Clipmarks | abailart's clips

The investigation of laughter is belatedly becoming a science..:-)

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 06:19:49 GMT

clipped by: einbar
clipper's remarks: In 1923 a theoretical tome listed 88 different theories of humour, few of which seemed to acknowledge that it is supposed to be enjoyable. The theories can be divided into three main types:

Clip Source: www.moreintelligentlife.com

The study of laughter has entered mainstream psychology. Anthony Gottlieb reads the reports--and a new book on the history of jokes--and finds much to chuckle

Recent studies of twins, they reported, suggested that there may be a genetic explanation for some differences between British and American styles of humou

The real news is that the investigation of humour is belatedly becoming a science. After millennia of untested speculation by armchair thinkers, moves are afoot to bring the study of laughter into the mainstream of experimental psychology.

"The Psychology of Humor",

suggest that on average people laugh 17.5 times per day. And a good sense of humour tends to be one of the most highly rated traits when people choose their friends, lovers or spouses. So psychologists have every reason to take humour seriously.

Clip Source: wwnorton.com

Clip Source: www.moreintelligentlife.com

One popular field of research is the effect of humour on health

then it should be associated with longevity

The Brain Unmasked

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 18:37:22 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman

Clip Source: www.technologyreview.com

New imaging technologies reveal the intricate architecture of the brain, creating a blueprint of its connectivity.

Diffusion spectrum imaging (DSI) is one of these twists. It uses magnetic resonance signals to track the movement of water molecules in the brain: water diffuses along the length of neural wires, called axons. Scientists can use these diffusion measurements to map the wires, creating a detailed blueprint of the brain's connectivity.

Clip Source: www.technologyreview.com

On the next page is an animation of the wiring of a marmoset monkey.

Clip Source: www.technologyreview.com

The marmoset brain, shown above, is about the size of a plum. By scanning a dissected brain for 24 hours, scientists were able to generate a map with a spatial resolution of 400 microns. "The image quality and resolution are much higher than we can obtain in a living subject," says Wedeen.

Clip Source: www.technologyreview.com

Brain and Creativity Institute

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 16:24:53 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: The mission of the Brain and Creativity Institute is to gather new knowledge about the human emotions, decision-making, memory, and communication, from a neurological perspective, and to apply this knowledge to the solution of problems in the biomedical and sociocultural arenas.

Clip Source: www.usc.edu

The Brain and Creativity Institute was founded by Antonio Damasio and Hanna Damasio in 2006. Since ancient times, thinkers and scientists have sought to explain how we perceive, interpret, and shape our existence. However, until very recently, researchers interested in these questions have had to rely entirely on conjecture or indirect evidence. Now, recent technological advances in brain imaging and fresh insights into the functioning of the human brain at the level of systems, cells and molecules, provide extraordinary new opportunities for uncovering the neurological underpinnings for a large array of mental functions – from emotion and decision-making to innovation and creativity.

It is also apparent that emotion, decision-making, memory and communication, are central to our most fundamental socio-cultural endeavors

The Institute is a groundbreaking effort to make use of important new discoveries from the mind and brain sciences and confront pressing issues of our time.

Tags: brain and creativity, antonio damasio

Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 15:57:38 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks:
Trial-and-error evolution
According to Gary Marcus's Kluge our brains are an engineering nightmare, says Steven Rose

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

The fallibility of the human mind is a source of continual frustration to philosophers, artificial intelligencers and evolutionary psychologists. Our memories are weak, we are credulous and easily led to believe improbable or impossible things, our language is not optimally constructed. We have problems with probabilities, and are logically inconsistent. We make choices that are apparently irrational and not in our own best long-term interests, and certainly not in those of our genes. Thus - according to Marcus - we prefer instant gratification to the chance of greater, longer-term benefits. We get drunk, embark on non-procreative sex for mere pleasure, and may even sacrifice our lives for some perceived cause that has nothing to do with increasing our inclusive (genetic) fitness.

His chapter on language as a kluge, full of grammatical and linguistic incongruities, is particularly strong, although his basic argument is almost drowned in a flood of examples

Tags: kluge, human mind, evolution, book review

"The Road Goes On Forever and the party never ends.." beautiful "path" picture

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 08:32:00 GMT

clipped by: einbar
clipper's remarks:

Clip Source: graphics8.nytimes.com

Clip Source: pixdaus.com

Clip Source: image.linkinn.com

Clip Source: www.geekarmy.com

Clip Source: matadornetwork.cachefly.net

Clip Source: image2.linkinn.com

Clip Source: www.geekarmy.com

68 Molecules that hold the key to all Cellular Life

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 01:01:12 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: Currently, the vast majority of medical research looks to the human genome and proteome for answers, but those answers remain elusive, and perhaps for good reason.

“We have now found instances where the pathogenesis of widespread and chronic diseases can be attributed to a change in the glycome, for example, in the absence of definable changes in the genome or proteome,” Marth said, adding that, as biomedical researchers, “we need to begin to cultivate the integration of disciplines in a holistic and rigorous way in order to perceive and most effectively manipulate the biological mechanisms of health and disease.”

