenly appears in the sky? If you know the answer, pop it on a postcard and send it to the people of Norway, where this mysterious light display baffled residents yesterday. Speculation was increasing today that the display was the result of an embarrassing failed test launch of a jinxed new Russian missile. The Bulava missile was test-fired from the Dmitry Donskoi submarine in the White Sea early on Wednesday but failed at the third stage, say newspapers in Moscow today. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1234430/Mystery-spiral-blue-light-display-hovers-Norway.html#ixzz0ZHhBv6N7

What's blue and white, squiggly and suddenly appears in the sky?

Igy kell kutatást csinálni a mai világban.

your arm. Together, the sling and the shot could save millions of lives. That's why he spent $50 million of his own money developing the

"a species of jellyfish that can live indefinitely"

Turritopsis nutricula is a small (5mm) species of jellyfish which uses transdifferentiation to become younger after sexual reproduction. This cycle can repeat indefinitely, rendering it biologically immortal. It originates from the Caribbean sea, but has now spread around the world.

Biologically immortal jellyfish

Úžasné způsoby jak skládat origami.

via kedrosky .... greenspun is right of course but that doesn't mean i've stopped thinking he's kind of an asshole

I don't agree with all of his points, but I do like some of his proposals as to how to restructure pedagogy to make classes far more practical.

"This article is about why educational performance is critical to a society's wealth, how the modern university is not appreciably improved over the template established in 1088, and proposes some simple changes that should greatly improve the effectiveness of undergraduate education."

What universities need to change to improve society

This article is about why educational performance is critical to a society's wealth, how the modern university is not appreciably improved over the template established in 1088, and proposes some simple changes that should greatly improve the effectiveness of undergraduate education.

Once again, The Times Magazine looks back on the past year from our favored perch: ideas. Like a magpie building its nest, we have hunted eclectically, though not without discrimination, for noteworthy notions of 2009 — the twigs and sticks and shiny paper scraps of human ingenuity, which, when collected and woven together, form a sort of cognitive shelter, in which the curious mind can incubate, hatch and feather. Unlike birds, we can also alphabetize. And so we hereby present, from A to Z, the most clever, important, silly and just plain weird innovations we carried back from all corners of the thinking world. To offer a nonalphabetical option for navigating the entries, this year we have attached tags to each item indicating subject matter. We hope you enjoy.

Die Ideen des Jahres 2009 aus den Bereichen, Kunst, Business, Kultur, Design, Gesundheit, Wissenschaft, Politik, Sport und Technologie, ausgesucht von der New York Times

"The virus behind cold sores is a major cause of the insoluble protein plaques found in the brains of Alzheimer's disease sufferers, University of Manchester researchers have revealed."

s disease puts out the welcome mat for the virus that

The virus behind cold sores is a major cause of the insoluble protein plaques found in the brains of Alzheimer's disease sufferers, University of Manchester researchers have revealed. They believe the herpes simplex virus is a significant factor in developing the debilitating disease and could be treated by antiviral agents such as acyclovir, which is already used to treat cold sores and other diseases caused by the herpes virus. Another future possibility is vaccination against the virus to prevent the development of the disease in the first place. The team discovered that the HSV1 DNA is located very specifically in amyloid plaques: 90% of plaques in Alzheimer's disease sufferers' brains contain HSV1 DNA, and most of the viral DNA is located within amyloid plaques. The team had previously shown that HSV1 infection of nerve-type cells induces deposition of the main component, beta amyloid, of amyloid plaques.

# To the optimist, the glass is half full. To the pessimist, the glass is half empty. To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

NEVER loan out your copies of: * `The Art of Electronics' (Horowitz & Hill, Cambridge University Press) (you do HAVE a copy don't you?) * 'Illustrated Sourcebook of Mechanical Components or Ingenious Mechanisms for Designers and Inventors * The Art of Computer Programming, Volumes 1..3 Boxed Set

최근 10년간 SF소설 시장에서 눈부신 활약을 보였던 20권의 책 선정(해리포터 시리즈, 시간여행자의 아내 등등). 2009년 12월 11일자 <자료제공:io9>

Subscribe Now! National Geographic Magazine $15

"Ida," the small "missing link" found in Germany that's created a big media splash.

May 19, 2009

Ida

missing link in human evolution May 2009 article from Nat. Geo.

News of a 47-million-year-old fossil that may give us more information on primate evolution.

Recommended by Mike Morreti for yeast storage.

good for TSA too!

The conclusions are sane, compassionate, and compelling: in a nutshell, the "serious" stuff we all hope kids will do online (researching papers and so on) are only possible within a framework of "hanging out, messing around and geeking out." That is to say, all the "time-wasting" social stuff kids do online are key to their explorations and education online.

"hanging out, messing around and geeking out."

Comment from Cory Doctorow on the Digital Youth Project, publishing results of the ethnographic study of kids use on Internet.

Study on 5000 people across China. “Women’s orgasm frequency increases with the income of their partner,” said Dr Thomas Pollet, the Newcastle University psychologist behind the research. [...] The study is certain to prove controversial, suggesting that women are inherently programmed to be gold-diggers." Replicated in Germany and USA.

gest lifestyle studies. The Chinese Health and Family Life Survey targeted 5,000 people across China for in-depth interviews about their personal lives, including questions about their sex lives, income and other factors. Among these were 1,534 women with male partne

Scientists have found that the pleasure women get from making love is directly linked to the size of their partner’s bank balance.

Hilarious! Now I understand why my wife has a constant smile :-)

g abo

Worth reading from A-Z.

Once again, The Times Magazine looks back on the past year from our favored perch: ideas.

las mejores ideas de '09 ordenadas alfabéticamente por NYTimes

Dr Mark Norman, head of science at Museum Victoria, Melbourne, and one of the authors of the paper, said: "It is amazing watching them excavate one of these shells. They probe their arms down to loosen the mud, then they rotate them out."

Tool use among octopuses

greenhouse gas beca

Quickly Find... Home | Front Page MyEXPRESS - My Homepage

100 reasons why global warming is not man-made (or even exists at all)

Simple list about what is good for brain, nothing new, but good round up.

Mahamritunjay Mantra

Stunning Hubble photos for the holidays http://bit.ly/7PPKxr via @atleykins

The boys and I are loving this amazing collection of photographs.

The story of Matthias Rath, vitamin king, and the damage he wrought in promoting consumption of his products over antivirals of proven effectiveness in AIDS-wracked South Africa.

The chapter missing from ‘Bad Science’ due to Rath suing Goldacre at the time.

The doctor will sue you now

Quackery and exploitation, with deadly consequences.

a very serious story about the dangers of pseudoscience

"Another is that combat in orbit would be very different from combat in "deep space," which is what you probably think of as how space combat should be – where a spacecraft thrusts one way, and then keeps going that way forever. No, around a planet, the tactical advantage in a battle would be determined by orbit dynamics: which ship is in a lower (and faster) orbit than which; who has a circular orbit and who has gone for an ellipse; relative rendezvous trajectories that look like winding spirals rather than straight lines."

First, let me point out something that Ender's Game got right and something it got wrong. What it got right is the essentially three-dimensional nature of space combat, and how that would be fundamentally different from land, sea, and air combat. In principle, yes, your enemy could come at you from any direction at all. In practice, though, the Buggers are going to do no such thing. At least, not until someone invents an FTL drive, and we can actually pop our battle fleets into existence anywhere near our enemies. The marauding space fleets are going to be governed by orbit dynamics – not just of their own ships in orbit around planets and suns, but those planets' orbits. For the same reason that we have Space Shuttle launch delays, we'll be able to tell exactly what trajectories our enemies could take between planets: the launch window.

The Physics of Space Battles

I hope someone's working on the simulation.

very realistic sound movement

Holophonic Sounds

This has the largest collection of virtual field trips I have ever found. They look pretty fun^_^

tons of virtual field trips

WITH AN INTERNET CONNECTION, STUDENTS CAN TRAVEL AROUND THE WORLD RIGHT IN YOUR CLASSROOM.

ideals of courtly love, the writing process

Lots to choose from here including several zoos

Creepy!! http://twurl.nl/1dsmw7 [from http://twitter.com/FANLESS/statuses/1024831220]

Cool weird squid

The Fourth Paradigm: Data-Intensive Scientific Discovery Presenting the first broad look at the rapidly emerging field of data-intensive science

Gray

In The Fourth Paradigm: Data-Intensive Scientific Discovery, the collection of essays expands on the vision of pioneering computer scientist Jim Gray for a new, fourth paradigm of discovery based on data-intensive science and offers insights into how it can be fully realized.

Free eBook of essays on "Data-Intensive Scientific Discovery" : "Increasingly, scientific breakthroughs will be powered by advanced computing capabilities that help researchers manipulate and explore massive datasets."

Watch an incredible travel to the end of the universe and back. http://bit.ly/5lNzl1

r|t, simulation, univers, -th|l, [4], ****, ººººº.

Similar to Powers of 10, but a little more detailed

Video visualization of the universe

...examine, review, and collect relevant science resources that can be used as part of information literacy instruction to science students and faculty.

文章　順序

こんちには みさなん おんげき ですか？　わしたは げんき です。 この ぶんょしう は いりぎす の ケブンッリジ だがいく の けゅきんう の けっか にんんげ は もじ を にしんき する とき その さしいょ と さいご の もさじえ あいてっれば じばんゅん は めくちちゃゃ でも ちんゃと よめる という けゅきんう に もづいとて わざと もじの じんばゅん を いかれえて あまりす。 どでうす？　ちんゃと よゃちめう でしょ？ ちんゃと よためら はのんう よしろく

人間は文字を認識するときに最初と最後の文字さえ合っていれば順番はめちゃくちゃでもちゃんと読めてしまう

おかいしのに　なかぜ読める　不議思な　日本語。(試しに漢字も混ぜて書いた。） どっかで最近読んだな～と思ったら、岩波書店の１冊でわかるシリーズ「脳」にこれの英語版が載ってた。

whoa dude

RT @justinvincent Single molecule's stunning image http://bit.ly/rcsbq [from http://twitter.com/CollinVanUden/statuses/3614397312]

The detailed chemical structure of a single molecule has been imaged for the first time, say researchers.

The detailed chemical structure of a single molecule has been imaged for the first time, say researchers. The physical shape of single carbon nanotubes has been outlined before, using similar techniques - but the new method even shows up chemical bonds. Understanding structure on this scale could help in the design of many things on the molecular scale, particularly electronics or even drugs. The IBM researchers report their findings in the journal Science.

The Site is Now Missing (as of 10 march 2009) But Lucky i annotated most of the part , so click on the Expand and read from ther Annotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.magazinetimepass.com%2Foddities%2Fmost-bizarre-experiments-of-all-time

Peixe bizarro, transparente

This is a Phase II expansion grant from the National Science Foundation (2008-2011). The goal of the project is to develop, classroom test, evaluate and disseminate projects based on primary historical sources in Discrete Mathematics, Combinatorics, Logic and Computer Science courses.

This is a Phase II expansion grant from the National Science Foundation (2008-2011). The goal of the project is to develop, classroom test, evaluate and disseminate projects based on primary historical sources in Discrete Mathematics, Combinatorics, Logic and Computer Science courses. This is a collaborative project between Mathematics (Math) and Computer Science (CS) faculty at New Mexico State University (NMSU) and Colorado State University at Pueblo (CSU-P).

Learning Discrete Mathematics and Computer Science via Primary Historical Sources

The goal of the project is to develop, classroom test, evaluate and disseminate projects based on primary historical sources in Discrete Mathematics, Combinatorics, Logic and Computer Science courses.

COMPUTER PROGRAMMING SITES!! many many many OF THEM!!!

How to concentrate and get rid of distractions

From better eating and lifestyle habits we become radically healthier, more potent and with improved genes

there's hope. you are not your genes

Nuclear Reactor Wall Charts

Cutaway illustrations of Nuclear Power Reactors. Linked via John Nack at Adobe.

んー、どうなんだろ。導入してる歯医者はまだまだ少なめ。一般販売してないってのがメンドクサイなあ。

一部の歯科医院で購入。500ml入りボトルで2,400円～3,000円

collection of infographics from Victorian era books/publications

Victorian Infographics -- animals, time, and space from the Victorians. It's beautiful, it's meaningful, it must be infoengravings.

BibliOdyssey: Victorian Infographics design, illustration, visualization, history, science, graphics, books, maps, science, vintage, infographics

Screw ups, disasters, misfires, flops. Why losing big can be a winning strategy.

"There are advantages to thinking on the margin. When we look at a problem from the outside, we’re more likely to notice what doesn’t work. Instead of suppressing the unexpected, shunting it aside with our 'Oh shit!' circuit and Delete key, we can take the mistake seriously. A new theory emerges from the ashes of our surprise."

"This is why other people are so helpful: They shock us out of our cognitive box."

Over the past few decades, psychologists have dismantled the myth of objectivity. The fact is, we carefully edit our reality, searching for evidence that confirms what we already believe. Although we pretend we’re empiricists — our views dictated by nothing but the facts — we’re actually blinkered, especially when it comes to information that contradicts our theories. The problem with science, then, isn’t that most experiments fail — it’s that most failures are ignored.

Article about the messiness of science, its failures and how an “in vivo” investigation that attempted to learn from the messiness of real experiments -

ハーディのパラドクス cf.http://www.thevarsity.ca/article/18481-u-of-t-scientists-prove／論文http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/1367-2630/11/3/033011/njp9_3_033011.html

Since its birth in the 1920s, physicists and philosophers have grappled with the bizarre consequences that his theory has for reality, including the fundamental truth that it is impossible to know everything about the world and, in fact, whether it really exists at all when it is not being observed. Now two groups of physicists, working independently, have demonstrated that nature is indeed real when unobserved. When no one is peeking, however, it acts in a really odd way.

Yet more proof that the stuff down at a quantum level makes no sense when thought about using metaphors derived at a human level.

science-fiction books - education !!

READ THESE FOR INSPIRATION ASAP

If you really want to stoke your imagination, spend all those hours reading science fiction instead. Every good entrepreneur needs a certain amount of imagination to envision the future. Science fiction books tend to keep the imaginative juices flowing. And the better ones have moral or other life lessons that are a lot more fun to read entwined with the drama of an unfolding story that involves spaceships, time travel or other worlds.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

sci-fi meets business

instead of sweetened beverages, the average American drank water, Finkelstein calculates, he or she would weigh fifteen pounds less.

Good article on the rising rate of obesity in the US and around the world.

"The human body is “mismatched” to the human situation. “We evolved on the savannahs of Africa,” Power and Schulkin write. “We now live in Candyland.” "

A food scientist for Frito-Lay relates how the company is seeking to create “a lot of fun in your mouth” with products like Nacho Cheese Doritos, which meld “three different cheese notes” with lots of salt and oil. Another product-development expert talks about how she is trying to “unlock the code of craveability,” and a third about the effort to “cram as much hedonics as you can in one dish.” Kessler invents his own term—“conditioned hypereating”—to describe how people respond to these laboratory-designed concoctions. Foods like Cinnabons and Starbucks’ Strawberries & Crème Frappuccinos are, he maintains, like drugs:

"Early humans compensated for the energy used in their heads by cutting back on the energy used in their guts; as man’s cranium grew, his digestive tract shrank. This forced him to obtain more energy-dense foods than his fellow-primates were subsisting on, which put a premium on adding further brain power. The result of this self-reinforcing process was a strong taste for foods that are high in calories and easy to digest; just as it is natural for gorillas to love leaves, it is natural for people to love funnel cakes. In America today, obtaining calories is very nearly effortless; as Power and Schulkin observe, with a few dollars it’s possible to go to the grocery store and purchase enough sugar or vegetable oil to fulfill the average person’s energy requirements for a week. The result is what’s known as the 'mismatch paradigm.' The human body is 'mismatched' to the human situation. 'We evolved on the savannahs of Africa,' Power and Schulkin write. 'We now live in Candyland.'"

One of the most comprehensive data sets available about Americans—how tall they are, when they last visited a dentist, what sort of cereal they eat for breakfast, whether they have to pee during the night, and, if so, how often—comes from a series of studies conducted by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Participants are chosen at random, interviewed at length, and subjected to a battery of tests in special trailers that the C.D.C. hauls around the country. The studies, known as the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys, began during the Eisenhower Administration and have been carried out periodically ever since.

Research behind design

Provides examples that include 'Kingsdale School in London [which] was redesigned, with the help of psychologists, to promote social cohesion; the new structure also includes elements that foster alertness and creativity.'

