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Ain't Eccentricity Great!

Sat, 10 May 2008 17:37:43 GMT

clipped by: Socratoad
clipper's remarks: Fascinating! methinks

Our Own Devices

Does technology drive history?

James Prescott Joule, whose findings led to the first law of thermodynamics, spent his honeymoon jury-rigging a thermometer to take a reading at the top and bottom of a waterfall where a lesser man might merely have canoodled. Joseph Henry shredded his wife’s silk petticoat to make insulation for the coil of wire he needed to wrap around an electromagnet. Thomas Edison didn’t wash, and was convinced that changing his clothes would alter his body’s chemistry, and not in a good way. Nikola Tesla, who developed the first motor for alternating current, had to do everything in multiples of three: twenty-seven laps in the pool, twelve hundred electric lamps for the city of Strasbourg. He was also afraid of earrings, peaches, touching people’s hair, dropping tiny square slips of paper into bowls of liquid, and eating food whose cubic footage he had not been able to estimate at a glance.

The world's rarest big cat.

Fri, 09 May 2008 14:12:38 GMT

clipped by: Brimstone
clipper's remarks: Know as the Amur, and is found in Russia and China.

I had no idea Russia had Leopards. Just shows you learn something new everyday.

Clip Source: news.nationalgeographic.com

Tags: animals, photos

A Game worthwhile playing !

Sat, 10 May 2008 12:25:49 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: As a serious gamer I am certainly going to devote some time to this one. The idea is brilliant. Collaborative computing may bring breakthroughs that are decades away otherwise.
If you pop this at least give the game a try

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

Gamers have devoted countless years of collective brainpower to rescuing princesses or protecting the planet against alien invasions. This week researchers at the University of Washington will try to harness those finely honed skills to make medical discoveries, perhaps even finding a cure for HIV.

A new game, named Foldit, turns protein folding into a competitive sport. Introductory levels teach the rules, which are the same laws of physics by which protein strands curl and twist into three-dimensional shapes -- key for biological mysteries ranging from Alzheimer's to vaccines.

After about 20 minutes of training, people feel like they're playing a video game but are actually mouse-clicking in the name of medical science. The free program is at http://fold.it/.

High-scoring players will be credited in scientific publications the way that top Rosetta@home contributors already are credited for their computer time.

Tags: medicine, computer games, collaborative computing

Ancient Seaweed Tells of Earliest Americans

Thu, 08 May 2008 23:12:52 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: dsc.discovery.com

May 8, 2008 -- Remains of meals that included seaweed are helping confirm the date of a settlement in southern Chile that may offer the earliest evidence of humans in the Americas.

Researchers date the seaweed found at Monte Verde to more than 14,000 years ago, 1,000 years earlier than the well-studied Clovis culture.

And the report comes just a month after other scientists announced they had found coprolites â€“ fossilized human feces -- dating to about 14,000 years ago in a cave in Oregon.

Taken together, the finds move back evidence of people in the Americas by a millennium or more, with settlements in northern and southern coastal areas.

Tags: archaeology, chile, america, prehistory, science

The Bigot in your Brain

Sat, 10 May 2008 18:55:33 GMT

clipped by: dakotayii
clipper's remarks: Why might black faces, in particular, provoke vigilance? Northwestern University psychologist Jennifer A. Richeson speculates that American cultural stereotypes linking young black men with crime, violence and danger are so robust that our brains may automatically give preferential attention to blacks as a category, just as they do for threatening animals such as snakes. In a recent unpublished study Richeson and her colleagues found that white college students’ visual attention was drawn more quickly to photographs of black versus white men, even though the images were flashed so quickly that participants did not consciously notice them. This heightened vigilance did not appear, however, when the men in the pictures were looking away from the camera. (Averted eye gaze, a signal of submission in humans and other animals, extinguishes explicit perceptions of threat.)

Clip Source: www.sciam.com

"There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life,” Jesse Jackson once told an audience, “than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery—then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.”

Jackson’s remark illustrates a basic fact of our social existence, one that even a committed black civil-rights leader cannot escape: ideas that we may not endorse—for example, that a black stranger might harm us but a white one probably would not—can nonetheless lodge themselves in our minds and, without our permission or awareness, color our perceptions, expectations and judgments.

Implicit biases grow out of normal and necessary features of human cognition, such as our tendency to categorize, to form cliques and to absorb social messages and cues.

Without such deductions, we would have a lot more trouble navigating our environment and surviving in it.

Tags: science

Practising Muslims 'will outnumber Christians by 2035'

Fri, 09 May 2008 22:01:55 GMT

clipped by: arifsali
clipper's remarks: Go ahead, get scared!

Clip Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

Practising Muslims will outnumber worshipping Christians in Britain within 30 years, according to research published today.

By 2035, there will be about 1.96 million active Muslims in Britain, compared with 1.63 million church-going Christians, according to calculations by Christian Research, a think- tank.

The figures are published in the latest in a series of reports entitled Religious Trends.

The think-tank has warned that 4,000 churches could close by 2020 if congregations continue to shrink at current rates.

According to the most recent figures from the Church of England, regular Sunday, weekly and monthly attendance each fell by one per cent in 2006.

Fewer than a million people attend church every Sunday.

Although at the last count there were only 1.6million Muslims living in Britain – compared to 41million Christians – experts have suggested Muslims are more likely to practise their faith.