Marth believes that biology should become more integrative both in academic and research settings. “I’m one who believes that we don’t need to sacrifice breadth of knowledge in order to acquire depth of understanding.”

Clip Source: www.physorg.com

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

Why is it that the origins of many serious diseases remain a mystery? In considering that question, a scientist at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine has come up with a unified molecular view of the indivisible unit of life, the cell, which may provide an answer.

Reviewing findings from multiple disciplines, Jamey Marth, Ph.D., UC San Diego Professor of Cellular and Molecular Medicine and Investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, realized that only 68 molecular building blocks are used to construct these four fundamental components of cells: the nucleic acids (DNA and RNA), proteins, glycans and lipids.

Like the periodic table of elements, first published in 1869 by Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev, is to chemistry, Marth’s visual metaphor offers a new framework for biologists.

These 68 building blocks provide the structural basis for the molecular choreography that constitutes the entire life of a cell

Tags: biology, cell biology

Metta Bhavana - Developing Loving Kindness

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 20:56:27 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman

Clip Source: www.dharmachakra.com

a series of talks by Kamalashila

4. Metta Bhavana - Introduction and Basic Tools

5. Metta Bhavana - Full Lead-through

6. Metta Bhavana - Short Lead-through

Clip Source: www.dharmachakra.com

Metta Bhavana - Full Lead-through

	1.	Introduction - setting up your practice (2:33)
	2.	First stage - thinking of yourself (6:36)
	3.	Second Stage - thinking of a good friend (7:21)
	4.	Third stage - thinking of a neutral person (8:09)
	5.	Fourth stage - thinking of a difficult person or enemy (7:24)
	6.	Fifth stage - thinking of all four people; expanding to all beings everywhere (10:04)

Clip Source: www.dhammatalks.org.uk

Venerable Ajahn Sumedho

Reflecting on Metta
(14.4Mb mp3) - uploaded 07.04.2008

War is a Racket

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 13:44:50 GMT

clipped by: sahara
clipper's remarks: Wars are really a continuous stream of coordinated acts of terrorism, related to money and power instigated by the people who will benefit from the war and its expected end result. War is an instrument to expand economic power by destroying the national institutions and intelligent people of the victimized nation.

Clip Source: www.rense.com

US General Smedley Butler wrote in his 1935 classic, "War Is a Racket": "I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests in 1914," "I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested." Butler acknowledged that he'd spent most of his thirty-three years in the Marines as "a high class muscle man for Big Business, Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism[ts]."

Tags: war

Can we harness energy from outer space?

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 22:36:41 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks: While nuclear fusion has already been tested with the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium, those reactions give off the majority of their energy as radioactive neutrons, raising both safety and production concerns. Helium-3, on the other hand, is perfectly safe. It doesn't give off any pollution or radioactive waste and poses no danger to surrounding areas.
helium-3 has two protons but only one neutron. When it's heated to very high temperatures and combined with deuterium, the reaction releases incredible amounts of energy. Just 2.2 pounds (one kilogram) of helium-3 combined with 1.5 pounds (0.67 kilograms) of deuterium produces 19 megawatt-years of energy Roughly 25 tons of the stuff could power the United States for an entire year.

Clip Source: science.howstuffworks.com

People have been searching for clean alternative energy sources for decades to no avail. As soon as one source seems to pass the test, someone uncovers its fatal flaw. Nuclear, wind, solar and hydropower have all been dragged through the mud to some degree. Traditional nuclear fission is too risky, winds aren't consistent, the sun doesn't always penetrate the clouds and hydropower dams disrupt natural environments.

It seems like any workable solution is light-years away -- literally. Some researchers think the answer to our energy needs rests in the stars. From wind turbines on Mars to helium-3 fusion, people are increasingly looking to extraterrestrial sources for the Earth's energy needs.

One of the sources they're looking at is helium-3 to use in nuclear fusion reactions. As opposed to nuclear fission, which splits an atom's nucleus in half, nuclear fusion combines nuclei to produce energy.

Tags: energy, space

Seeing in four dimensions

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 01:20:23 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: The videos are all available free at www.dimensions-math.org. The videos go on to show how we can visualize imaginary numbers geometrically, how fractal patterns emerge in the Mandelbrot set and Julia sets, and how beautiful and complex shapes can be built up from circles.

Clip Source: www.sciencenews.org

Mathematicians create videos that help in visualizing four-dimensional objects

Three dimensions can be so limiting.

There is the minor difficulty that our nervous systems are only equipped to conjure images in three dimensions. But that doesn’t stop Étienne Ghys of the École Normale Supérieure in Lyon, France, from visualizing the four-dimensional dynamical systems he studies: “I live in dimension four,” he says.

And you can too. Ghys has now created a series of videos teaching others to visualize four dimensions the way he does.

in four dimensions, there are six regular solids, including one with 600 faces! Each of those 600 faces is itself a three-dimensional tetrahedron, and 20 of them meet at each vertex.

How on earth can we visualize such a thing?

Still, they could try. We depict three-dimensional objects on a page all the time, essentially by drawing their outlines.

a third method called “stereographic projection,” which is less intuitive but much more helpful.

