Clipmarks | einbar's Pops

Rap about world's largest science experiment becomes YouTube hit

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 04:58:52 GMT

clipped by: hitchhiker08
clipper's remarks: Well - I understood the theories better....

Rap about world's largest science experiment becomes YouTube hit

The start up of the biggest experiment on the planet has inspired a science rap song that has become an unlikely global hit. Roger Highfield reports.

After 14 years, the European particle physics lab near Geneva, known by its French acronym CERN, is preparing to switch on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), designed to seek out new particles including the long-awaited Higgs boson responsible for making things weigh what they do, the possible source of gravity called dark matter, as well as probe the differences between matter and its "evil twin" antimatter.

Clip Source: link.brightcove.com

Clip Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

Now a larky but accurate rap song explaining the point of the 17 mile circumference machine, which formally starts up on September 10, has made a star of Kate McAlpine, 23, aka "alpinekat", who stars with her friends in a YouTube video that has been downloaded more than 400,000 times.

At the time she made the video, she was working in the press office of the giant machine.

Tags: cern, lhc, geneva, big bang, matter, antimatter

100 Extensive University Libraries from Around the World that Anyone Can Access

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 09:41:26 GMT

clipped by: mugofcoffee
clipper's remarks: For the complete list, pl visit the site...

Clip Source: www.collegedegree.com

By Alisa Miller

Digital Libraries

Capturing images of manuscripts, art, and artifacts, digital libraries are an excellent way of both preserving the past and sharing it with everyone.

Harvard University Library. Browse through 24 different collections ranging from cultural images of eastern Asia to 19th century American trade cards.

Yale University Library: Digital Collections. Find ancient manuscripts or read a classic all preserved digitally courtesy of the Yale University Library.

International Digital Libraries

These digital libraries either have a focus on a culture other than that of the United States or are housed in another country.

Medical Libraries

These libraries offer medical information for both the professional and the lay person.

Legal Libraries

Whether you are studying the law or are just interested in it, these libraries have information for you.

Religious Studies

Specialized Selections

Academic Research

American Universities

International Universities

DNA artwork created by German university student

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 16:34:12 GMT

clipped by: mugofcoffee
clipper's remarks: intelligent scientific artwork...

Clip Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

With its bright colours and unusual patterns these canvasses are the latest examples of scientific art.

The artwork is made of up DNA symbols from animal and plant genes Photo: GB / Barcroft Media

Known as "Visual DNA" these spectacular images are the data visualisation of sequenced animal and plant genes.

German creator Daniel Becker, explains how the process of translating DNA text into colourful symbols is not as complicated as it sounds.

"DNA art interprets the complex information of DNA with the help of symbols and colours," says the 29-year-old from Frankfurt.

"The result is a individual graphic pattern for any creature or plant.

"For the naked eye a DNA sequence is a string of thousands of those four letters.

"So I came up with the idea to interpret these genes into symbols and colours."

A Student of Design at the University of Applied Sciences in Mainz, Daniel also works as a graphic designer.

"They can use the graphics to print it on T-shirts, cups, use it as a poster.

Some Animal "awww" Pictures

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 20:16:13 GMT

clipped by: Kelika

Clip Source: www.darkroastedblend.com

Big-eyed beauty... A face that launched 10,000 hikers (up the tree) -

Sun Bears or Malayan Sun Bears are the smallest bears in the world (more pics... this one does not seem very happy) -

Baby orangutan at 4 hours after birth:

Tags: animals, nature, photos

The Muppet Show Cake

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 20:21:52 GMT

clipped by: skwirlinator

Clip Source: www.flickr.com

The Muppet Show Cake

This insanely awesome cake, created by Heather Haynes of Clarksville, IN, was a blue ribbon winner in the "Special Technique Cake" category at the 2007 Kentucky State Fair.

Tags: the muppet show cake, yummy, cakes, artistic, art, sculpture

3D Architectural Illusions

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 20:36:51 GMT

clipped by: Kelika

Clip Source: weburbanist.com

3D street artists are great, but their ever-popular sidewalk chalk art isn’t the only 3D art of its kind. Inside a home, on the outside of a building or even in a swimming pool, the illusion of three-dimensionality can transform a space, giving the appearance of depth, texture and place in a mythical or fantastical fashion.

Eric Grohe creates surprising illusions of far-reaching spaces out of otherwise flat surfaces. In some of these images of his works, it is difficult to see what is within the picture he created and what is in the real foreground. Though not strictly photorealistic, his plays on perspective feel compellingly real from a distance.