How Room Designs Affect Your Work and Mood

ists are giving their hunches an empirical basis

Recently, researchers have found even more positive news. The brain, as it traverses middle age, gets better at recognizing the central idea, the big picture. If kept in good shape, the brain can continue to build pathways that help its owner recognize patterns and, as a consequence, see significance and even solutions much faster than a young person can. The trick is finding ways to keep brain connections in good condition and to grow more of them. “The brain is plastic and continues to change, not in getting bigger but allowing for greater complexity and deeper understanding,” says Kathleen Taylor, a professor at St. Mary’s College of California, who has studied ways to teach adults effectively. “As adults we may not always learn quite as fast, but we are set up for this next developmental step.” [via xeks]

“As adults we have these well-trodden paths in our synapses,” Dr. Taylor says. “We have to crack the cognitive egg and scramble it up. And if you learn something this way, when you think of it again you’ll have an overlay of complexity you didn’t have before — and help your brain keep developing as well.”

Annotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2010%2F01%2F03%2Feducation%2Fedlife%2F03adult-t.html%3Fem

Jack Mezirow, a professor emeritus at Columbia Teachers College, has proposed that adults learn best if presented with what he calls a “disorienting dilemma,” or something that “helps you critically reflect on the assumptions you’ve acquired.”

Memory tips

The Truth Behind Real CSI Evidence - Popular Mechanics

As DNA testing has made it possible to re-examine biological evidence from past trials, more than 200 people have had their convictions overturned. In approximately 50 percent of those cases, bad forensic analysis contributed to their imprisonment.

Forensic science was not developed by scientists. It was mostly created by cops, who were guided by little more than common sense. And as hundreds of criminal cases begin to unravel, many established forensic practices are coming under fire. PM takes an in-depth look at the shaky science that has put innocent people behind bars.

When things don’t add up, the mind goes into high gear.

Blacketer sent this to me

Are you a digital native?

article about iBrain book - changes in brain due to technology

leading neuroscientist says processing digital information can rewire your circuits. But is it evolution?

Technology Use and Our Brains

In cold fact, a financial crisis is one of the kindest and mildest sorts of crisis a civilization can have. Compared to typical Italian catastrophes like wars, epidemics, earthquakes, volcanoes, endemic political collapse — a financial crisis is a problem for schoolchildren.

Bruce Sterling text on design, futurism and stuff.

funny, brilliant man

We create and distribute original Science is Culture content that communicates science's fast-changing place in our culture to an international audience. Our mission is to help nurture a science-savvy global citizenry by increasing public interest in science and public understanding of science.

"Eight years late, the 20th century has finally departed us this year. It will never return." bruce sterling's optimistic piece on what we're collectively in for next.

Check out the little bloke on Neptune...

Cool graphic comparing gravity wells of solar system.

What is the hardest language?

n all dem anglophones

Frankly it's amazing that anyone learns any language. Maybe Esperanto wasn't such a bad idea after all.

In search of the world's hardest language

How Florence Nightingale used statistics and good visualization to persuade the queen of England to improve the military medical service.

passion, persistence, for the least, but combined with competency and intelligence

David Dobbs tells us about a new theory in genetics called the orchid hypothesis that suggests that the genes that underlie some of the most troubling human behaviors -- violence, depression, anxiety -- can, in combination with the right environment, also be responsible for our best behaviors. Most of us have genes that make us as hardy as dandelions: able to take root and survive almost anywhere. A few of us, however, are more like the orchid: fragile and fickle, but capable of blooming spectacularly if given greenhouse care. So holds a provocative new theory of genetics, which asserts that the very genes that give us the most trouble as a species, causing behaviors that are self-destructive and antisocial, also underlie humankind's phenomenal adaptability and evolutionary success. With a bad environment and poor parenting, orchid children can end up depressed, drug-addicted, or in jail -- but with the right environment and good parenting, they can grow up to be society's most cr

People that are genetically prone to being at risk in poor environments are also more successful in good environments

found via kottke.org

"the very genes that give us the most trouble as a species also underlie humankind’s phenomenal adaptability and evolutionary success"

Most of us have genes that make us as hardy as dandelions: able to take root and survive almost anywhere. A few of us, however, are more like the orchid: fragile and fickle, but capable of blooming spectacularly if given greenhouse care. So holds a provocative new theory of genetics, which asserts that the very genes that give us the most trouble as a species, causing behaviors that are self-destructive and antisocial, also underlie humankind’s phenomenal adaptability and evolutionary success. With a bad environment and poor parenting, orchid children can end up depressed, drug-addicted, or in jail—but with the right environment and good parenting, they can grow up to be society’s most creative, successful, and happy people.

a bad environment and poor parenting vs the right environment and good parenting

“stress diathesis” or “genetic vulnerability” model Most of us have genes that make us as hardy as dandelions: able to take root and survive almost anywhere. A few of us, however, are more like the orchid: fragile and fickle, but capable of blooming spectacularly if given greenhouse care. So holds a provocative new theory of genetics, which asserts that the very genes that give us the most trouble as a species, causing behaviors that are self-destructive and antisocial, also underlie humankind’s phenomenal adaptability and evolutionary success. With a bad environment and poor parenting, orchid children can end up depressed, drug-addicted, or in jail—but with the right environment and good parenting, they can grow up to be society’s most creative, successful, and happy people. The Atlantic Online | December 2009 |

Maybe, in some alternate universe, I paid attention in chemistry class...

Openchemistry makes chemistry learning content free, open and available to the world.

"How television tried to predict the future of science"

How television tried to predict the future of science. I can't believe this has not been promoted more.

From a time before we started dumbing down science for the masses...

Classic UK TV

2009 internat yr of astronomy

sterrenkunde Uit meer met media

人工生態系Biosphere2が廃墟に

The fertile promise of the microcosm has been abandoned.

Gravity keeps our feet on the ground and our planet circling the sun, but we know remarkably little about it. New Scientist investigates the force's greatest mysteries.

Scientific Method Web Page http://info.ritenour.k12.mo.us/hms/tripp/method/observation.html [from http://twitter.com/FelipeMorales/statuses/1673000250]

web quest from @jackiegerstein & kjarrett

Learn about the scientific method using a webquest

The head of Google's new university, Ray Kurzweil believes the advance of technology will solve the energy crisis, upgrade the human genome and even lead to everlasting life - no wonder he is so optimistic

In the land of Kurzweil, the possibility of reprogramming the body is not a dry academic theory, it is a blueprint for how to lead your life.

chevere

Animations can be viewed within your web browser (the Macromedia Flash plugin is required) or downloaded for play from your computer.

The Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory's learning center has a nice library of animations demonstrating various biology concepts. Some of the concepts covered in the animations library include DNA restriction and transformation, DNA arrays, and model organisms. The animations can be viewed online or downloaded. In addition to the animations library, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory has a library of 3D models. Highlighting the list of 3D models is a model of the human brain. Like the other animations, the 3D models can be viewed online or downloaded for use on your local hard drive.

How does the Internet change the way we think?

each year this site asks major thinkers to answer a question, here, "How is the Internet changing your way of thinking?" A great question with lots of respondents' short essays--enough to keep me reading for a week.

HOW IS THE INTERNET CHANGING THE WAY YOU THINK?

"Documentales de ciencia"

Mixed bag of science documentaries.

Amazing things from 2009

The layer, a sort of protective barrier called the heliosphere, shields us from harmful cosmic radiation. Its existence defies all expectations about what the edge of the solar system might look like. Fisher's response: "We thought we knew everything about everything, and it turned out that there were unknown unknowns." In other words: We don't know what we don't know until we know that we don't know it.

In any given era, those who minister to the mentally ill — doctors or shamans or priests — inadvertently help to select which symptoms will be recognized as legitimate. Because the troubled mind has been influenced by healers of diverse religious and scientific persuasions, the forms of madness from one place and time often look remarkably different from the forms of madness in another.

from a book on the same topic, describes how the "symptom repertoire" of mental illness is becoming standardized around the world, which is quite different from times past. "we’ve been changing not only the treatments but also the expression of mental illness in other cultures. Indeed, a handful of mental-health disorders — depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and anorexia among them — now appear to be spreading across cultures with the speed of contagious diseases. These symptom clusters are becoming the lingua franca of human suffering, replacing indigenous forms of mental illness."

Shit is NOT easy.

Bibliography of Programming Languages Implementation

結局ファンがついていようが騒音がどうかわからないとかあるけど、まず形を変えたことが素晴らしい。

Dyson、“羽根がないのに風が出る”扇風機を発表 DysonのAir Multiplier扇風機は従来の扇風機のような羽根はなく、流体力学を利用した独自の技術で空気の流れを増幅する。 2009年10月13日 16時47分 更新 　Dysonは10月12日、「羽根のない扇風機」を発表した。 ah_dyson1.jpgah_dyson2.jpg 羽根のない扇風機 　同社の「Dyson Air Multiplier」は従来の扇風機とは違って羽根がなく、土台に輪を乗せたような形になっている。 　従来の扇風機は、羽根が空気を切ってしまい、空気の流れが不均衡になる点が問題だった。Dysonの技術は流体力学を利用した独自の技術で空気の流れを15倍に増幅し、毎秒119ガロンの空気をスムーズに流すという。

"この扇風機は土台の部分に組み込まれたモーターを使って空気を吸い込み、その空気を飛行機の翼のような傾斜がついた輪から送り出す。空気が輪から出るときに、その気流に周囲の空気が引き込まれて、空気の流れが増幅され、空気が一定して途切れなく流れる。"

Japan & NASA

The data, comprising 1.3 million images, come from a collaboration between the US space agency Nasa and the Japanese trade ministry.

... resulting in 2000 civilizations in the galaxy, as plugged into the drake equation.

Recent work at Edinburgh University tried to quantify how many intelligent civilisations might be out there. The research suggested there could be thousands of them.

From the article: "But, based on the limited numbers of planets found so far, Dr Boss has estimated that each Sun-like star has on average one 'Earth-like' planet." Contrast with Nick Bostrom's take on life from other planets.

"A recent study by Walker and his colleagues examined how rest - specifically, rapid eye movement (REM) sleep - influences our ability to read emotions in other people's faces." does sleep promote brain acuity? can lack of sleep explain social deviations? are autistic people counted into this study?

"Adequate sleep may underpin our ability to understand complex emotions properly in waking life." Research suggests that sleep-deprived people are more-sensitive to negative emotions such as anger and fear. "With little mental energy to spare, you're emotionally more attuned to things that are likely to be the most threatening in the immediate moment. Inversely, when you're well rested, you may be more sensitive to positive emotions, which could benefit long-term survival." So if you're not sleeping, and you're feeling a little on-edge, there's your reason why...

In the low self-esteem group, those who repeated the mantra felt worse afterwards compared with others who did not. However people with high self-esteem felt better after repeating the positive self-statement - but only slightly. The psychologists then asked the study participants to list negative and positive thoughts about themselves. They found that, paradoxically, those with low self-esteem were in a better mood when they were allowed to have negative thoughts than when they were asked to focus exclusively on affirmative thoughts. Writing in the journal, the researchers suggest that, like overly positive praise, unreasonably positive self-statements, such as "I accept myself completely," can provoke contradictory thoughts in individuals with low self-esteem. Such negative thoughts can overwhelm the positive thoughts.

BBC NEWS | Health

Repeating affirmations which are, in your perception, not true will not actually help. Just the opposite, in fact.

A UK psychologist said people based their feelings about themselves on real evidence from their lives.

The Khan Academy is a not-for-profit organization with the mission of providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere. We have 1000+ videos on YouTube covering everything from basic arithmetic and algebra to differential equations, physics, chemistry, biology and finance which have been recorded by Salman Khan.

Rich, Black, Flunking Cal Professor John Ogbu thinks he knows why rich black kids are failing in school. Nobody wants to hear it. By Susan Goldsmith May 21, 2003 Chris Duffey John Ogbu has been compared to Clarence Thomas, denounced by the Urban League, and criticized in The New York Times. Amy Weiser It wasn’t socioeconomics, school funding, or racism that accounted for the students' poor performance, Ogbu says; it was their own attitudes, and those of their parents. Chris Duffey Lionel Fluker John McWhorter believes academia too readily blames white people. The black parents wanted an explanation. Doctors, lawyers, judges, and insurance brokers, many had come to the upscale Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights specifically because of its stellar school district. They expected their children to succeed academically, but most were performing poorly. African-American students were lagging far behind their white classmates in every measure of academic success: grade-point average, stand

John Ogbu attributes more of the responsibility for the achievement gap to Black people than other academics do.

Ogbu's work on the black middle class in Shaker Heights OH

Simulador de un laboratorio de química

A virtual chemistry lab.

virtual labs

laboratorio virtuale di scienze

virtual science lab for kids - sam

Film, Television, Books, Music, Art, Poetry, Celebrity, Sex, Science, Fashion

"Chaos theory has a bad name, conjuring up images of unpredictable weather, economic crashes and science gone wrong. But there is a fascinating and hidden side to Chaos, one that scientists are only now beginning to understand. It turns out that chaos theory answers a question that mankind has asked for millennia - how did we get here? In this documentary, Professor Jim Al-Khalili sets out to uncover one of the great mysteries of science - how does a universe that starts off as dust end up with intelligent life? How does order emerge from disorder? It's a mindbending, counterintuitive and for many people a deeply troubling idea. But Professor Al-Khalili reveals the science behind much of beauty and structure in the natural world and discovers that far from it being magic or an act of God, it is in fact an intrinsic part of the laws of physics. Amazingly, it turns out that the mathematics of chaos can explain how and why the universe creates exquisite order and pattern. The natural worl

A new MacGyver-esque cellphone hack could bring cheap, on-the-spot disease detection to even the most remote villages on the planet. Using only an LED, plastic light filter and some wires, scientists at UCLA have modded a cellphone into a portable blood tester capable of detecting HIV, malaria and other illnesses.

UCLA scientists combine hacked cell phone and machine vision to do on the spot blood-disease testing - http://bit.ly/dhvZ [from http://twitter.com/nealrichter/statuses/1362446459]

Mobile phone modified with lens and coherent light source to detect diseases e.g. HIV in blood

Scientists Hack Cellphone to Analyze Blood, Detect Disease, Help Developing Nations

"Science is a deeply frustrating pursuit." ... "This is why other people are so helpful: They shock us out of our cognitive box."

Recomm. by Francois R.

monopoles gather to form a "magnetic current" like electricity. The phenomenon, dubbed "magnetricity", could be used in magnetic storage or in computing. Magnetic monopoles were first predicted to exist over a century ago, as a perfect analogue to electric charges. Although there are protons and electrons with net positive and negative electric charges, there were no particles in existence which carry magnetic charges. Rather, every magnet has a "north" and "south" pole. //"particles" which carry an overall magnetic charge. But they exist only in the spin ice crystals.

Researchers have discovered a magnetic equivalent to electricity: single magnetic charges that can behave and interact like electrical ones. The work is the first to make use of the magnetic monopoles that exist in special crystals known as spin ice.

Apparently magnets with only one pole exist

"Researchers have discovered a magnetic equivalent to electricity: single magnetic charges that can behave and interact like electrical ones."

'Magnetic electricity' discovered

Researchers have discovered a magnetic equivalent to electricity: single magnetic charges that can behave and interact like electrical ones.

nanotechnology has helped discover magnetricity, particles that carry magnetic charges

HOLY SHIT SCOTTY WAS HERE

check this out

Oxford scientists have created a transparent form of aluminium by bombarding the metal with the world’s most powerful soft X-ray laser. 'Transparent aluminium' previously only existed in science fiction, featuring in the movie Star Trek IV, but the real material is an exotic new state of matter with implications for planetary science and nuclear fusion.

Oxford scientists have created a transparent form of aluminium by bombarding the metal with the world's most powerful soft X-ray laser. 'Transparent aluminum' previously only existed in science fiction, featuring in the movie Star Trek IV, but the real material is an exotic new state of matter with implications for planetary science and nuclear fusion

3D virtual browsing. Interface it a bit clunky, but I heart me some virtual books.