Tags: mathematics, visualization

brilliant use of computer presented stats

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 16:34:20 GMT

clipped by: jimbo1000
clipper's remarks: you won't see stats better than this and the subject is important too

Clip Source: www.ted.com

Hans Rosling

with the best stats you've ever seen

About this talk

You've never seen data presented like this. With the drama and urgency of a sportscaster, statistics guru Hans Rosling debunks myths about the so-called "developing world."

Tags: statistics, presentation, development, politics

The George Orwell Diaries

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 10:59:20 GMT

clipped by: Djiezes
clipper's remarks: Published real-time in blog format with a 70 year lag.
http://orwelldiaries.wordpress.com/

Clip Source: orwelldiaries.wordpress.com

THE ORWELL PRIZE

In association with the Orwell Trust, Political Quarterly and Media Standards Trust

Clip Source: orwelldiaries.wordpress.com

The Orwell Prize, Britain’s pre-eminent prize for political writing, is publishing George Orwell’s diaries as a blog. From 9th August 2008, Orwell’s domestic and political diaries (from 9th August 1938 until October 1942) will be posted in real-time, exactly 70 years after the entries were written.

The diaries are exactly as Orwell wrote them.

For more information, click here.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

Though as prolific as any blogger (his collected writings occupy some 20 volumes), Orwell, who died in 1950, never had the chance to spontaneously publish his thoughts to a waiting public. Now — with some lag time — they are being made available that way at orwelldiaries.wordpress.com.

Tags: george orwell, diary, politics, news, history, literature, writer

But is it art ? what makes a science-inspired image truly "art"?

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 06:40:14 GMT

clipped by: einbar
clipper's remarks: "that question prompted quite a bit of debate : what makes a science-inspired image truly "art"? Perhaps there is a debate, not so much because Frankel is blurring boundaries, but because she has raised the standard for scientific visualization to an unprecedented high level, making it much harder to tell the difference."

Clip Source: twistedphysics.typepad.com

but is it art?

art and science have a rich long history of feeding into each other

The undisputed queen of scientific visualization today is MIT's Felice Frankel, whose stunning images of things like colonies of bacteria or the behavior of water molecules have graced many a cover of the leading scientific journals

most famous photograph is the one below

Frankel's work is aesthetically pleasing, as well as scientifically accurate, but is it art?

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

When people call Felice Frankel an artist, she winces.

“My stuff is about phenomena.”

Phenomena like magnetism or the behavior of water molecules or how colonies of bacteria grow — phenomena of nature. “So I don’t call it art,”

“When it’s art, it’s more about the creator, not necessarily the concept in the image.”

“She has transformed the visual face of science.”

“To me the idea is to engage somebody to look at something, and they don’t even know it’s science,”

“People are not intimidated by pictures. It permits them to ask questions.”

Science

"Invisible Cities": five-minute audio collages from 24 cities around the world

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 03:25:36 GMT

clipped by: enbar
clipper's remarks: Pretty amazing. Twenty-four artists working with field recording teams put together five-minute audio pastiches representing 24 cities -- Beijng, Belfast, Marrakesh, Naples, Washington, and more. All mp3s downloadable.

Clip Source: www.fallt.com

Various Artists | Invisible Cities

Audio Installation/MP3 | F.0037.0001

Curated by Fällt designers Fehler, 'Invisible Cities' offers the opportunity to experience an intimate series of portraits of the world's cities painted with sound.

Through the interface of a gallery wall, each city, represented by an audio work of five minutes duration, is accessible through headphones. Participants in the gallery can transcend distance - moving from Moscow to Montreal, from Berlin to Beijing - in the time it takes to plug a pair of headphones into an alternative location.

A series of artists were invited to contribute a five minute audio work inspired by and utilising the sounds of the cities they cherish. Their contributions range from quiet and contemplative to noisy and frenetic with styles ranging from the pristine digital crackles of Baltimore based artist Richard Chartier (Whitney Biennial, 12k, LINE) to the near-silence of Tokyo based ultra-minimalist *0 (Nosei Sakata).

Tags: audio, art, cool, mp3, global, cities

A New State Of Mind

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 17:25:05 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: But that view of the neurotransmitter was vastly oversimplified. What wasn’t yet clear was that dopamine is also a profoundly important source of information. It doesn’t merely let us take pleasure in the world; it allows us to understand the world.

Clip Source: www.seedmagazine.com

Montague discovered the powers of dopamine, a neurotransmitter in the brain. His research on the singular chemical has drawn tantalizing connections between the peculiar habits of our neurons and the peculiar habits of real people, so that the various levels of psychological description — the macro and the micro, the behavioral and the cellular — no longer seem so distinct.

What began as an investigation into a single neurotransmitter has morphed into an exploration of the social brain

“We are profoundly social animals,” he says. “You can’t really understand the brain until you understand how these social behaviors happen, or what happens when they go haywire.”

even as Montague attempts to answer these incredibly complex questions, his work remains rooted in the molecular details of dopamine.

The importance of dopamine was discovered by accident

Tags: neuroscience, dopamine, brain