British Muslims perform their traditional prayers

Tags: muslims, britain, christian, religion

Spain claims $500 million in sunken treasure

Fri, 09 May 2008 20:44:18 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: Am just curious where these 500,000$ treasure came from in the first place.

Clip Source: www.physorg.com

(AP) -- Spain formally laid claim Thursday to a shipwreck that yielded a $500 million treasure, saying it has proof the vessel was Spanish.

Officials demanded the return of the booty recovered last year by a U.S. deep-sea exploration firm, saying the 19th-century shipwreck at the heart of the dispute is the Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes - a Spanish warship sunk by the British navy southwest of Portugal in 1804 with more than 200 people on board.

Tampa, Fla.-based Odyssey Marine Exploration on Thursday disputed Spain's claim. In May 2007, Odyssey announced that it had discovered a wreck in the Atlantic - and its cargo of 500,000 silver coins and other artifacts worth an estimated $500 million.

Spain argues that the entire treasure should be returned because naval vessels remain the property of the nation that flagged them, regardless of where they lie, under the principle of sovereign immunity.

Tags: treasure finding

Lost ancient city of Marhashi found in Iran - Claims

Thu, 08 May 2008 23:09:31 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: Very interesting, but we need to wait and see the further reports.

Clip Source: www.andhranews.net

Tehran, May 7 : Archaeologists have come up with a new theory, which suggests that the prehistoric site of Jiroft in Iran is the lost ancient city of Marhashi.

Marhashi, (also known as Warahshe) was a 3rd millennium BC polity situated east of Elam, on the Iranian plateau. It is known from Mesopotamian sources, and its precise location has not been identified.

An inscription of Lugal-Anne-Mundu, the most important king of the Adab city-state in Sumer, locates it, along with Elam, to the south of Gutium, an ancient polity in upper Mesopotamia.

The inscription also explains that Lugal-Anne-Mundu confronted the Warahshe king, Migir-Enlil.

Steinkeller had previously been searching the Kerman region in order to identify a site from the 3rd millennium BC, which he could consider it as Marhashi.

But, Steinkeller found that Jiroft, which had been located between Anshan and Meluhha, lies in the heart of the ancient city of Marhashi, which led him to come up with his theory.

Tags: archaeology, mesopotamia, iran, jiroft, marhashi, sumer, elam

Stanley Kubrick homage

Fri, 09 May 2008 11:45:45 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.youtube.com

[Video]

Tags: stanley kubrick, homage, films

What Happens When the art IS life?

Sat, 10 May 2008 10:53:04 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: quite incredible

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

Bio Art: Life Imitates Art. But What Happens When the art IS life?

Well, then the bio-art starts growing out of control and has to be killed by a lone hero. Obviously. That might sound like the script of "Little Shop Of Horrors: The Revenge", but it actually happened in New York this month.

The organic art in question was the piece "Victimless Leather", a tiny jacket grown from mice embryonic stem cells and kept alive by an external life-support system. Yes, you read that right. Artists, working with the SymbioticA research laboratory in the University of Western Australia, grew living tissue into the shape of a tiny leather jacket and cyborged it up with electrical parts. Presumably to give Tom Thumb either a stylish biodegradable look or nightmares for life.

The mini-flesh-threads were designed to raise questions about human use of animals, and it certainly did - even if only by adding the questions "What the hell are they doing with that jacket?"

Is that terrible or awesome?"

Tags: life, art, biotech

1,000 Ancient Tombs, Unique Remains Found in Colombia

Fri, 09 May 2008 23:15:16 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: news.nationalgeographic.com

Builders clearing land for a housing project in Colombia have uncovered an ancient burial site containing nearly a thousand tombs linked to two little-known civilizations. (See photos.)

The site covers some 12 acres (5 hectares) in the impoverished Usme district in southeast Bogotá (see map) and includes one set of remains that some researchers believe could be a victim of human sacrifice.

Clip Source: news.nationalgeographic.com

The possible victim is a young woman who seems to have been buried alive, said Ana Maria Groot, one of the lead anthropologists from the National University of Colombia working at the site.

"Her mouth is open as if in terror, and her hands seem contracted as if she had tried grabbing hold of something," Groot said.

Another tomb contains the remains of a man with a curved tibia, or shinbone, possible evidence that the man was a shaman, she added.

Tags: colombia, discovery, anthropology

I Can Haz LOLCATS ??!!1!!??

Fri, 09 May 2008 02:08:49 GMT

clipped by: CrazyRedHead

Clip Source: icanhascheezburger.com

Tags: humor, cats, lolcats

10 Facts About the Brain

Thu, 08 May 2008 21:36:24 GMT

clipped by: willhelm

Clip Source: www.lifeoptimizer.org

Your brain is the most energy-consuming part of your body. The brain represents only 2% of the body weight, but it uses up to 20 percent of the body’s energy production.

Your brain contains about 100 billion neurons which is about 16 times the number of people on earth.

The neocortex (a section of the brain involved with language and consciousness) accounts for about 76% of the mass of the human brain.

Neurons multiply at a rate 250,000 neurons per minute during early pregnancy.

750ml of blood pumps through your brain every minute which is 15-20% of blood flow from the heart.

The human brain is about 75% water.

Your brain generates 25 watts of power while you’re awake which is enough to illuminate a lightbulb.

Humans do not use only 10% or less of their brain. This is a common misconception.

It is estimated that the human brain has a raw computational power between 10¹³ and 10¹⁶ operations per second.

Our brain often fools us.