Welcome to our gallery of Turning the Pages™ presentations - high-quality digital facsimiles of manuscripts which replicate the physical experience of reading the original works as closely as possible. We hope that these will give you a flavour of the fascinating and diverse range of material held within our collections. We will be adding more items soon. Launch Turning the Pages™ 2.0 * Full 3D version - high end, full functionality. (Need help?) * Silverlight version - if you cannot use the 3D version, try this one. (Need help?) * Accessible version - if you're still having difficulty, try this version. (Need help?) The Turning the Pages™ Library currently includes these manuscripts. William Stukeley's Life of Newton Thomas Paine's iron bridge design Woolsthorpe Paine letter The Constitutions of Carolina Anatomical drawings of the human lymphatic system The fundamental constitutions of Carolina Foot Richard Waller's watercolours of English flowers and grasses

Welcome to our gallery of Turning the Pages™ presentations - high-quality digital facsimiles of manuscripts which replicate the physical experience of reading the original works as closely as possible.

Welcome to our gallery of Turning the Pages™ presentations - high-quality digital facsimiles of manuscripts which replicate the physical experience of reading the original works as closely as possible. We hope that these will give you a flavour of the fascinating and diverse range of material held within our collections. We will be adding more items soon.

Share your ideas for transforming learning through the Digital Media and Learning Competition in coordination with National Lab Day — where designers, entrepreneurs and educators compete to create 21st century learning labs — digital media experiences that help young people learn, play, tinker, participate and grow through hands on work

hands on learning ideas/projects

matches students with professionals

oeh what does this thingy do?

スペースシャトルのコクピット写真。

la cabina de mandos del Atlantis

The space shuttle cockpit

Switch-and-knob-tastic

Evolution explained

There are all sorts of ways to reconstruct the history of life on Earth. Pinning down when specific events occurred is often tricky, though. For this, biologists depend mainly on dating the rocks in which fossils are found, and by looking at the "molecular clocks" in the DNA of living organisms.

Annotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.newscientist.com%2Farticle%2Fdn17453-timeline-the-evolution-of-life.html%3Ffull%3Dtrue

There are all sorts of ways to reconstruct the history of life on Earth. Pinning down when specific events occurred is often tricky, though. For this, biologists depend mainly on dating the rocks in which fossils are found, and by looking at the "molecular clocks" in the DNA of living organisms. There are problems with each of these methods. The fossil record is like a movie with most of the frames cut out. Because it is so incomplete, it can be difficult to establish exactly when particular evolutionary changes happened

Drinking five cups of coffee a day could reverse memory problems seen in Alzheimer's disease, US scientists say.

The Florida research, carried out on mice, also suggested caffeine hampered the production of the protein plaques which are the hallmark of the disease.

Real World Science News

1メートル離れた原子同士でテレポーテーションの実験が成功した件

"if you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understands quantum mechanics." Or sometimes he is cited thusly: "I think I can safely say that nobody understand quantum mechanics."

Scientists have come a bit closer to achieving the

so this is one of my FAVORITE BOOKS OF ALL TIME!! and now lots of the stories are up right here :D :D :D

From "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!", the kind of advice that saves you a lifetime of figuring it out by yourself

hey're not going to give you a goddamn thing; I'm not going to be a gentleman to such worthless bitches, and so on. I learned it till it was automatic.

escala del universo

A escala do universo da menor particula ao tamanho do universo

Amazing flash animation where you choose the scale with a slider and it zooms from quantum foam to the entire universe. Spectacular. [via Math Hombre blog]

Zoom from the edge of the universe to the quantum foam of spacetime and learn the scale of things along the way! Learn the size of the Pillars of Creation and marvel at the minuscule scale of a neutrino! ARROW KEYS! ARROW KEYS! You can use arrow keys if the scroll bar is too sensitive. Thank you so much for your high ratings and rave reviews!

tv en Internet, el canal de la ciencia y la innovación

El canal de la ciencia y la innovación

Tele online que empieza ahora con contenidos de ciencia y tecnología

Simulación del sistema solar. Puedes poner a cualquier planeta como centro del sistema, y ver cómo son las órbitas de los demás vistas desde él

Planets

„dctp.tv ist das Web-TV der dctp GmbH, Düsseldorf. Das Internetangebot ergänzt die auf den TV-Sendern RTL, SAT.1 und VOX ausgestrahlten dctp-Programme. In einem aktuellen Live-Stream und dem Themenpark mit verschiedenen Themenschleifen findet der User jeweils bis zu zwölf Filme zu den unterschiedlichsten Schwerpunkten. Themen, die sich nicht täglich ändern, doch Antworten auf und Denkanstöße zu aktuellen Ereignissen und Fragen von dauernder Bedeutung geben.“

Fernsehsender von Alexander Kluge

Article on challenges of living/working in a world that is full of distractions and the impact that this has on us as individuals - both in terms of productivity and sense of well being

Review of Gallagher's 'Rapt'

April 2009: Twitter and e-mail aren't making us stupider, but they are making us more distracted. A new book [Winifred Gallagher's "Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life"] explains why learning to focus is the key to living better.

Twitter and e-mail aren't making us stupider, but they are making us more distracted. A new book explains why learning to focus is the key to living better. By Laura Miller

This website has been developed to provide an evidence-based resource for those interested in the biomechanics of different foot strikes in endurance running and the applications to human endurance running prior to the modern running shoe.

wow, i had really strong feelings for this one http://www.xkcd.com/695/

If the Mars Spirit Rover could talk...

:-(

Aw, man.

Older news, but I finally got around to reading it. Interesting piece on the importance of color.

In the latest and most authoritative study on color's cognitive effects, test subjects given attention-demanding tasks did best when primed with the color red. Asked to be creative, they responded best to blue.

A Traveling Exhibition about the Sounds and Songs of Life

Spray-on liquid glass is transparent, non-toxic, and can protect virtually any surface against almost any damage from hazards such as water, UV radiation, dirt, heat, and bacterial infections. The coating is also flexible and breathable, which makes it suitable for use on an enormous array of products.

h-hoooooly shit??? (This is either awesome or going to kill a bunch of people before they go, Oh, hidden health risks. BUT MAN IF THIS ARTICLE WERE RIGHT THIS'D SO SO INCREDIBLE, and even with the health risks, there are loads of things you could use it for anyway. *_*

"Spray-on liquid glass is transparent, non-toxic, and can protect virtually any surface against almost any damage from hazards such as water, UV radiation, dirt, heat, and bacterial infections. The coating is also flexible and breathable, which makes it suitable for use on an enormous array of products." Sounds too good to be true.

A debut column on math features an introduction to numbers, from upsides (they're efficient) to down (they're ethereal).

I’ll be writing about the elements of mathematics, from pre-school to grad school, for anyone out there who’d like to have a second chance at the subject — but this time from an adult perspective. It’s not intended to be remedial. The goal is to give you a better feeling for what math is all about and why it’s so enthralling to those who get it.

In cooperation with the National Science Foundation, NBC Learn explores the physics, biology, chemistry, and math behind the winter games.

NBC Learn is the education arm of NBC News. We are making the global resources of NBC News and the historic film and video archive available to teachers, students, schools and universities.

online videos capitalize on students’ interest in the Vancouver Olympics to make science more accessible to them by illustrating how scientific principles apply to competitive sports. Narrated by NBC News anchor Lester Holt, the series is available to educators free of charge on the NBC Learn web site as a timely way to incorporate the Olympics into their classroom teaching.

The Science behind the winter olympics

NBC Learn interviews athletes, coaches, and scientists in this original 16-part series, and unravels the physics, biology, chemistry, and materials engineering behind the Olympic Winter Games. The Science of the Olympic Winter Games is made possible through a partnership with the National Science Foundation.

A fundamental but elusive step in the early evolution of life on Earth has been replicated in a laboratory. Researchers synthesized the basic ingredients

something Creationists said could never be done or observed

RNAの合成に成功。nature may 13

amazing stuff

Finally read this NYT Mag article. Western individualism bad for mental health treatment?

To blog about later. "For more than a generation now, we in the West have aggressively spread our modern knowledge of mental illness around the world. We have done this in the name of science, believing that our approaches reveal the biological basis of psychic suffering and dispel prescientific myths and harmful stigma. There is now good evidence to suggest that in the process of teaching the rest of the world to think like us, we’ve been exporting our Western “symptom repertoire” as well. That is, we’ve been changing not only the treatments but also the expression of mental illness in other cultures. Indeed, a handful of mental-health disorders — depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and anorexia among them — now appear to be spreading across cultures with the speed of contagious diseases. These symptom clusters are becoming the lingua franca of human suffering, replacing indigenous forms of mental illness."

This could be good if it takes off...

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!', but 'That's funny…'" -Isaac Asimov

RESURCH+ORG is my epic collection of links, references, insights, and inspirations that I have compiled while writing The Skepdad Blog. Many of these are sites I read, books I reference, documents I consult, or information I find otherwise useful and interesting. I've put it here specifically to be a central hub of information (hopefully useful for others) for all things skeptical, science, secular, parenting, educational, or otherwise tangential to that. Many more links have been suggested by helpful readers.

HUGE collection of skeptic resources. Might impressive.

Good list of skeptic blogs/podcasts/books/etc...

Morality in animals

This thinking is another indicator of a change in human assumptions about animal consciousness -- from uncaring reductionism to reflective respect. This is not new. In 1966, Conrad Lorenz made much the same point in On Agression, but noted that humans are the only animals whose moral principles against violence are so often breached in the form of murder and war.

Scientists studying animal behaviour believe they have growing evidence that species ranging from mice to primates are governed by moral codes of conduct in the same way as humans.

Animals possess a sense of morality that allows them to tell the difference between right and wrong, according to a controversial new book.

"...thinking fast made participants feel more elated, creative and, to a lesser degree, energetic and powerful."

thinking and happiness. Annotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sciam.com%2Farticle.cfm%3Fid%3Drapid-thinking-makes-people-happy

Rapid Thinking Makes People Happy

While few of the scientific offerings formally follow the scientific method or test an explicitly stated hypothesis, even those videos veering more towards demonstrating various principles, theories, and laws still offer visitors a chance to learn something about how the world around them operates. By this point, it should go without saying that many of the following videos contain procedures that may be dangerous to perform at home or without the proper equipment and/or training. Please do not duplicate any of these experiments unless assured that they are entirely safe for amateurs.

email use primarily for positive and intelligent sharing

But it turns out that readers have more exalted tastes, according to the Penn researchers, Jonah Berger and Katherine A. Milkman. People preferred e-mailing articles with positive rather than negative themes, and they liked to send long articles on intellectually challenging topics. Perhaps most of all, readers wanted to share articles that inspired awe, an emotion that the researchers investigated after noticing how many science articles made the list. In general, they found, 20 percent of articles that appeared on the Times home page made the list, but the rate rose to 30 percent for science articles, including ones with headlines like “The Promise and Power of RNA.” (I swear, the science staff did nothing to instigate this study, but we definitely don’t mind publicizing the results.)

readers wanted to share articles that inspired awe, an emotion that the researchers investigated after noticing how many science articles made the list. In general, they found, 20 percent of articles that appeared on the Times home page made the list, but the rate rose to 30 percent for science articles ... two criteria for an awe-inspiring story: Its scale is large, and it requires “mental accommodation” by forcing the reader to view the world in a different way. “It involves the opening and broadening of the mind,” people who share this kind of article [are] seeking emotional communion, Dr. Berger said. “Emotion in general leads to transmission, and awe is quite a strong emotion,” he said. “If I’ve just read this story that changes the way I understand the world and myself, I want to talk to others about what it means. I want to proselytize and share the feeling of awe. If you read the article and feel the same emotion, it will bring us closer together.”

Sociologists have developed elaborate theories of who spreads gossip and news — who tells whom, who matters most in social networks — but they’ve had less success measuring what kind of information travels fastest. Do people prefer to spread good news or bad news? Would we rather scandalize or enlighten? Which stories do social creatures want to share, and why?

the spread of articles/content online...leading the way: awe!

After scouring book reviews and Wikipedia, a list of the Top Ten Best Apocalyptic Novels was born. The books on this list take you down the darkest paths in uncivilized worlds, from cannibalistic gangs to vampire infected corpses. If this list doesn't get you thinking on the quickest way stock your basement full of water, canned goods and rifles, I don't know what will! Enjoy!

"One big myth is that fruit juice is a healthy part of our diet. Wrong. Drinking a glass of fruit juice a day — which is the equivalent of one soft drink of 110 to 180 calories — has been linked in the U.S., Australia and Spain to increased calorie intake and higher risks of diabetes and heart disease. Eating a piece of fruit provides vitamins, fiber and, best of all, tends to reduce intake of other food. Most fruit juices are just sugary beverages, providing extra calories — all from refined carbohydrates — without sating appetite. ... The added calories can contribute to weight gain and increased risk of both diabetes and heart disease."

Fruit juices aren’t nearly as healthy for you as you think..

From the Room for Debate Blog, debonking some food myths!

...mirror neurons fire when you merely watch another person perform a similar act. It's as if the neuron (more strictly the network of which the neuron is part) was using the visual input to do a sort of "virtual reality simulation" of the other person's actions—allowing you to empathize with her and view the world from her point of view.

Brain stuff from VS Ramachandran

Ramachandran - recent piece (Jan. 09) on what various bizarre neurological disorders might imply about the self.

Is this what Antony is saying when he writes about Epilepsy? "Now imagine these same circuits become hyperactive as sometimes happens when you have seizures originating in the temporal lobes (TLE or temporal lobe epilepsy). The result would be an intense heightening of the patient's sensory appreciation of the world and intense empathy for all beings to the extent of seeing no barriers between himself and the cosmos—the basis of religious and mystical experiences. (You lose all selfishness and become one with God.) Indeed many of history's great religious leaders have had TLE. My colleague, the late Francis Crick, has suggested that TLE patients as well as priests may have certain abnormal transmitters in their brains that he calls "theotoxins"."

Bericht im CNN iReport

Two MIT students have photographed the earth from 18 miles in space on a $148 budget using components available off-the-shelf, including a helium-filled latex balloon and $50 GPS-equipped camera-cell phone....

Interesting article about MIT students

We all suffer occasional lapses in memory. Some people suffer severe neurological conditions, such as Alzheimer's, that rob them of their ability to form memories or remember recent events. Three new studies shed light on the way the brain forms, stores and retrieves memories. Experts say they could have implications for people with certain mental disorders.

for schools

The National WWII Museum presents this website with information, lessons, and actiities about the science an technology of World War II. You can use this site to to provide your students the opportunity to broaden their understanding of WWII history.

web support estudiants de matematiques

This is a UK-based site with leaflets and booklets to download, revision exercises with answers, maths video tutorials, and other resources, for students needing maths help in Bioscience, Business, Economics, Engineering, Heath Sciences, Physical Sciences, and Mathematics and Statistics.

We are a group of people who run university maths support centres, who teach maths, and who design new media products for learning. We come from the Universities of Loughborough, Leeds and Coventry, from the Educational Broadcasting Services Trust, and from UK Learning and Teaching Support Networks. We have setup mathcentre to deliver mathematics support materials, free of charge, to students, teachers, lecturers and everyone looking for post-16 maths help. mathcentre gives you the opportunity to study important areas of pre-university mathematics, which you may have studied before or may be new to you - the maths you know you'll need for your course.

The underground world of neuroenhancing drugs. Such is the zeitgeist.

Brain Gain ?

using mind enhancing drugs to improve performance

The underground world of “neuroenhancing” drugs.

dziwne zwierzaki

eww.

Measurement of quantum phenomena could be affected by fractal nature of the object being measured.

Review of "Rapt" by Winifred Gallagher -- focuses on the culture of distraction

For the focused life, forget multitasking and try meditating.

The book’s theme, which Ms. Gallagher chose after she learned she had an especially nasty form of cancer, is borrowed from the psychologist William James: “My experience is what I agree to attend to.”

Household machine to draw water out of the air

The solution to the world's worsening water shortages by drawing the liquid of life from an unlimited and untapped source - the air. ... Their creation, the WaterMill, uses the electricity of about three light bulbs to condense moisture from the air and purify it into clean drinking water.

thanks to a firm of eco-inventors from Canada who claim to have found the solution to the world's worsening water shortages by drawing the liquid of life from an unlimited and untapped source - the air.

Canadian firm of eco-inventors claims to have found the solution to the world's worsening water shortages

In a surprisingly under-reported story from 2007, Mark Holley, a professor of underwater archaeology at Northwestern Michigan College, discovered a series of stones – some of them arranged in a circle and one of which seemed to show carvings of a mastodon – 40-feet beneath the surface waters of Lake Michigan. If verified, the carvings could be as much as 10,000 years old – coincident with the post-Ice Age presence of both humans and mastodons in the upper midwest.