This mystery artist clearly has an eye for classical and medieval scenes. His paintings both enliven these otherwise conventional interior spaces, creating amazing conversation pieces and great play spaces for children. If anyone knows who this is, please add information and links in the comments!

Tags: art, 3d, architecture

Cloud-seeding ships could combat climate change

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 21:27:56 GMT

clipped by: Kelika

Clip Source: physicsworld.com

It should be possible to counteract the global warming associated with a doubling of carbon dioxide levels by enhancing the reflectivity of low-lying clouds above the oceans, according to researchers in the US and UK. John Latham of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, US, and colleagues say that this can be done using a worldwide fleet of autonomous ships spraying salt water into the air.

The 300-tonne unmanned ships used to seed the clouds would be powered by the wind, but would not use conventional sails. Instead they would be fitted with a number of 20 m-high, 2.5 m-diameter cylinders known as “Flettner rotors” that would be made to spin continuously. This spinning would generate a force perpendicular to the wind direction, propelling the ship forward if it is oriented at right angles to the wind (Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A DOI: 10.1098/rsta.2008.0136).

Tags: global warming

Life Sucks

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 22:41:17 GMT

clipped by: swampfoxz
clipper's remarks: So, the forces which created you, random or otherwise, have spoken. And they’ve
determined that, for you, life sucks.

Clip Source: phunkyou.com

Life Sucks

We’re all trapped.

Each of us is stuck being who we are. Sometimes we fight to change ourselves, but
ultimately this has little effect. We can change what we do, but we cannot change who we
are.

If you’re a happy person, you don’t feel trapped. If you’re surrounded by people who you
love and who love you, if you can do what you want to do in life, if you are at peace with
who you are, why would you ever feel trapped? You wouldn’t want to change yourself, you
wouldn’t need to try.

If you’re a happy person, hey, you got lucky! Go back to the previous page, you’ll find
nothing of interest here.

I am not a happy person. Maybe you’re not either. Maybe you’re too fat, or too thin, too old,
or too young. Maybe you’re ugly and nobody wants to sleep with you. Maybe everyone
wants to sleep with you, but nobody loves you and it’s all meaningless. Maybe your body is
fucked up and you’re in pain all the time. Maybe your mind is fucked up and you’re in pain
all the time.

So you struggle with

Tags: life sucks

Five Women Buried Alive - and the Media Ignore It

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 23:43:15 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: www.alternet.org

Last month, the U.S. media were full of stories about the resignation of Pervez Musharraf as president of Pakistan. But another event that same week in Pakistan -- that tribesmen buried five young women alive for wanting to choose their own husbands -- got almost no coverage.

According to the Asian Human Rights Commission, the women's "crime" was that they defied tribal elders and arranged marriages to men of their own choosing in a civil court. They were abducted at gunpoint by some men and dragged off to a remote field, where they were beaten, shot, thrown into a ditch, and then, while still breathing, smothered to death with rocks and mud.

Yet not even when a member of the Pakistani parliament, Israr Ullah Zehri, defended these barbaric killings as "century-old traditions" -- when he said that killing women who defy male control by wanting to chose their own husbands is necessary to "stop obscenity" -- was there international outrage.

Tags: pakistan, human rights, murder, traditions, women, democracy

flooded London 2090 - art imaginary scenario

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 23:59:01 GMT

clipped by: syncopath
clipper's remarks: "The installations are optimistic and reveal that far from being a tragedy, the floods have brought about a much-improved way of life to the capital city."

one of the comments on this story says: "Can’t wait for global warming to improve the London weather."

Clip Source: www.dezeen.com

Film and media studio Squint/Opera has created a series of images depicting imaginary scenes in London in 2090, when rising sea levels have inundated the city.

The general scenario is set 80 or so years into the future, long after the sea levels have risen. The catastrophe side of the sea coming in has long since past and the five images are snapshots of people going about their lives, long since having adapted to the worlds new circumstance.

The scenes shown through light boxes present London as a tranquil utopia

The people in each scene appear to be relaxed and happy in their environment and in the first we see a man who has rowed into St Pauls and is preparing to dive off the ledge of the whispering gallery into the dimly lit ‘swimming pool’.

Another sees the upper reaches of a once famous art gallery where people have collected pre flood artifacts and are rigging them up to get makeshift machinery going to power a light bulb.

Clip Source: www.dezeen.com

Tags: art, installation, future, london

Study: Credit Cards Cause More Spending

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 00:20:55 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: Keep away from those nasty cards... and live in peace.