Underwater discovery 2

three peat

Really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really fucking deep.

Information on the digs at Gobekli Tepe in Turkey.

Turkey: Archeological Dig Reshaping Human History - Newsweek.com

Predating Stonehenge by 6,000 years, Turkey's stunning Gobekli Tepe upends the conventional view of the rise of civilization

"Predating Stonehenge by 6,000 years, Turkey's stunning Gobekli Tepe upends the conventional view of the rise of civilization"

Gobekli Tepe: The World’s First Temple?

lol "it's SCIENTIFIC, HAHAHAHA!"

Adam explains why helium makes your voice sound higher... with examples, of course.

This video would be a fun start to a discussion of gas and density in chemistry. It could also be used when doing sound waves in physics.

VOice changing with helium and sulphur hexaflouride

Mythbusters - Fun With Gas. New episodes air Wednesdays @ 9PM ET only on the Discovery Channel! Get more video at http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/mythbusters/ Adam demonstrates how (and explains why) helium turns you into Donald Duck, and sulfur hexafluoride into Satan. From: DiscoveryNetworks. Views: 1201339. 5581 ratings. Time: 00:39. More in. Entertainment.

Holy crap! Awesome.

Orbital simulation fun for the whole family.

Get Adobe Flash player

Good and bad supplements

With just a few weeks of training, you can learn to “see” objects in the dark using echolocation the same way dolphins and bats do. Ordinary people with no special skills can use tongue clicks to visualize objects by listening to the way sound echoes off their surroundings, according to acoustic experts at the University of Alcalá de Henares in Spain.

*

I need to try this!!

wired = weird

Ordinary people with no special skills can use tongue clicks to visualize objects by listening to the way sound echoes off their surroundings, according to acoustic experts at the University of Alcalá de Henares in Spain.

DIY at home genetic engineering movement has begun

"Co-founder Mackenzie Cowell, a 24-year-old who majored in biology in college, said amateurs will probably pursue serious work such as new vaccines and super-efficient biofuels, but they might also try, for example, to use squid genes to create tattoos that glow."

"Many of these amateurs may have studied biology in college but have no advanced degrees and are not earning a living in the biotechnology field. Some proudly call themselves "biohackers" — innovators who push technological boundaries and put the spread of knowledge before profits."

biohackers

If you&#39;ve ever wondered who&#39;s in control, you or your cat, a new study points to the obvious. It&#39;s your cat.

As if you needed convincing.

From Ann Brandon via Facebook.

No surprise there.

If you've ever wondered who's in control, you or your cat, a new study points to the obvious. It's your cat.

Imported from http://twitter.com/newsycombinator/status/2636037970 Cats Do Control Humans, Study Finds http://bit.ly/PFK0w

Duh.

A 42-year-old HIV patient with leukemia appears to have no detectable HIV in his blood and no symptoms after a stem cell transplant from a donor carrying a gene mutation that confers natural resistance to the virus that causes AIDS, according to a report published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

A 42-year-old HIV patient with leukemia appears to have no detectable HIV in his blood and no symptoms after a stem cell transplant from a donor carrying a gene mutation that confers natural resistance to the virus that causes AIDS, according to a report published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. Via <a href="http://www.google.com/profiles/interney#buzz">Edney</a>

A 42-year-old HIV patient with leukemia appears to have no detectable HIV in his blood and no symptoms after a stem cell transplant from a donor carrying a gene mutation that confers natural resistance to the virus that causes AIDS, according to a report published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. "The patient is fine," said Dr. Gero Hutter of Charite Universitatsmedizin Berlin in Germany. "Today, two years after his transplantation, he is still without any signs of HIV disease and without antiretroviral medication." The case was first reported in November, and the new report is the first official publication of the case in a medical journal. Hutter and a team of medical professionals performed the stem cell transplant on the patient, an American living in Germany, to treat the man's leukemia, not the HIV itself.

Sean Carroll

A cool look at why we view the world we do and why certain actions can't be reversed.

READ THIS

finally they take a step or two towards the truth

So this freaking article has been showing up all over delicious for weeks, and I didn't save it when I read it, but since it's everywhere I'd like to officially say: NO. WHETHER OR NOT IT IS AN EVOLUTIONARY ADVANTAGE, RIGHT NOW THERE IS NO REASON TO GO THROUGH LIFE MISERABLE, NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOUR PROBLEM-SOLVING OR WHATEVER IS IMPROVED. NO NO NO. Unless the *fate of the entire human population rests in your hands*, you should NOT STAY MISERABLE.

The persistence of this affliction — and the fact that it seemed to be heritable — posed a serious challenge to Darwin’s new evolutionary theory. If depression was a disorder, then evolution had made a tragic mistake, allowing an illness that impedes reproduction — it leads people to stop having sex and consider suicide — to spread throughout the population. For some unknown reason, the modern human mind is tilted toward sadness and, as we’ve now come to think, needs drugs to rescue itself.

While there has been endless speculation about Darwin’s mysterious ailment — his symptoms have been attributed to everything from lactose intolerance to Chagas disease — Darwin himself was most troubled by his recurring mental problems. His depression left him “not able to do anything one day out of three,” choking on his “bitter mortification.” He despaired of the weakness of mind that ran in his family. “The ‘race is for the strong,’ ” Darwin wrote. “I shall probably do little more but be content to admire the strides others made in Science.”

RT: @rapella {reassuring} So we’re all a bunch of mutants http://bit.ly/a1s6S (I love this, it's made me very happy). [from http://twitter.com/nijay/statuses/3819538334]

'We are all mutants', scientists find http://twurl.nl/li4gus [from http://twitter.com/znth/statuses/3714551195]

I'm a mutant! we are all mutants! http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8227442.stm [from http://twitter.com/madguy000/statuses/3712074988]

Popular Science archives.

"We've partnered with Google to offer our entire 137-year archive for free browsing. "

imperfect people create imperfect financial situations, regardless of prior experiences. fascinating!

Postrel on a laboratory experiment where people buy and sell a guaranteed and specified security. "Here, finally, is a security with security—no doubt about its true value, no hidden risks, no crazy ups and downs, no bubbles and panics. The trading price should stick close to the expected value. At least that’s what economists would have thought before Vernon Smith, who won a 2002 Nobel Prize for developing experimental economics, first ran the test in the mid-1980s. But that’s not what happens. Again and again, in experiment after experiment, the trading price runs up way above fundamental value. Then, as the 15th round nears, it crashes...you don’t just get random noise. You get bubbles and crashes. Ninety percent of the time. So much for security. "

These lab results should give pause not only to people who believe in efficient markets, but also to those who think we can banish bubbles simply by curbing corruption and imposing more regulation. Asset markets, it seems, suffer from irrepressible effervescence. Bubbles happen, even in the most controlled conditions.

financial bubbles

At least that’s what economists would have thought before Vernon Smith, who won a 2002 Nobel Prize for developing experimental economics, first ran the test in the mid-1980s. But that’s not what happens. Again and again, in experiment after experiment, the trading price runs up way above fundamental value. Then, as the 15th round nears, it crashes. The problem doesn’t seem to be that participants are bored and fooling around. The difference between a good trading performance and a bad one is about $80 for a three-hour session, enough to motivate cash-strapped students to do their best. Besides, Noussair emphasizes, “you don’t just get random noise. You get bubbles and crashes.” Ninety percent of the time.

One of the most striking features of the disease is the disproportion between its severity and the simplicity of the cure. Today we know that scurvy is due solely to a deficiency in vitamin C, a compound essential to metabolism that the human body must obtain from food. Scurvy is rapidly and completely cured by restoring vitamin C into the diet.

scurvy bad, science hard : "We tend to think that knowledge, once acquired, is something permanent. Instead, even holding on to it requires constant, careful effort."

National Geographic SEARCH * Subscriptions * Shop * Mobile VideoTravel & CulturesSciencePhotographyMusicMapsKidsHistoryEnvironmentGamesGreen GuideDaily NewsAnimalsHome

Live Streaming Video, Botswana, Wildlife, Animals -- National Geographic

Science for Animals.

Watch real footage of a watering hole in Africa.

WEEK 8 -- 03/10/2010

In February 2009 Dmitri Williams

4 years, 400k players ~=60TB -- about 475k/s, slightly > 1k /user/sec.

Thanks to a partnership with Sony, a team of academic researchers have obtained the largest set of data on social interactions they've ever gotten their hands on: the complete server logs of Everquest 2, which track every action performed in the game.

m psychologists to epidemiologists have wondered for some time whether online, multiplayer games might provide some ways to test concepts that are otherwise difficult to track in the real world. A Saturday morning session at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of

Food for data miners

is how DVDs work: a high res green image and two low-res imag

ure notice when someone tampers with your green!! The difference with red is ce

visual spiral timeline of earth

What other facts are needed to legalize pot at this point?

This insight is the jumping-off point of Dr. Wolfram's glossy 1,263-page book, ''A New Kind of Science,'' published a month ago by Dr. Wolfram himself to the accompaniment of articles comparing Dr. Wolfram to Isaac Newton.

A New Kind of Science

simples rules and algorithms define nature, not complex ones

Bernard d'Espagnat: What we call 'reality' is just a state of mind http://hub.tm/dkmur

Quantum reality

"You might expect the child to plan for the future, think 'OK it's cold outside so the jacket will keep me warm.' But what we suggest is that this isn't what goes on in a 3-year-old's brain. Rather, they run outside, discover that it is cold, and then retrieve the memory of where their jacket is, and then they go get it."

hat tip to Leonardo Souza

“What’s hard for parents is that what feels like your own personal taste, it’s everybody’s taste,” Wattenberg says. “It’s a no win situation - if you pick a name you like, probably everybody else will like it too.”

"“What’s hard for parents is that what feels like your own personal taste, it’s everybody’s taste,” Wattenberg says. “It’s a no win situation - if you pick a name you like, probably everybody else will like it too.” And that’s what’s fascinating about watching the nation-level trends in baby naming. The national nomenclature is transformed living room by living room as one frazzled couple after another makes a seemingly personal decision for underlying phonetic reasons they haven’t considered. “People may think they named a child after great, great grandma Olivia, but they have a lot of great, great grandmas, and they picked Olivia because it fits the popular sounds,” Wattenberg says. And that’s how a country’s culture changes: People cherry-picking from the past as they look for a name to call the future."

Every day, hundreds of articles appear in academic journals and very little of this information is available to the public. Now, RNA Biology has decided to ask every author who submits an article to a newly created section of the journal about families of RNA molecules to also submit a Wikipedia page that summarizes the work. As Nature reports, this is the first time an academic journal has forced its authors to disseminate information this way. The initiative is a collaboration between the journal and the RNA family database (Rfam) consortium led by the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute.

Scientific Journal to Authors: Publish in Wikipedia or Perish

Every day, hundreds of articles appear in academic journals and very little of this information is available to the public. Now, RNA Biology has decided to ask every author who submits an article to a newly created section of the journal about families of RNA molecules to also submit a Wikipedia page that summarizes the work. As Nature reports, this is the first time an academic journal has forced its authors to disseminate information this way. The initiative is a collaboration between the journal and the RNA family database (Rfam) consortium led by the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute.

A detailed simulation of a small region of a brain built molecule by molecule has been constructed and has recreated experimental results from real brains. "It starts to learn things and starts to remember things. We can actually see when it retrieves a memory, and where they retrieved it from because we can trace back every activity of every molecule, every cell, every connection and see how the memory was formed."

A detailed simulation of a small region of a brain built molecule by molecule has been constructed and has recreated experimental results from real brains.

It's a matter of if society wants this. If they want it in 10 years, they'll have it in 10 years.

advances

Good story on how much science is messed up by misuse of statistics

Tom Siegfried, Mar 27, 2010 "uring the past century, though, a mutant form of math has deflected science’s heart from the modes of calculation that had long served so faithfully. Science was seduced by statistics, the math rooted in the same principles that guarantee profits for Las Vegas casinos. Supposedly, the proper use of statistics makes relying on scientific results a safe bet. But in practice, widespread misuse of statistical methods makes science more like a crapshoot." "Statistical tests are supposed to guide scientists in judging whether an experimental result reflects some real effect or is merely a random fluke, but the standard methods mix mutually inconsistent philosophies and offer no meaningful basis for making such decisions. Even when performed correctly, statistical tests are widely misunderstood and frequently misinterpreted. As a result, countless conclusions in the scientific literature are erroneous, and tests of medical dangers or treatments are often contra"

On the abuse and misuse of statistics by science

Science fails to face the shortcomings of statistics

A useful article outlining the shortcomings of statistics when it comes to ascertaining scientific fact. Half of all medical data could be wrong. "For better or for worse, science has long been married to mathematics. Generally it has been for the better. Especially since the days of Galileo and Newton, math has nurtured science. Rigorous mathematical methods have secured science’s fidelity to fact and conferred a timeless reliability to its findings."

Science fails to face the shortcomings of statistics

"Prime Numbers and the Benford's Law | Pyevolve" http://hub.tm/?RHOqX [from http://twitter.com/carreonG/statuses/1747034327]

Pyevolve - A complete genetic algorithm framework written in pure python

Higher amounts of sugar, fat and salt, found in foods, makes you want to eat more. KFC, Burger King, and McDonalds show great examples of these high fat foods. The action of eating these foods is now known as “conditioned hypereating” its conditioned because of the automatic response to eating these foods and hyper because people consume the food excessively. There are a few ways to stop this process. Plan your meals, use portion sizes, cut out the foods you cant control yourself over, talk yourself out of your urges, and rehearse making the right choice before entering the restaurant.

story. Made of sugar-rich russet potatoes, they have a slightly bitter background note and brown irregularly, which gives them a complex flavour. High levels of fat generate easy mouth-melt, and surface variations add a level of interest beyond that found in mass-prod

"Our favourite foods are making us fat, yet we can't resist, because eating them is changing our minds as well as bodies"

Its name is supposed to represent the three most frequently used sounds common to the most widely spoken languages today, k, e and o... The satellite has enough capacity to carry a four-page message from each of the more than six billion inhabitants on the planet... KEO will also carry a diamond that encases a drop of human blood chosen at random and samples of air, sea water and earth.[3] The DNA of the human genome will be engraved on one of the faces. .. The messages and library will be encoded in glass-made radiation-resistant DVDs. Symbolic instructions in several formats will show the future finders how to build a DVD reader.

KEO is the name of a proposed space time capsule which will be launched in 2010 or 2011[1] carrying messages from the citizens of present Earth to humanity 50,000 years from now, when it will reenter Earth's atmosphere.

Fascinating article that traces election results in counties in the South all the way back to geological events millions of years ago. In short, coastlines determined soil types which determined demographics which determined voting patterns.

This is so awesome.

How an ancient Cretaceous shoreline voted for Obama.

amazing. how soil types determine voting patterns.

Some of the most useful applications of genetic algorithms in the real world.

<<Computer Science Unplugged is a series of learning activities that reveals a little-known secret: computer science isn't really about computers at all! Unplugged teaches principles of computer science such as binary numbers, algorithms and data compression through games and puzzles that use cards, string, crayons and lots of running around. Unplugged is suitable for people of all ages, from elementary school to university, and from many countries and backgrounds. >> See the PDF of all activities that teachers can download....

RT @EHillBurns: Jellyfish "can regenerate its entire body" repeatedly RT @JLVernonPhD: A must tweet! The world's only immortal animal ht ...

Oh, crap... "Worldwide silent invasion" of immortal jellyfish: http://bit.ly/93JXXO. Why didn't something fluffy discover eternal life?

The world's only immortal animal | Yahoo! Green

play with the interactive version | find out more about this image | post a comment This image is a balloon race. The higher a bubble, the greater the

scientific evidence for popular health supplements [chart]

A graphical representation of the scientific evidence for or against particular health supplements. Vitamin C seems to be quite far down the list :).

RT @farmgeek The average American eats 60 pounds of High Fructose Corn Syrup every year http://bit.ly/bfiFWi >>just wow

Toldja so!

hello i visit your blog, u visit mine

A Princeton University research team has demonstrated that all sweeteners are not equal when it comes to weight gain: Rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same.

Among rats fed calorically identical quantities of table sugar and HFCS, those fed corn syrup gain as much as 48% more weight. Fascinating.

Professor Improbable

- A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language - By Randall Munroe

LOL another oldie, but Goodie. Scientists rock.

こういうのを学生時やりたかった・・

Interesting story about a kid getting hit my a meteor.

You can't make this up.

"I am really keen on science and my teachers discovered that the fragment is really magnetic," said Gerrit.

Gerrit Blank, 14, was on his way to school when he saw "ball of light" heading straight towards him from the sky. A red hot, pea-sized piece of rock then hit his hand before bouncing off and causing a foot wide crater in the ground. The teenager survived the strike, the chances of which are just 1 in a million - but with a nasty three-inch long scar on his hand. He said: "At first I just saw a large ball of light, and then I suddenly felt a pain in my hand. "Then a split second after that there was an enormous bang like a crash of thunder." "The noise that came after the flash of light was so loud that my ears were ringing for hours afterwards. "When it hit me it knocked me flying and then was still going fast enough to bury itself into the road," he explained.

14-year-old hit by 30,000 mph space meteorite http://tinyurl.com/lfzr3e [from http://twitter.com/oonceoonce/statuses/2181418340]

A red hot, pea-sized piece of rock then hit his hand before bouncing off and causing a foot wide crater in the ground. The teenager survived the strike, the chances of which are just 1 in a million - but with a nasty three-inch long scar on his hand. He said: "At first I just saw a large ball of light, and then I suddenly felt a pain in my hand. "Then a split second after that there was an enormous bang like a crash of thunder." "The noise that came after the flash of light was so loud that my ears were ringing for hours afterwards. "When it hit me it knocked me flying and then was still going fast enough to bury itself into the road," he explained. Scientists are now studying the pea-sized meteorite which crashed to Earth in Essen, Germany.

space webquest

webquest for the solar system

This is a 3rd grade webquest. The students act as if they are astronauts on a mission to another planet in our solar system. They will join a crew to gather information about their destination.

3rd grade webquest

Although the configuration program specified tasks for all 100 cells, it transpired that only 32 were essential to the circuit's operation. Thompson could bypass the other cells without affecting it. A further five cells appeared to serve no logical purpose at all--there was no route of connections by which they could influence the output. And yet if he disconnected them, the circuit stopped working.

genetic fpga evolution/programming

CREATURES FROM PRIMORDIAL SILICON

apply evolution to digital FPGA

Using FPGAs to evolve solutions to problems.

Bobbie-the-Jean's Journal deviantART:

19.) Because I don’t understand why, if we share common ancestry with chimps, there are still chimps. And when someone with more than three brain cells in their head inevitably replies: “for the same reason Americans share common ancestry with Brits but there are still Brits, I can’t follow the logic. It’s just too big a leap. Who am I, Evil Knievel? 20.) Because my mom dropped me on my head when I was a baby. 21.) Multiple times. 22.) On purpose.

Gyaaarrrrrr!!

lolz

"If you just repeat something again and again that requires your young child to prepare for something in advance, that is not likely to be effective," Munakata said. "What would be more effective would be to somehow try to trigger this reactive function. So don't do something that requires them to plan ahead in their mind, but rather try to highlight the conflict that they are going to face. Perhaps you could say something like 'I know you don't want to take your coat now, but when you're standing in the yard shivering later, remember that you can get your coat from your bedroom."

Toddlers listen, they just store the information for later use.

Toddlers listen, they just store the information for later use, a new study finds."What would be more effective would be to somehow try to trigger this reactive function. So don't do something that requires them to plan ahead in their mind, but rather try to highlight the conflict that they are going to face. Perhaps you could say something like 'I know you don't want to take your coat now, but when you're standing in the yard shivering later, remember that you can get your coat from your bedroom."

Norbert Eisenreich, a senior researcher and deputy of directors at the Fraunhofer Institute for Chemical Technology (ICT) in Pfinztal, Germany, said his team of scientists have come up with a substance that could replace plastic: Arboform -- basically, liquid wood.

Fascinating Fact: Ketchup was originally a fish sauce originating in the orient. Two words from the Fujian region of China were used to describe a fish brine / sauce and a tomato sauce - both words bear a striking resemblance in sound to the word “ketchup”; the words are: ke-tsap and kio-chiap. Early western ketchups were made with fish and spices, or mushrooms. In fact, mushroom ketchup is still available in the United Kingdom and it is prized by some modern chefs for its natural inclusion of monosodium glutamate - the only substance known to stimulate the 5th human taste sense umami (savoury).

7-Up used to contain Lithium. Who'd have thought?

For those keen to know more: the computations involve "envisioning space and time as part of a four-dimensional crystal lattice, with discrete points spaced along columns and rows."

"Until now, this has been a hypothesis," France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) said proudly in a press release.

According to the conventional model of particle physics, protons and neutrons comprise smaller particles known as quarks, which in turn are bound by gluons. The odd thing is this: the mass of gluons is zero and the mass of quarks is only five percent. Where, therefore, is the missing 95 percent? The answer, according to the study published in the US journal Science on Thursday, comes from the energy from the movements and interactions of quarks and gluons.

「解析の結果、このコードには、プロデューサーのジョージ・マーティンが演奏したと思われる5つのピアノ音が含まれていることが判明した。」

太陽系の惑星 音楽

Sistema solar musical

hermoso este sonido

太陽系の惑星を音符とした音楽

"Stunning" is the word!

Glistening in the early morning, these insects look like creatures from another planet as dew gathers on their sleeping bodies.

alta modalitate de a capta puterea soarelui

Daniel Nocera

http://cleantechnica.com/2008/10/25/mit-energy-storage-discovery-could-lead-to-unlimited-solar-power/

Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have discovered a new way of storing energy from sunlight that could lead to ‘unlimited’ solar power. The process, loosely based on plant photosynthesis, uses solar energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. When needed, the gases can then be re-combined in a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity whether the sun is shining or not.

Interesting. I hate to be cynical, but I wonder if it will take off?

nationalgeographic sciense

国家地理杂志PDF下载,国家地理频道视频在线播放及下载,国家地理经典壁纸桌面收藏下载,国家地理杂志文章翻译,National Geographic Fans

地理爱好

国家地理大全

人与文化,动物世界,风景地貌,探险探索,自然天气,人在旅途,水下世界,历史经典,黑白照片,空间科学...

RT @tweetlicius: Zero Intelligence Agents » UPDATED: Must-Have Python Packages for Social Scientists - http://bit.ly/ciDEqb

#smjgc1 Talk about zero intellegence nice way to analyse data social networks http://ning.it/dnovdC #wiki35carib – leroyh (leroyh) http://twitter.com/leroyh/statuses/8874754475

If you are a new researcher looking to get started, or experienced and willing to walk away from your lifestyle in Matlab—and licensing and training fees—then equip yourself with these 10 packages and get to it!

Interesting picures from N.G.

Decorate your desktop with these images from Your Shot: The Daily Dozen.

lots of bunk in science's 1st draft

"The data clearly show that much current advice about dietary pyramids, food supplements, megavitamins, and weight loss regimens is frequently unproven, erroneous, or even harmful and is often based on pseudoscience or derivative incorrect professorial opinion."

This time-line gives a summary of the transfers of nuclear technology and secrets. It starts with the United States in 1945 and moves through USSR (1949), UK & Canada (1952), France (1960) and on to present date 'aspirants'. The New York Times > Science > Image

via @ghensel on twitter

Electromagnetic spectrum with a lot of histories!!

the electromagnetic spectrum, a radial image with a lot of information

Recently I've been looking at the International Barcode of Life project. The idea is take DNA samples from animals and plants to help identify known species and discover new ones. While other projects strive to identify the complete genome for a few species, such as humans, dogs, red flour beetles and others, the barcoding project looks at a short 650-base sequence from a single gene. The idea is that this short sequence may not tell the whole story of an organism, but it should be enough to identify and distinguish between species. It will be successful as a barcode if (a) all (or most) members of a species have the same (or very similar) sequences and (b) members of different species have very different sequences.

Julian Bleecker : Extending this idea that science fiction is implicated in the production of things like science fact, I wanted to think about how this happens, so that I could figure out the principles and pragmatics of doing design, making things that create different sorts of near future worlds.

Extending this idea that science fiction is implicated in the production of things like science fact, I wanted to think about how this happens, so that I could figure out the principles and pragmatics of doing design, making things that create different sorts of near future worlds. So, this is a bit of a think-piece, with examples and some insights that provide a few conclusions about why this is important as well as how it gets done. How do you entangle design, science, fact and fiction in order to create this practice called “design fiction” that, hopefully, provides different, undisciplined ways of envisioning new kinds of environments, artifacts and practices.

"Design Fiction is making things that tell stories. It’s like science-fiction in that the stories bring into focus certain matters-of-concern, such as how life is lived, questioning how technology is used and its implications, speculating bout the course of events; all of the unique abilities of science-fiction to incite imagination-filling conversations about alternative futures ... It’s meant to encourage truly undisciplined approaches to making and circulating culture by ignoring disciplines that have invested so much in erecting boundaries between pragmatics and imagination."

design essay

Sleep may be a way to sweep out the brain and get it ready for a new day of building connections between neurons, according to two new studies of fruit flies. The studies support the controversial theory that sleep weakens or entirely dissolves some synapses, the connections between brain cells. “We assume that if this is happening, it is a major function, if not the most important function, of sleep” [Science News], says Chiara Cirelli, a coauthor of the first study, published in Science.

So the setup is “snappy, intuitively appealing argument without obvious problems” vs. “rebuttal I probably don’t have time to read, let alone analyze closely.” If we don’t sometimes defer to the expert consensus, we’ll systematically tend to go wrong in the face of one-way-hash arguments, at least outside our own necessarily limited domains of knowledge. Indeed, in such cases, trying to evaluate the arguments on their merits will tend to lead to an erroneous conclusion more often than simply trying to gauge the credibility of the various disputants. The problem, of course, is gauging your own competence level well enough to know when to assess arguments and when to assess arguers. Thanks to the perverse phenomenon psychologists have dubbed the Dunning-Kruger effect, those who are least competent tend to have the most wildly inflated estimates of their own knowledge and competence. They don’t know enough to know that they don’t know, as it were.

Via Brad Plumer, I see Cato’s Jerry Taylor is riled at responses to an open letter ad the Institute published in which a group of scientists signed off on a statement questioning the strength of the case for catastrophic climate change. I’m broadly sympathetic with his irritation at the proportion of ad hominem attacks in debates like these, but I’m not sure I agree with his bottom line in context: An argument’s merit has nothing to do with the motives of the arguer, the credentials of the arguer, or the popularity of the argument. Full stop. No exceptions.

The one-way hash argument is an excellent illustration of why argument from authority is not always wrong.

Use this free site to access interactives in Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, Earth Science, Geology, Living Environment, Meteorology, Nature of Science, or Physics. Click on a subject to view a list of games. Click on the teachers section to receive great tips, create your own games, and download study sheets for use in class. 1

Flash drill games

Interactive educational games, all subjects

first wildfires, then sea level rise; "People have imagined that if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide that the climate would go back to normal in 100 years or 200 years. What we're showing here is that's not right. It's essentially an irreversible change that will last for more than a thousand years," Solomon says. This is because the oceans are currently soaking up a lot of the planet's excess heat — and a lot of the carbon dioxide put into the air. The carbon dioxide and heat will eventually start coming out of the ocean. And that will take place for many hundreds of years.

Climate change is essentially irreversible, according to a sobering new scientific study. As carbon dioxide emissions continue to rise, the world will experience more and more long-term environmental disruption. The damage will persist even when, and if, emissions are brought under control, says study author Susan Solomon, who is among the world's top climate scientists. "We're used to thinking about pollution problems as things that we can fix," Solomon says. "Smog, we just cut back and everything will be better later. Or haze, you know, it'll go away pretty quickly."

No comments.

get ready for 1000 years of suck

e benefits to working with data in this way don't really need to be touted too much - many businesses already perform data visualization, often using expensive software and powerful computers to do so. What makes what Green Phosphor does so interesting is not that they've come up with a way to visualize data - it's that they've come up with a way to leverage the platforms of virtual worlds to do so.

Second Life and real world data coming together

SHE is the perfect wife, with the body of a Page 3 pin-up and housekeeping skills that put TV's Kim and Aggie to shame. Her name is Aiko, she can even read a map, and will never, ever, nag. Sounds too good to be true, doesn't she fellas? And she is. Aiko is actually a robot, a fantasy brought to life by inventor Le Trung.

mr universe would understand

SHE is the perfect wife, with the body of a Page 3 pin-up and housekeeping skills that put TV’s Kim and Aggie to shame.

I guess the motivation is questionable. However, it shows that robotic companions are not so far out in the future. And the more human those robotic companions can behave and communicate, the more intuitive the human-robot interaction will be, thus eliminating the need for extensive training or manual reading and giving a broader public access to such anthropomorphic computing interfaces.

speaks 13,000 sentences

Sam Harris - brilliant!

Scientists found way to stop metastasis

"Scientists say they have identified an enzyme that helps cancer spread around the body."

Enzyme promotive of metastasis identified.

Enzyme behind cancer spread found breast cancer Breast cancer cells can spread to other parts of the body Scientists say they have identified an enzyme that helps cancer spread around the body. Cancer metastasis, where the cancer spreads from its original location, is known to be responsible for 90% of cancer-related deaths. Institute of Cancer Research scientists have found that an enzyme called LOX is crucial in promoting metastasis, Cancer Cell journal reports.

Myths debunked: You don't lose most heat from your head and sugar doesn't make children hyperactive

Lovely example of checking your facts

Good to know!

and other myths debunked

Annotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.guardian.co.uk%2Fscience%2F2008%2Fdec%2F17%2Fmedicalresearch-humanbehaviour

This article is like several Mythbusters episodes. Several kinda boring Mythbusters episodes.

I never get tired of looking at Guardian articles. One of the best looking news sites on the interweb.

These are 18 of the MILLIONS of SPACE photographs taken by HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE since 1990.

宇宙写真好きにはたまらんね。

18 pics from the Hubble telescope.

Did you ever stop to think how silly and also how dangerous it is to live our lives with absolutely no monitoring of our body’s medical status? Years from now people will look back and find it unbelievable that heart attacks, strokes, hormone imbalances, sugar levels, and hundreds of other bodily vital signs and malfunctions were not being continuously anticipated and monitored by medical implants. We can call this concept body 2.0, or the networked body, and we need it now! usb_finger Above: concept illustration from yankodesign The trio of biomedicine, technology, and wireless communication are in the midst of a merger that will easily bring continuous, 24×7 monitoring of several crucial bodily functions in the years ahead. Unfortunately, as is often the case with medical products, the needed innovations are either already developed or will be soon, but some of the best commercial products won’t make it to the market until years of testing have proven their safety. In the futu

Keepers at Furuvik Zoo found that the chimp collected and stored stones that he would later use as missiles. Further, the chimp learned to recognise how and when parts of his concrete enclosure could be pulled apart to fashion further projectiles.

This is fascinating. Experts say this shows that the chimp was "anticipating a future mental state - an ability that has been difficult to definitively prove in animals."

Chimps behaviour shows they are more intelligent than it seems

About the creative (descriptive) use of language

An interesting discuss on language and how images have different meaning to different people and cultures

Lera Boroditsky's take on how language transmit culture. I'd also love to read her essay, "How Does Language Shape the Way We Think" in the anthology What's Next (Vintage Books, June 2009)

Through Juliet's lips, Shakespeare said "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." But the Bard may have been wrong &mdash; names do matter. Language researchers say your sense of the rose depends on what you call it.

Lera Boroditsky asks us to describe a bridge - "What explains the difference? Boroditsky proposes that because the word for "bridge" in German — die brucke — is a feminine noun, and the word for "bridge" in Spanish — el puente — is a masculine noun, native speakers unconsciously give nouns the characteristics of their grammatical gender" (wikipedia notes that "For the Burning Man festival, she once built a banana vehicle" ;)

Catholicism made me a humanist before I knew the word. When people rail against "secular humanism," I want to ask them if humanism itself would be okay with them. Over the high school years, my belief in the likelihood of a God continued to lessen. I kept this to myself. I never discussed it with my parents. My father in any event was a non-practicing Lutheran, until a death bed conversion which rather disappointed me. I'm sure he agreed to it for my mother's sake.

amazing photos "Iceland's disruptive volcano - The Big Picture - Boston.com" ( http://bit.ly/aYmre0 )

The Big Picture - News Stories in Photographs from the Boston Globe

Jak on bdzie sie tak bujał przez rok to wiem gdzie pojedziemy na wakacje

"There are many things I know are true... ... but don't really believe"

時速75km 車間距離40m (75/40=1.67) を保つべし！！

統計データによれば、車間距離40mの時の平均速度は時速72kmですので、「高速道路では40m以上詰めると損をする」あるいは「時速約70km、車間距離40mが渋滞の始まり」と覚えておいていただければいいでしょう。

やってみよう

回避術の対象が1km程度の自然渋滞ばかりなきがするけど，10km以上の渋滞についてはどうなのだろう…。

Skeptics said the Semantic Web would be too difficult for people to understand or exploit. Not so. The enabling technologies have come of age. A vibrant community of early adopters has agreed on standards that have steadily made the Semantic Web practical to use.