Clip Source: www.livescience.com

If you're trying to save money, leave your credit cards at home and pack cash only.

A four-part study found what many financial planners already knew: People spend more money when using credit cards compared to cash purchases. People also spend less when they look at their expenses in detail, the researchers found.

Consumers simply feel the pain of paying more when they part with cash, the researchers, led by Priya Raghubir at New York University, write in the September issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied.

Tags: credit cards, expenses, psychology, science

Fear Is The Cheapest Room In The House

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 02:01:22 GMT

clipped by: debbyski

Clip Source: www.earthlight.org

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends up in folly.’ Political activists are more inclined, though, to heed an observation from Richard Nixon: ‘People react to fear, not love. They don’t teach that in Sunday School, but it’s true.’

To give into despair is to succumb to fear, the ultimate source of all human violence.

A vibrant and functional democracy depends on the honest dissemination of information. The corporate media, in its rightward drift and easy compliance to political power, is failing the general populace

Don’t let consumption define who we are. True peace is to see ourselves as citizens, not simply consumers.

Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote: "Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent revolution inevitable." If we commit ourselves to creating peaceful change by not giving into despair and a culture of fear, we practice the spiritual ecology of peace.

CT Scans Overprescribed?

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 00:33:18 GMT

clipped by: Kelika
clipper's remarks: "The result is cancer.

The increased risk varies with age but, at most, adds about a tenth of a percent to a person's 42% lifetime chance of getting cancer.

Still, even the small amount of radiation from a CT can compound over time as the number of scans adds up.

Medical tests are now the biggest source of radiation exposure, recently surpassing background radiation, according to the National Council on Radiation Protection & Measurements.

Of particular concern is the rising use of CT scans for children and pregnant women. Children -- who account for 11% of CT scans -- face significantly higher risks than adults because they are more sensitive to radiation and have more years ahead for a cancer to develop.

For example, an abdominal scan in a 5-year-old carries a 0.10% risk of triggering a fatal cancer, nearly 10 times the risk in adults older than 35, according to the New England Journal study.

Risks this small are not well understood, and there is a vigorous debate o

Clip Source: www.latimes.com

The scans involved hundreds of razor-thin X-rays of her innards stitched together by a computer into stunningly detailed 3-D images showing the size and location of the stone, down to the millimeter.

What she didn't realize was that the perfection of the images was a result of a radiation dose equivalent to more than a dozen standard abdominal X-rays -- all for a condition that though painful is relatively mundane.

But with the boom has come a rising concern that the abundant use of radiation is beginning to have a subtle effect on the health of the nation.

Although the risk of a single CT scan to an individual is minuscule, even a tiny increase in radiation exposure spread over a large population can eventually add up to tens of thousands of cancer deaths a year.

Some researchers estimate that up to a third of scans could have been avoided or replaced by safer technologies, such as ultrasound or magnetic resonance imaging.

Tags: ct scans, health, cancer

“Junk DNA” May Have Triggered Key Evolutionary Changes in Human Thumb and Foot

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 01:36:34 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: A rapidly evolving sequence from the human genome drives gene activity in the developing thumb, wrist and ankle of mouse embryos, suggesting the sequence may have contributed to key evolutionary changes in the human limbs that allowed us to walk upright and use tools.

An indication of their biological importance, many of these non-coding sequences have remained similar, or “conserved,” even across distantly related vertebrate species such as chickens and humans. Recent functional studies suggest some of these “conserved non-coding sequences” control the genes that direct human development.

Clip Source: opa.yale.edu

Out of the 3 billion genetic letters that spell out the human genome, Yale scientists have found a handful that may have contributed to the evolutionary changes in human limbs that enabled us to manipulate tools and walk upright.

Results from a comparative analysis of the human, chimpanzee, rhesus macaque and other genomes reported in the journal Science suggest our evolution may have been driven not only by sequence changes in genes, but by changes in areas of the genome once thought of as “junk DNA.”

Those changes activated genes in primordial thumb and big toe in a developing mouse embryo, the researchers found.

“Our study identifies a potential genetic contributor to fundamental morphological differences between humans and apes

In the last several years, scientists have discovered that non-coding regions of the genome, far from being junk, contain thousands of regulatory elements that act as genetic “switches” to turn genes on or off.

Tags: genetics, junk dna, ontogenesis

Amazingly Creative Art

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 23:43:38 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver

Clip Source: my.mmoabc.com

Tags: art, design