L. Feigenbaum et all. : The Semantic Web in Action - http://tinyurl.com/7276zx in: Scientific American [from http://twitter.com/bibliothekarin/statuses/1204287131]

This article (originally published in December 2007 and re-featured in January 2009) reviews progress towards the idea of a "Semantic Web: a highly interconnected network of data that could be easily accessed and understood by any desktop or handheld machine." Accompanied by a glossary and related articles and links. From Scientific American.

Looking for an antidote to Star Trek's utopian but overbearing Federation? Like your science fiction with a bigger emphasis on personal liberties? Then check out our list of the greatest libertarian science fiction...

This ant is from Madagascar, and is named Eutetramorium mocquerysi. The species is notable for having wingless queens that are indistinguishable from workers. This image is composed of 400 pictures, and it's magnified 400x using a scanning electron microscope. The ant was given to us to image by Brian Fisher (http://www.calacademy.org/science/heroes/bfisher/) an entomologist at the California Academy of Sciences.

future of health

Learn about the frontiers of human health from seven of Stanford's most innovative faculty members. Inspired by a format used at the TED Conference (http://www.ted.com), each speaker delivers a highly engaging talk in just 10-20 minutes about his or her research. Learn about Stanford's newest and most exciting discoveries in neuroscience, bioengineering, brain imaging, psychology, and more.

7 youtube videos from Stanford University

"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons." - Popular Mechanics (1949)

Google Earth 5.0 finds Atlantis

Our universe may have started not with a big bang but with a big bounce—an implosion that triggered an explosion, all driven by exotic quantum-gravitational effects

(7:30)

"If you've ever wondered how the Internet was born, but can't be bothered reading a whole book on the subject, check out this short animated documentary from Milah Bilgil. Entitled History of the internet, it does a great job explaining time-sharing, file-sharing, arpanet and internet. "

amazing advances in brain studies

Critical of Paul MacLean

“So-called lower animals, such as fish, reptiles and birds, display a startling array of cognitive capabilities. Goldfish, for instance, have shown they can negotiate watery mazes similar to the way rats do in intelligence tests in the lab…”

# Despite cartoons you may have seen showing a straight line of fish emerging on land to become primates and then humans, evolution is not so linear. The brains of other animals are not merely previous stages that led directly to human intelligence. # Instead—as is the case with many traits—complex brains and sophisticated cognition have arisen multiple times in independent lineages of animals during the earth’s evolutionary history. # With this new understanding comes a new appreciation for intelligence in its many forms. So-called lower animals, such as fish, reptiles and birds, display a startling array of cognitive capabilities. Goldfish, for instance, have shown they can negotiate watery mazes similar to the way rats do in intelligence tests in the lab.

sunlight hours,

flash animation

Wolfram|Alpha is a free online computational knowledge engine that generates answers to questions in real time

Browse our video gallery to learn more about how you can utilize Wolfram|Alpha in the classroom.

Wolfram|Alpha is a free online computational knowledge engine that generates answers to questions in real time by doing computations on its own vast internal knowledge base. Our long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. This can be valuable to educators in many ways.

contains lesson plans using wolfram alpha

"Wolfram|Alpha is a free online computational knowledge engine that generates answers to questions in real time by doing computations on its own vast internal knowledge base. Our long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. This can be valuable to educators in many ways. "

stratosphere

Proving that you don't need Google's billions or the BBC weather centre's resources, the four Spanish students managed to send a camera-operated weather balloon into the stratosphere.

Imagine everyone having the same level of intelligence. What would set us apart then?

PNGwriter is a very easy to use open source graphics library that uses PNG as its output format. The interface has been designed to be as simple and intuitive as possible. It supports plotting and reading in the RGB (red, green, blue), HSV (hue, saturation, value/brightness) and CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) colour spaces, basic shapes, scaling, bilinear interpolation, full TrueType antialiased and rotated text support, bezier curves, opening existing PNG images and more. Documentation in English and Spanish. Runs under Linux, Unix, Mac OS X and Windows. Requires libpng and optionally FreeType2 for the text support.

Sensacionales fotos del Sahara de la mano de Boston.com.

Splendid HTML5 app for 3D molecule modeling.

On the one hand, fish are inoffensive creatures. Wet, slimy, and not especially gifted in the brain cell department, the majority aren’t much to worry about unless they’re getting overcooked on the barbecue. Yet on the other hand there are a few species that are slightly more loathsome to our palates. These are creatures straight out of our nightmares – some more fangs than fish; others that look like they’ve barely swum out of the primeval sludge. Brace yourself.

HAH

One of science's most puzzling mysteries - the disappearance of the Neanderthals - may have been solved. Modern humans ate them, says a leading fossil expert.

Neanderthals? Oh yeah. Humans totally ate them and made their teeth into jewelry - http://tr.im/lLZN [from http://twitter.com/s_m_i/statuses/1848014151]

>One of science's most puzzling mysteries - the disappearance of the Neanderthals - may have been solved. Modern humans ate them, says a leading fossil expert. Mmmm neanderthal burgers.

One of prehistory’s great mysteries is, what happened to the Neanderthals? Here’s an answer: we ate them.

This clip is raw from Camera E-8 on the launch umbilical tower/mobile launch program of Apollo 11, July 16, 1969. This is an HD transfer from the 16mm original. Even more excellent footage is available on our DVDs at our website at http://www.spacecraftfilms.com The camera is running at 500 fps, making the total clip of over 8 minutes represent just 30 seconds of actual time. Narration is provided by Mark Gray (me), Executive Producer for Spacecraft Films.

Super slow-mo but beautiful HD video

OMGGGGGGGGGGGGGG http://vimeo.com/4366695 – Naly_D (Naly_D) http://twitter.com/Naly_D/statuses/12961184692

About 95% of the human genome has once been designated as "junk" DNA. While much of this sequence may be an evolutionary artifact that serves no present-day purpose, some junk DNA may function in ways that are not currently understood. The conservation of some junk DNA over many millions of years of evolution may imply an essential function that has been "turned off." Now scientists say there's a junk gene that fights HIV. And they've discovered how to turn it back on. What these scientists have done could give us the first bulletproof HIV vaccine. They have re-awakened the human genome's latent potential to make us all into HIV-resistant creatures, and hey've published their ground-breaking research in PLoS Biology. A group of scientists led by Nitya Venkataraman and Alexander Colewhether wanted to try a new approach to fighting HIV - one that worked with the body's own immune system. They knew Old World monkeys had a built-in immunity to HIV: a protein called retrocyclin, which c

Darwin's Radio: Prehistoric Gene Reawakens to Battle HIV

LQC is in fact the first tangible application of another theory called loop quantum gravity, which cunningly combines Einstein's theory of gravity with quantum mechanics. Theories like this work out what happens when microscopic volumes experience an extreme gravitational force, as happened near the big bang, for example. Ashtekar rewrote the equations of general relativity in a quantum-mechanical framework. ABHAY ASHTEKAR saw the universe bounce back while watching a simulation of the universe rewind towards the big bang. Mostly the universe behaved as expected, becoming smaller and denser as the galaxies converged. But then, instead of reaching the big bang "singularity", the universe bounced and started expanding again. The theory that the recycled universe was based on, called loop quantum cosmology (LQC), had managed to illuminate the very birth of the universe - something even Einstein's general theory of relativity fails to do.

"Ashtekar later used this framework to show that the fabric of space-time is woven from loops of gravitational field lines."

Did our cosmos exist before the big bang

Loop Quantum Cosmology posits a different beginning to the universe.

Kenji the robot fixates on human tech and has to be turned off. Repeatedly.

http://gizmodo.com/5164841/robot-programmed-to-love-traps-woman-in-lab-hugs-her-repeatedly

robot asesino

Brain-Twitter

Adam Wilson posted on twitter "SPELLING WITH MY BRAIN." No keyboards, just a red cap fitted with electrodes that monitor brain activity, hooked up to a computer flashing letters on a screen. Wilson sent the messages by concentrating on the letters he wanted to "type," then focusing on the word "twit" at the bottom of the screen to post the message.

(CNN)

Adam Wilson posted two messages on Twitter on April 15. The first one, "GO BADGERS," might have been sent by any University of Wisconsin-Madison student cheering for the school team.

i

RT @andrea_r @sherina: WOW. http://xrl.in/22to &lt;= Twitter direct from the brain, right here in my hometown! (Telepathy, here we come!) [from http://twitter.com/CircleReader/statuses/1594935657]

Brain-Twitter project offers hope to paralyzed patients: http://bit.ly/pDt8i (via my Dad) [from http://twitter.com/sherrymain/statuses/1604887892]

RT @sherina: WOW. http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/04/22/twitter.locked.in/index.html { AMAZING } [from http://twitter.com/andrea_r/statuses/1594843677]

This has a lot of interesting stuff, for the most part. (Apparently, hot drinks make you feel more trusting than cold drinks!)

Research also indicates that women's perception of cold varies

New research is suggesting that we all feel the cold differently

オイラー

哲学的な何か、あと数学とか

解らないけど面白い

池谷裕二、移動/電車

■「淡蒼球」を動かす4つのスイッチ 　[B] Body　カラダを動かす 　[E] Experience　いつもと違うことをする 　[R] Reward　ごほうびを与える 　[I] Ideomotor　なりきる

「どうやって脳とつきあっていくか」ってなんかネストしてるみたいでおもしろい表現

日曜日の朝、平日より遅く起きていませんか？ 起床のリズムを崩すことはおすすめできません。

Annotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fzasshi.news.yahoo.co.jp%2Farticle%3Fa%3D20090413-00000301-president-bus_all

進化の過程を思い出してください。脳とカラダのどちらが先に発達したか。もちろんカラダです。カラダのない動物はいませんが、脳のない動物はいくらでもいます。脳は進化の歴史では新参者なのです。「楽しいから笑う」のではなく「笑うから楽しい」、「やる気が出たからやる」のではなく「やるからやる気が出る」のです。

At no point was matter spewing forth from anything. Space and time itself was being created first. Ordinary matter (atoms, molecules etc) was created out of tiny imbalances of energy left over from the inflationary period.

The Big Bang was not an explosion of matter into space, rather it was an explosion of space ITSELF, and since space and time are interconnected, we really have to say it was an explosion of space AND time, or space-time.

They enjoy TV, but watch it a lot less!

Happy people spend a lot of time socializing, going to church and reading newspapers — but they don’t spend a lot of time watching television, a new study finds.

via Lifehacker. "But the researchers could not tell whether unhappy people watch more television or whether being glued to the set is what makes people unhappy."

THE aliens are out there and Earth had better watch out, at least according to Stephen Hawking. He has suggested that extraterrestrials are almost certain to exist — but that instead of seeking them out, humanity should be doing all it that can to avoid any contact.

THE aliens are out there and Earth had better watch out, at least according to Stephen Hawking. He has suggested that extraterrestrials are almost certain to exist — but that instead of seeking them out, humanity should be doing all it that can to avoid any contact. He's a smart man. Take his advice and don't fuck with aliens

"He concludes that trying to make contact with alien races is “a little too risky”. He said: “If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.”"

著者の生物学の分野以外には一概に当てはまらないが、学部学生は読むべき。まぁ、大学院に入ればどのみち身をもって知ることになるのだけど。

長い．

http://riywo.tumblr.com/post/71955065

Report on flexibility in the future after 30 not really occurring.

“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; but remember that what you now have was once among the things only hoped for.”

“The shortest path to oneself leads around the world.”

NOOO I'M ALREADY 21 MUST SELF-ACTUALIZE BEFORE I GET SET IN MY WAYS.

Scientific American: Millions of us dream of transforming our lives, but few of us are able to make major changes after our 20s. Here's why

personality changes occur well past the age of 30 but that typically these changes are small in magnitude compared with the changes that occur between the ages of 20 and 40.

Sci Fi

An interesting article highlighting the need to spark student interest in maths through the use of magic numbers, links to music and the creative arts and through an emphasis that, “A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas,” (cited du Sautoy, 2009). The article is a brilliant read for math teachers in the diverse classroom who need to understand that for some students, “the subject comes alive when they learn how mathematics is not an isolated subject, but runs seductively below the surface of many other subjects in the curriculum,” (du Sautoy, 2009). The article may be beneficial for those teachers aiming to engage the disengaged and may provide teachers with ideas for extension activities for gifted and talented students. Well worth a read for any teacher wanting to spice up their mathematics curriculum.

Guardian article written by Marcus du Sautoy 23/06/09 on livening up the maths curriculum with big, creative mathematical adventures. Links to gallery of useful archietectural photos. Recommended by CH. Links to other useful Guardian articles on maths by same author.

"I've never understood why education is so compartmentalised" - "... the maths we were doing in the classroom wasn't really what maths was about. It was something much more exciting, creative, imaginative. Those books provided me with a key to the secret garden of mathematics" - "In that garden I discovered that mathematics also has great stories. Unsolved mysteries like the enigma of prime numbers. Magical mathematical machines that could help you see in four dimensions. Mathematicians who had journeyed to infinity and beyond..." - lighting the fire, relating to the abstract

How do you spark off an interest in maths when the curriculum seems dreary? It's all about mystery, big stories and journeys to infinity and beyond, says Marcus du Sautoy

I've never understood why education is so compartmentalised. My son looks at his timetable: maths first lesson, history second lesson, music before lunch. The curriculum gives no hint at how integrated all these subjects are. To look at the historical evolution of mathematical ideas provides an invaluable perspective on why the mathematics was created in the first place.

great essay on encouraging a passion for math

This is the best.

Darwin artwork that parodies the famous Shepard Fairey Obama poster.

After conducting a college band and watching Palin deliver a commencement address to a small group of home-schooled students in June 1997, Wasilla resident Philip Munger said, he asked the young mayor about her religious beliefs.

Hahahahahahahaaaaaaa.... *phew*... Hahahahahahaha!

Huffington Post on the neanderthal Palin

Looking at a sexy photo of my wife "activated part of your 'new brain' that represents the sensation of touch in your genital area,"

For me, translating love into biology is actually kind of reassuring. Yes, it takes away some of the mystery — but also the fear. Think of it like a drug: If you're high and feel like you're sliding off the face of the earth, you can tell yourself, Hey, I'm having a horrible chemical reaction, but I'll get over it. I will stabilize.

Artist Ron Miller takes us on a journey to eight of the most breathtaking views that await explorers of our solar system. The scale of these natural wonders dwarfs anything Earth has to offer. What might we see and feel if we could travel to these distant domains? By interpreting data from probes such as NASA's Cassini, which is now exploring the Saturnian system, and MESSENGER, which goes into orbit around Mercury in March 2011, the artist's eye allows us an early visit to these unforgettable locales

What might future explorers of the solar system see? Find out by taking an interactive tour through the eyes of Hugo Award-winning artist Ron Miller. Text and narration by Ed Bell

Interactive tour - photos/video/audio

many language arts activities for COWs or interactive whiteboard

story starters, myth generator, character scrapbook

Find easy-to-use Interactive Whiteboard teaching tips and make the most of Language Arts Online Activities on your Interactive Whiteboard.

Reading, Science, Social Studies, Math activities on line

An article which analyses the Damascus blade, known for being supernaturaly strong, using scientific method.

Marianne Reibold

impressive

swords damascus steel

RT @draenews: Del 6 Cool Websites To Unleash The Mad Scientist Within You | MakeUseOf.com: http://bit.ly/a0SazI

A list of websites and prograns that let you try out crazy science experiments.

A fungus that lives inside trees in the Patagonian rain forest naturally makes a mix of hydrocarbons that bears a striking resemblance to diesel. It may be the case that organisms like this produced some — maybe not all — but some of the world's crude oil.

A fungus that lives inside trees in the Patagonian rain forest naturally makes a mix of hydrocarbons that bears a striking resemblance to diesel, biologists announced today. And the fungus can grow on cellulose, a major component of tree trunks, blades of grass and stalks that is the most abundant carbon-based plant material on Earth. "When we looked at the gas analysis, I was flabbergasted," said Gary Strobel, a plant scientist at Montana State University, and the lead author of a paper in Microbiology describing the find. "We were looking at the essence of diesel fuel."

humans versus animals

'Brain decline' begins at age 27 Concentration Mental abilities decline at a relatively young age, experts suspect Mental powers start to dwindle at 27 after peaking at 22, marking the start of old age, US research suggests. Professor Timothy Salthouse of the University of Virginia found reasoning, spatial visualisation and speed of thought all decline in our late 20s.

Mental powers start to dwindle at 27 after peaking at 22, marking the start of old age, US research suggests.

Thought that your mental prime years were in your thirties? Think again: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7945569.stm [from http://twitter.com/mpondu/statuses/1340264706]

An overview of a study on the shape of our learning. I suppose it is no mistake that tertiary education systems follow the curve. "A seven-year study (published in the journal Neurobiology of Aging) reveals the average age at which the top performance was achieved as 22 in nine out of the 12 tests given. The first age at which there was any marked decline was at 27 in tests of brain speed, reasoning and visual puzzle-solving ability. Things like memory stayed intact until the age of 37, on average, while abilities based on accumulated knowledge, such as performance on tests of vocabulary or general information, increased until the age of 60."

Six more years to go before I get the dumb.

Check out the types of tweets that can come from following these twitters

Saturn sure looks cool http://bit.ly/V0j85 [from http://twitter.com/JacksonATL/statuses/1982110585]

Saturn close-up: Sensational cosmic images bring ringed planet to life | Mail Online

Feel free to nod in recognition.

Thank God some people don’t need to see so far under the hood

Funny comic strip

Via <a href="http://www.codeproject.com/Lounge.aspx?msg=3187197#xx3187197xx">the Code Project</a>.

What are we to make of all those stories that warn of lifestyle dangers and slap a giant percentage sign in the headline? Michael Blastland introduces the Risk-o-meter to his regular column.

nice presentation, and even nicer correlation visualization if you scroll down further.

Ценнейший материал о том, как создавалась и тестировалась на читателях социальная реклама, представляющая сложные факты в виде наглядной инфографики.

What are we to make of all those stories that warn of lifestyle dangers and slap a giant "%" sign in the headline? Michael Blastland introduces the Risk-o-meter to his regular column.

differential equations

RT - "Romeo and Juliet behave like simple harmonic oscillators" - unfortunately phase shifted!! - http://alturl.com/otbb [from http://twitter.com/vivek_kumar/statuses/2647778575]

by steven strogatz.

RT @iwestminster “Love me, love me not” reduces love to a mathematical equation http://tr.im/mNUs (I was never good at #math:) #homeschool [from http://twitter.com/CircleReader/statuses/1961151636]

Blog column by Steven Strogatz.

Love of Romeo and Juliet, ODE style... by Steven Strogatz

"BBC News - 'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists" http://j.mp/cIRoBL

Scientists in the US have succeeded in developing the first living cell to be controlled entirely by synthetic DNA. The researchers constructed a bacterium's "genetic software" and transplanted it into a host cell. The resulting microbe then looked and behaved like the species "dictated" by the synthetic DNA. The advance, published in Science, has been hailed as a scientific landmark, but critics say there are dangers posed by synthetic organisms. Some also suggest that the potential benefits of the technology have been over-stated. But the researchers hope eventually to design bacterial cells that will produce medicines and fuels and even absorb greenhouse gases. The team was led by Dr Craig Venter of the J Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) in Maryland and California.

3 Things They Should Have Taught In My Computer Science Degree

ZA VSE FRIJEVCE <--kako bi to scodeal v btw?

Thanks to the listener who sent me this link.

Hubble finds unidentified object in space. Nerds all over say "cooooool" http://bit.ly/d6k7V6

Hubble: Hubble Finds Unidentified Object in Space, Scientists Puzzled

The headline and story made me think of Bruce Willis in Armageddon when he says, "You're NASA, you've always got a backup plan. You've probably got a team somewhere else thinking up ideas" because it's surprising that they can't even guess as to what this is.

[I]n a paper published last week in the Astrophysical Journal, scientists detail the discovery of a new unidentified object in the middle of nowhere.

Spooky.

Un pixel sin explicación en una imagen enviada por el Hubble. Una fuente de luz que apareció de repente y unos días después despareció.

This is exactly why we send astronauts to risk their life to service Hubble in a paper published last week

Galerien

"And when the surface is scratched, what you find below is extraordinary - or, rather, extraordinarily difficult to make good, clear sense of. Lying in wait are arguments that lead to, if not sheer lunacy, then bullets we're loathe to bite."

Consider a photo of someone you think is you eight years ago. What makes that person you? You might say he she was composed of the same cells as you now. But most of your cells are replaced every seven years. You might instead say you're an organism, a particular human being, and that organisms can survive cell replacement - this oak being the same tree as the sapling I planted last year.

Very cool story about ants and smells.

Cummingtonite

RT @Cocoia: You can't really make up mineral names like these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cummingtonite

"Monoclinic cummingtonite is compositionally similar and polymorphic with orthorhombic anthophyllite, which is a much more common form of magnesium-rich amphibole, the latter being metastable"

おお。とてもべんり。

特許庁ホームページ　／　特許庁では、論文、マニュアル、カタログ、ｗｅｂページ等の非特許文献に記載された、開発されて間もない新しい技術等を技術分野（テーマ）ごとに収集した標準技術集を作成し、特許審査に活用するとともに出願人の事前調査に役立てていただけるよう外部公表しています。

標準技術集作成テーマ一覧

Meredith Chivers is a 36-year-old psychology professor at Queen’s University in the small city of Kingston, Ontario.

One of my all time favourite hacks... this has become such an iconic figure

if not for our future career aspirations, this is totally something we would try.

I love dork humor.

This is funny. Now it won't happen again. Pitty. Sorry for the news source, i know they aren't the best. Hey it is still a funny article

折田先生像に対する見解といい、京大はしぶすぎる。

兄弟かこよす

これが正しい態度ですね。

Spaceflight 12-2008

Results

Awesome Balloon Experiment 2

Content Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1

Recommended by Art

law of thermodynamics

Recently I read a very impressive book by Gary Taubes, previously a reporter for the journal Science. The work in question is, "Good Calories, Bad Calories."' In the book, Taubes collects research to challenge the common knowledge of nutrition: that fat is bad for you, that we should eat polyunsaturated vegetable oils, that we should exercise for sixty minutes a day, etc.

nice theory on how puritanicalism informs, in this case, our common dietary 'wisdom'

Whether or not God exists, thinking about Him or Her doesn't require divinely dedicated neurological wiring. Instead, religious thoughts run on brain systems used to figure out what other people are thinking and feeling. The findings, based on brain scans of people contemplating God, don't explain whether a propensity for religion is a neurobiological accident. But at least they give researchers a solid framework for exploring the question. "In a way, this is a very cold look at religious belief," said National Institutes of Health cognitive scientist Jordan Grafman, co-author of a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "We're only trying to understand where in the brain religious beliefs seem to be modulated."

Whether or not God exists, thinking about Him or Her doesn't require divinely dedicated neurological wiring.

"In a way, this is a very cold look at religious belief," said National Institutes of Health cognitive scientist Jordan Grafman, co-author of a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "We're only trying to understand where in the brain religious beliefs seem to be modulated."

Whether or not God exists, thinking about Him or Her doesn't require divinely dedicated neurological wiring. Instead, religious thoughts run on brain systems used to figure out what other people are thinking and feeling. The findings, based on brain scans of people contemplating God, don't explain whether a propensity for religion is a neurobiological accident. But at least they give researchers a solid framework for exploring the question.

Electrolyzed water yields two compounds as a degreaser and sanitizer

********************

Sounds like the old "Saturday Night Live" gag for Shimmer, the faux floor polish plugged by Gilda Radner. But the elixir is real. It has been approved by U.S. regulators. And it's starting to replace the toxic chemicals Americans use at home and on the job. The stuff is a simple mixture of table salt and tap water whose ions have been scrambled with an electric current. Researchers have dubbed it electrolyzed water -- hardly as catchy as Mr. Clean. But at the Sheraton Delfina in Santa Monica, some hotel workers are calling it el liquido milagroso -- the miracle liquid.

hard

3d modeler for creating mechanical parts and assemblies; for more advanced

In research published recently in Neuron, Marcos Frank, PhD, Assistant Professor of Neuroscience, at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, postdoctoral researcher Sara Aton, PhD, and colleagues describe for the first time how cellular changes in the sleeping brain promote the formation of memories.

The key cellular player is the molecule N-methyl D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR), which acts like a combination listening post & gate-keeper. It both receives extracellular signals in the form of glutamate & regulates the flow of calcium ions into cells. Once the brain is triggered to reorganize its neural networks in wakefulness (by visual deprivation, eg), intra- & intercellular communication pathways engage, setting a series of enzymes into action w/in the reorganizing neurons during sleep. To start the process, NMDAR is primed to open its ion channel after the neuron has been excited. The ion channel then opens when glutamate binds to the receptor, allowing calcium into the cell. In turn, calcium, an intracellular signaling molecule, turns other downstream enzymes on and off. Some neural connections are strengthened as a result of this process, & the result is a reorganized visual cortex. &, this only happens during sleep.

If you ever argued with your mother when she told you to get some sleep after studying for an exam instead of pulling an all-nighter, you owe her an apology, because it turns out she's right. And now, scientists are beginning to understand why.

In research published recently in Neuron, Marcos Frank, PhD, Assistant Professor of Neuroscience, at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, postdoctoral researcher Sara Aton, PhD, and colleagues describe for the first time how cellular changes in the sleeping brain promote the formation of memories. ... "We find that the biochemical changes are simply not happening in the neurons of animals that are awake," Frank says. "And when the animal goes to sleep it's like you’ve thrown a switch, and all of a sudden, everything is turned on that's necessary for making synaptic changes that form the basis of memory formation. It's very striking." The team used an experimental model of cortical plasticity – the rearrangement of neural connections in response to life experiences. "That's fundamentally what we think the machinery of memory is, the actual making and breaking of connections between neurons,” Frank explains

Dirk had an accident. Below is the X-ray showing his totally crushed finger tip. It took 1 1/2 hours of surgery to remove the shattered bones and repair the damage. Medically speaking, he crushed his right index finger distal phalange. The magnets had a 50 cm (20 inch) separation when they decided to fly together.

includes gory finger photos...

accidente con imanes de neodimio. muy explícito :-(

ow!!!

2009-03-26 18:05:21 <sissypapi> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7951331.stm

Awwww

Experts believe it is probably an albino, which is an extremely rare phenomenon in African elephants. ¶ They are unsure of its chances of long-term survival – the blazing African sunlight may cause blindness and skin problems for the calf.

pink elephant

shoplifting pornos

These stunning images show mysterious columns of light streaming into the sky above the town of Sigulda in Latvia at the end of last month.

From Pedro on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/pedrobeltrao/ee8c9d29/seventh-graders-describe-scientists-before

[Found via Pedro Beltrão] "Seventh graders describe scientists before and after a visit to Fermilab."

percepcion de los científicos

Scientists - they CAN be col. Sweet before and after drawings of what kids think scientists are about

Seventh graders describe scientists before and after a visit to Fermilab. Lovely.

"Seventh graders describe scientists before and after a visit to Fermilab" AWESOME

Sleeping on a problem really can help solve it, say scientists who found a dreamy nap boosts creative powers. They tested whether "incubating" a problem allowed a flash of insight, and found it did, especially when people entered a phase of sleep known as REM. [Excerpt, click on the link to read the rest of this article.]

Sleeping on a problem really can help solve it, say scientists who found a dreamy nap boosts creative powers. They tested whether "incubating" a problem allowed a flash of insight, and found it did, especially when people entered a phase of sleep known as REM. Volunteers who had entered REM or rapid eye movement sleep - when most dreams occur - were then better able to solve a new problem with lateral thinking.

We propose that REM sleep is important for assimilating new information into past experience to create a richer network of associations for future use. They tested whether "incubating" a problem allowed a flash of insight, and found it did, especially when people entered a phase of sleep called REM sleep.

The study at the University of California San Diego showed that the volunteers who entered REM during sleep improved their creative problem solving ability by almost 40%.

"We found that, for creative problems you've already been working on, the passage of time is enough to find solutions. "However for new problems, only REM sleep enhances creativity."

From the November 2008 Scientific American Magazine | 62 comments Does Nature Break the Second Law of Thermodynamics? In seeming defiance of the second law of thermodynamics, nature is filled with examples of order emerging from chaos. A new theoretical framework resolves the apparent paradox By J. Miguel Rubí

Scientific American: In seeming defiance of the second law of thermodynamics, nature is filled with examples of order emerging from chaos. A new theoretical framework resolves the apparent paradox

discussion topic, allow students to discuss key points of article, provide them with selected passages. This is a good way to see if they understand as they will have to discuss how nature does and doesn't obey the laws of thermodynamics.

Our planet may harbour forms of "weird life" unrelated to life as we know it.

When will the BBC get better quality science journos Alien Life my arse - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7893414.stm [from http://twitter.com/AndyBoydnl/statuses/1227806875]

new forms of life on earth, from earth or arrived to it. How to look for them. Definition of life (self sustained and capable of darwinian evolution?). Did life hartch on earth from scratch more than once?

Learn how to make fake snot or mucous.

Link to Piled Higher and Deeper

The Princeton Companion to Mathematics

wikiHow article about How to Make Hot Ice.

don

Another indication of malleability is that I.Q. has risen sharply over time. Indeed, the average I.Q. of a person in 1917 would amount to only 73 on today’s I.Q. test. Half the population of 1917 would be considered mentally retarded by today’s measurements, Professor Nisbett says. Another proven intervention is to tell junior-high-school students that I.Q. is expandable, and that their intelligence is something they can help shape. Students exposed to that idea work harder and get better grades. That’s particularly true of girls and math, apparently because some girls assume that they are genetically disadvantaged at numbers; deprived of an excuse for failure, they excel.

Poor people have I.Q.’s significantly lower than those of rich people, and the awkward conventional wisdom has been that this is in large part a function of genetics.

Good mythbuster and eye-opener on I.Q. Recommended.

"Intelligence does seem to be highly inherited in middle-class households, and that’s the reason for the findings of the twins studies: very few impoverished kids were included in those studies. But Eric Turkheimer of the University of Virginia has conducted further research demonstrating that in poor and chaotic households, I.Q. is minimally the result of genetics — because everybody is held back. "

praise effort more than achievement, teach delayed gratification, limit reprimands and use praise to stimulate curiosity

<< previous image | next image >> A hummingbird's neck is structured like a bucket

High-Speed Cameras Reveal the World Inside Time - http://gatorurl.com/fu3lj8 (via @stii) [from http://twitter.com/shawnroos/statuses/1857348702]

Wow. The world sure is neat.

What a long, strange trip it's been!

In his celebrated 1837 Phi Beta Kappa Oration at Harvard, titled "The American Scholar," Ralph Waldo Emerson predicted that a day would come when America would end what he called "our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands." His prediction came true in the twentieth century, and in no area of learning more so than in science. This surely would have pleased Emerson. When he listed his heroes he would generally include Copernicus and Galileo and Newton along with Socrates and Jesus and Swedenborg. But I think that Emerson would have had mixed feelings about one consequence of the advance of science here and abroad—that it has led to a widespread weakening of religious belief.[1]

Without God By Steven Weinberg Charles DarwinCharles Darwin by David Levine In his celebrated 1837 Phi Beta Kappa Oration at Harvard, titled "The American Scholar," Ralph Waldo Emerson predicted that a day would come when America would end what he called "our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands." His prediction came true in the twentieth century, and in no area of learning more so than in science. This surely would have pleased Emerson. When he listed his heroes he would generally include Copernicus and Galileo and Newton along with Socrates and Jesus and Swedenborg. But I think that Emerson would have had mixed feelings about one consequence of the advance of science here and abroad—that it has led to a widespread weakening of religious belief.[1]

He warned me that we must worship God, because otherwise we would start worshiping each other. He was right about the danger, but I would suggest a different cure: we should get out of the habit of worshiping anything.

so that's how Mickey D's does it

The Burger Lab: How to Make Perfect Thin and Crisp French Fries: http://j.mp/90A8YD

The future belongs to the companies who figure out how to collect and use data successfully. In this in-depth piece, O'Reilly editor Mike Loukides examines the unique skills and opportunities that flow from data science.

aspects Business Intelligence, Text Mining, and other statistical analysis

RT @Pogue: Just how deep is BP's nasty oil rig? This'll give you some idea... http://bit.ly/b46Ktu (via @armenoush)

ation of an imag

RT @HoagiesGifted: 'Thirst for knowledge' may be opium craving http://bit.ly/YHoJP [from http://twitter.com/bfwriter/statuses/14961074185]

How to predict the weather by observing nature around you

this is so cool: http://www.marisys.com/how-to-forecast-weather_2010-05-26/ Thanks, @smb018

Build and Surf an Origami Hang Glider on a Wave of Air

Great blog!

You are not so smart.

via Subgenius Spice :D

BBC News | Creativity is akin to insanity, say scientists who have been studying how the mind works.

Article on creativity and how the minds mimic schizophrenia. Interesting about education and the mind.

That thin line between genius and madness is now verified by science.

Eventi che cambieranno il mondo

This Web-only article is a special rich-media presentation of the feature, " 12 Events That Will Change Everything ," which appears in the June 2010 issue of Scientific American . The presentation was created by  Zemi Media . Find all our other interactive offerings here .

カッシーニの土星画像。

Checking in on Saturn The Big Picture

While we humans carry on with our daily lives down here on Earth, perhaps stuck in traffic or reading blogs, or just enjoying a Springtime stroll, a school-bus-sized spacecraft called Cassini continues to gather data and images for us - 1.4 billion kilometers (870 million miles) away. Over the past months, NASA's Cassini spacecraft has made several close flybys of Saturn's moons, caught the Sun's reflection glinting off a lake on Titan, and has brought us even more tantalizing images of ongoing cryovolcanism on Enceladus. Collected here are a handful of recent images from the Saturnian system. (30 photos total)

The accuracy of computer speech recognition flat-lined in 2001, before reaching human levels. The funding plug was pulled, but no funeral, no text-to-speech eulogy followed. Words never meant very much to computers—which made them ten times more error-prone than humans. Humans expected that computer understanding of language would lead to artificially intelligent machines, inevitably and quickly. But the mispredicted words of speech recognition have rewritten that narrative. We just haven’t recognized it yet. In 2001 recognition accuracy topped out at 80%, far short of HAL-like levels of comprehension. Adding data or computing power made no difference. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University checked again in 2006 and found the situation unchanged. With human discrimination as high as 98%, the unclosed gap left little basis for conversation.

In passing, interesting-looking thing about why computers can't understand language.

link to scientific article which shows low accuracy of 2006 products

Speech recognition flatlined at 80% accuracy in 2001, and you'd be forgiven for concluding it will never get better: http://bit.ly/aoSCO0 – iconmaster (iconmaster) http://twitter.com/iconmaster/statuses/14370926269

The accuracy of computer speech recognition flat-lined in 2001, before reaching human levels. The funding plug was pulled, but no funeral, no text-to-speech eulogy followed. Words never meant very much to computers—which made them ten times more error-prone than humans. Humans expected that computer understanding of language would lead to artificially intelligent machines, inevitably and quickly. But the mispredicted words of speech recognition have rewritten that narrative. We just haven’t recognized it yet.

6/15/10

I like the method for determining when the pan is the right temperature.  I don't like the attempted explanations; water and protein change much more than steel between 70 and 300 degrees.

There is actually a small ideal window of heat that you should be aiming for in order to prevent sticking, optimize browning of your meat, and develop a nice fond on the pan.

Whether the new thinking will be reflected in this year's revision of the federal dietary guidelines remains unclear

Sciyo is a free service that allows scientists to publish their works and connect with other authors. Works published on Sciyo are made available for free to visitors. Visitors can download works as PDFs. There are currently 211 free books on Sciyo. The category of books that is probably of most interest to readers of this blog is Technology and Education. In the future videos will also be available on Sciyo.

Science education sites

“We will transcend all of the limitations of our biology,” says Raymond Kurzweil, the inventor and businessman who is the Singularity’s most ubiquitous spokesman and boasts that he intends to live for hundreds of years and resurrect the dead, including his own father. “That is what it means to be human — to extend who we are.” But, of course, one person’s utopia is another person’s dystopia. http://www.kurzweilai.net/news/frame.html?main=news_single.html?id%3D12295

NYT article about the singularity movement

ON a Tuesday evening this spring, Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google, became part man and part machine. About 40 people, all gathered here at a NASA campus for a nine-day, $15,000 course at Singularity University, saw it happen. While the flesh-and-blood version of Mr. Brin sat miles away at a computer capable of remotely steering a robot, the gizmo rolling around here consisted of a printer-size base with wheels attached to a boxy, head-height screen glowing with an image of Mr. Brin’s face. The BrinBot obeyed its human commander and sputtered around from group to group, talking to attendees about Google and other topics via a videoconferencing system.

At that point, the Singularity holds, human beings and machines will so effortlessly and elegantly merge that poor health, the ravages of old age and even death itself will all be things of the past. Some of Silicon Valley’s smartest and wealthiest people have embraced the Singularity. They believe that technology may be the only way to solve the world’s ills, while also allowing people to seize control of the evolutionary process.

While the flesh-and-blood version of Mr. Brin sat miles away at a computer capable of remotely steering a robot, the gizmo rolling around here consisted of a printer-size base with wheels attached to a boxy, head-height screen glowing with an image of Mr. Brin’s face. The BrinBot obeyed its human commander and sputtered around from group to group, talking to attendees about Google and other topics via a videoconferencing system. The BrinBot was hardly something out of “Star Trek.” It had a rudimentary, no-frills design and was a hodgepodge of loosely integrated technologies. Yet it also smacked of a future that the Singularity University founders hold dear and often discuss with a techno-utopian bravado: the arrival of the Singularity — a time, possibly just a couple decades from now, when a superior intelligence will dominate and life will take on an altered form that we can’t predict or comprehend in our current, limited state.

Is the new iPhone resolution so high that the human eye cannot detect the pixels?

"...at 12 inches from the eye, Jobs claims, the pixels on the new iPhone are so small that they exceed your eye’s ability to detect them."

NASA wants to put a picture of you on one of the two remaining space shuttle missions and launch it into orbit. To launch your face into space and become a part of history, just follow these steps:

RT @AGirlNamedSteve: @teachernz Are you doing this? http://is.gd/cW3Ae <<<send your photo on the last space shuttle missions :-) #supercool

... just like patience

lazy or exhausted?

IF YOU found a self-replicating organism living inside your computer, your first instinct might be to reach for the antivirus software. If, however, you are Andrew Wade, an avid player in the two-dimensional, mathematical universe known as the Game of Life, such a discovery is nothing short of an epiphany.

First replicating creature spawned in life simulator

Posted by Supybot

AndaBien - Evolution Timeline

To scale.

はやぶさ、最初で最後のおつかい

?

Does seeing this make you feel small? [pic] http://adjix.com/ze6k – David Alfaro (agilenature) http://twitter.com/agilenature/statuses/15120149899

A Terra é um nada perdido no universo. Compare as escalas das estrelas e galáxias: http://i.imgur.com/frLHu.jpg

motion induced blindness, optical illusion, rotating array, yellow dots, green dot

Photos from 30 years ago showing the devestating effects of the Mount St Helens eruption, the thousands of trees all aligned on the ground are astonishing

A site full of information about the ocean. Timely--items about the current oil spill are there; just lots to see. Educator section.

The recent catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico compels all of us to turn our attention to the sea. A new website, the Smithsonian Ocean Portal offers teachers, parents and kids best-in-class educational, scientific and intellectual assets from the Smithsonian and more than 20 environmental organizations.

the first cyborg is now the first infected cyborg. TOI esque headline on BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10158517.stm [from http://twitter.com/madguy000/statuses/14764804819]

.

Does anyone know if Gilbert Van Tassel Hamilton's studies were published into a coffee table book? If they were, then my gift shopping for the year just got a whole lot easier.

There must be something in the water here in Lanesboro, Minnesota, because last night I dreamt of an encounter with a very muscular African-American centaur, an orgiastic experience with &ndash; gasp &ndash; drunken members of the opposite sex and (as if

By Patricia Curtis Can't remember where you put your glasses? Blanked on your new colleague's name? "Forgetting these types of things is a sign of how busy we are," says Zaldy S. Tan, MD, director of the Memory Disorders Clinic at…

About how Dunnung-Kroeger began as a theory

The onset of summer is no excuse to stop learning. In this year’s session, we will address Quantum Physics. Be here each Monday morning through July and August for a new lesson in the nine part series, covering graduate level physics concepts with grade school math, or no math at all.

conservatives have been better than progressives at exploiting anecdote and emotion to win arguments. Progressives tend to think that giving people the facts and figures will inevitably lead them to the right conclusions. They see anecdotes as inadmissible evidence, and appeals to emotion as wrong.

A well written, middle of the line piece on denialism and why normal people become extremists. Bottom line: they don't like giving up control for things that they can't see the real benefits of. Ie. Vaccines; because people no longer get diseases they are vaccinated by, denialists are prone to suspect if vaccines actually do anything or are they actually tools by a power hungry elite to control us and increase autism levels?

What motivates people to retreat from the real world into denial? George Lakoff, a cognitive psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, argues that conservatives have been better than progressives at exploiting anecdote and emotion to win arguments. Progressives tend to think that giving people the facts and figures will inevitably lead them to the right conclusions. They see anecdotes as inadmissible evidence, and appeals to emotion as wrong. The same is true of scientists. But against emotion and anecdote, dry statements of evidence have little power. To make matters worse, scientists usually react to denial with anger and disdain, which makes them seem even more arrogant. Poland has reached a similar conclusion. He has experimented a few times with using anecdote and appeals to emotion when speaking to lay audiences. "I get very positive responses - except from numerates, who see it as emotionally manipulative," he says.

The first thing to note is that denial finds its most fertile ground in areas where the science must be taken on trust. ... Similarly, global warming, evolution and the link between tobacco and cancer must be taken on trust, usually on the word of scientists, doctors and other technical experts who many non-scientists see as arrogant and alien. ... This is not necessarily malicious, or even explicitly anti-science. Indeed, the alternative explanations are usually portrayed as scientific. Nor is it willfully dishonest. It only requires people to think the way most people do: in terms of anecdote, emotion and cognitive short cuts. Denialist explanations may be couched in sciency language, but they rest on anecdotal evidence and the emotional appeal of regaining control. ... He calls his opponents "the innumerate" because they are unable to grasp concepts like probability. Instead, they reason based on anecdote and emotion. "People use mental short cuts

Good read > The Creativity Crisis http://bit.ly/an2WvJ /RT @invisiblepilot

Back in 1958, Ted Schwarzrock was an 8-year-old third grader when he became one of the “Torrance kids,” a group of nearly 400 Minneapolis children who completed a series of creativity tasks newly designed by professor E. Paul Torrance. Schwarzrock still vividly remembers the moment when a psychologist handed him a fire truck and asked, “How could you improve this toy to make it better and more fun to play with?”

Important article detailing research that indicates that tests of creative performance by children, after rising steadily from the 1950s to 1990, have been dropping sharply since that point. Story attempts to discuss some of the reasons why, how educators (here and abroad) are attempting to inculcate innovative thinking and action in schoolchildren and what sorts of familial and societal conditions spark creativity.

2013 e o Sol... Telegraph: http://is.gd/dc53X NASA: http://is.gd/dc509 http://is.gd/dc51g

how will i find you again if the solar storm knocks out our internet? http://bit.ly/cGZnH7

RT @biomatushiq: pity for us, evening owls :) Morning people rule the world http://bit.ly/9Ov9Er [from http://twitter.com/matushiq/statuses/18620682631]

사진이..ㅎ RT @bookedit: "아침형 인간이 세계를 지배하는 이유"를 밝힌 연구 결과가 나왔네요. 현재의 사회환경에서 저녁형 인간보다 좀더 주도적으로 상황을 이끌어갈 수 있기 때문이라네요. http://bit.ly/dh5Mw8

It's like the Talmud via exitcreative

Apparently, it's like reading religious texts.

Artist, Scientist And Philosopher

Web Designer as The Artist, Scientist And Philosopher - Smashing Magazine

It's a stretch as presented here, but it's still a good thought.

Web Designer as The Artist, Scientist And Philosopher - Smashing Magazine - http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/07/09/web-designer-as-the-artist-scientist-and-philosopher/

Artist, Scientist And Philosopher

Web Designer as The Artist, Scientist And Philosopher - Smashing Magazine - http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/07/09/web-designer-as-the-artist-scientist-and-philosopher/

Artist, Scientist And Philosopher

Web Designer as The Artist, Scientist And Philosopher - Smashing Magazine - http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/07/09/web-designer-as-the-artist-scientist-and-philosopher/

Artist, Scientist And Philosopher

The USGS Multimedia Gallery contains large collections of educational videos, animations, podcasts, and image galleries. You can search each collection by topic and or keyword tags.

Just #historified: USGS Multimedia Gallery : Home http://bit.ly/ag9OAY

Mulitmedia resources from the USGS, including videos, animations, photography, etc.

The USGS Multimedia Gallery is our one-stop collection of videos, photography, and other imagery. All items in this gallery are considered public domain.

Even in gun-crazy America, most of us aren't shooting things as part of our day-to-day routine. So most Americans actually know very little about guns. Hollywood writers realized this a long time ago and, being writers, used it as an excuse to never do any fact-checking ever again. Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_18576_5-ridiculous-gun-myths-everyone-believes-thanks-to-movies.html#ixzz0tVGE6TPl

While strong AI still lies safely beyond the Maes-Garreau horizon1 (a vanishing point, perpetually fifty years ahead) a host of important new developments in weak AI are poised to be commercialized in the next few years. But because these developments are a paradoxical mix of intelligence and stupidity, they defy simple forecasts, they resist hype. They are not unambiguously better, cheaper, or faster. They are something new. What are the implications of a car that adjusts its speed to avoid collisions … but occasionally mistakes the guardrail along a sharp curve as an oncoming obstacle and slams on the brakes? What will it mean when our computers know everything — every single fact, the entirety of human knowledge — but can only reason at the level of a cockroach?

New Developments in Artificial Intelligence: Man vs. Google #AI http://bit.ly/9LbS0q $$

What are the implications of a car that adjusts its speed to avoid collisions … but occasionally mistakes the guardrail along a sharp curve as an oncoming obstacle and slams on the brakes? What will it mean when our computers know everything — every single fact, the entirety of human knowledge — but can only reason at the level of a cockroach?

Impressive essay on artificial intelligence.

"Modeling the absence of centrifugal force"

What would happen to our oceans if the Earth stopped spinning ? http://www.esri.com/news/arcuser/0610/nospin.html

What would happen if the Earth stopped spinning?

The following is not a futuristic scenario. It is not science fiction. It is a demonstration of the capabilities of GIS to model the results of an extremely unlikely, yet intellectually fascinating query: What would happen if the earth stopped spinning? ArcGIS was used to perform complex raster analysis and volumetric computations and generate maps that visualize these results. the world as we know it earth's ellipsoid

If the earth's gravity alone was responsible for creating a new geography, the huge bulge of oceanic water—which is now about 8 km high at the equator—would migrate to where a stationary earth's gravity would be the strongest. This bulge is attributed to the centrifugal effect of earth's spinning with a linear speed of 1,667 km/hour at the equator. The existing equatorial water bulge also inflates the ellipsoidal shape of the globe itself.

Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.

While strong AI still lies safely beyond the Maes-Garreau horizon1 (a vanishing point, perpetually fifty years ahead) a host of important new developments in weak AI are poised to be commercialized in the next few years. But because these developments are a paradoxical mix of intelligence and stupidity, they defy simple forecasts, they resist hype. They are not unambiguously better, cheaper, or faster. They are something new. What are the implications of a car that adjusts its speed to avoid collisions … but occasionally mistakes the guardrail along a sharp curve as an oncoming obstacle and slams on the brakes? What will it mean when our computers know everything — every single fact, the entirety of human knowledge — but can only reason at the level of a cockroach?

New Developments in Artificial Intelligence: Man vs. Google #AI http://bit.ly/9LbS0q $$

What are the implications of a car that adjusts its speed to avoid collisions … but occasionally mistakes the guardrail along a sharp curve as an oncoming obstacle and slams on the brakes? What will it mean when our computers know everything — every single fact, the entirety of human knowledge — but can only reason at the level of a cockroach?