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Beautiful Black And White Photography

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 20:45:48 GMT

clipped by: carrerinyes

Beautiful Black-And-White-Photography

It’s Not What You Say, It’s the Order in Which You Say It

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 01:10:41 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: This research may hint that concepts exist an are being processed in the human brain, prior to and independent of language.

Clip Source: blogs.discovermagazine.com

We don’t always say exactly what we mean, and it has nothing to do with being polite.

A new study suggests that the order in which we construct our thoughts is consistent, regardless of the language we speak.

researchers recruited speakers of English, Mandarin Chinese, and Spanish, all of which use the subject-verb-object construction.

They also gathered participants who spoke Turkish, which orders sentences as subject-object-verb.

The participants were shown a series of illustrations and asked to communicate the scenes depicted using only gestures.

The resulting nonverbal communication was predominantly comprised of subject-object-verb order, regardless of the speaker’s language.

These findings suggest that natural order may be rooted in our brains, and could also help explain why newly developing sign languages use a consistent word order.

Why then do some languages defy our natural ordering impulse? Although this is still unclear, cultural forces may play a role.

Tags: brain, communication, language

Firefox Users Most Secure on Internet, Study Reveals

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 10:43:11 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.crn.com

Mozilla Firefox fans might rest a little easier these days after a study released Tuesday revealed that its users are most secure on the Internet.

The study "Understanding the Web browser threat: Examination of vulnerable online Web browser populations and the "insecurity iceberg," was a collaborative effort conducted by researchers at The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Google and IBM (NYSE:IBM) Internet Security Services. The research offers a comprehensive analysis of Web browsers, particularly in the area of security. The study's aim was to analyze Web browser preference and behavior for people using the Internet.

Altogether, the study found that less than 60 percent (59.1) of people use up-to-date, fully patched Web browsers. Failure update browsers exponentially increases the chance for remote attacks executed by hackers, the study found.

Tags: browsers, firefox, net

32 Sci-Fi Novels You Should Read

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 22:08:21 GMT

clipped by: Socratoad
clipper's remarks: More at site, plus a short blurb about each novel.

Clip Source: howtosplitanatom.com

32 Sci-Fi Novels You Should Read

Foundation - Isaac Asimov

The Time Machine - H.G. Wells

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick

Animal Farm - George Orwell

War Of The Worlds - H.G. Wells

Frankenstein - Mary Shelley

The Minority Report - Philip K. Dick

Neuromancer - William Gibson

Pattern Recognition - William Gibson

Accelerando - Charles Stross

I Robot - Isaac Asimov

Stranger In A Strange Land - Robert A. Heinlein

Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut

The Giver - Lois Lowry

20,000 Leagues Under The Sea - Jules Verne

Ringworld - Larry Niven

More Than Human - Theodore Sturgeon

Spook Country - William Gibson

Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom - Cory Doctorow

Altered Carbon - Richard Morgan

Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

Dune - Frank Herbert

Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson

The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas Adams

Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand

1984 - George Orwell

Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury

Ender’s Game - Orson Scott Card

A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess

The Andromeda Strain - Michael Crichton

Worms Do Calculus To Find Meals

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 10:49:34 GMT

clipped by: shandora
clipper's remarks: In their paper, the researchers documented how two related, closely located chemosensory neurons, acting in tandem, regulate behavior. The left neuron controls an on switch, while the opposing right one an off switch. These sister neurons are situated much like the two nostrils or two eyes of mammals. Together these neurons are known as ASE for antagonistic sensory cues.

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

ScienceDaily (July 3, 2008) — Thanks to salt and hot chili peppers, researchers have found a calculus-computing center that tells a roundworm to go forward toward dinner or turn to broaden the search. It's a computational mechanism, they say, that is similar to what drives hungry college students to a pizza.

"This computer does some nice calculus, differentiating the rate of change of the strength of various tastes," Lockery said. "The worm uses this information to find food and to avoid poisons."

It's possible, Lockery said, that the discovery someday could help research aimed at treating at least some of the 200,000 people in the United States who annually seek medical treatment, according to records of the National Institutes of Health, for problems involving taste and smell.

Tags: science, brain, nature

Translucent Sea Creatures - Photo Gallery

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 07:12:19 GMT

clipped by: hitchhiker08
clipper's remarks: Wow - aquatic neon lighting?!

Clip Source: photography.nationalgeographic.com

Photo Gallery: Translucent Creatures

A pelagic, or open-ocean, octopus gives off a neon glow in Hawaii. Most species of octopus have no internal skeleton, unlike other cephalopods.

Clip Source: photography.nationalgeographic.com

A photographer's strobe gives a violet sheen to this translucent juvenile roundbelly cowfish off the coast of Kona, Hawaii. Also known as the transparent boxfish, the roundbelly cowfish has two short horns in front of its eyes.

Clip Source: photography.nationalgeographic.com

A hydromedusa spreads its luminescent tentacles in the Weddell Sea near Antarctica.

Clip Source: photography.nationalgeographic.com

Darkness in Antarctica's Weddell Sea gives this comb jelly a chance to show off its candy-colored bioluminescent cells.

Clip Source: photography.nationalgeographic.com

A transparent larval shrimp piggybacks on an equally see-through jellyfish in the waters around Hawaii.

Clip Source: photography.nationalgeographic.com

An opalescent squid uses its giant eyes to navigate the nighttime waters around Papua New Guinea.

Tags: bizarre, marine life, ocean, cephalopods, fish, sea

Top 10 Inspirational Quotes

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 07:53:34 GMT

clipped by: einbar
clipper's remarks: "9. Nora Roberts
If you don't go after what you want, you'll never have it. If you don't ask, the answer is always no. If you don't step forward, you're always in the same place.
10. Stephen Covey
Begin with the end in mind"

Clip Source: images.stockxpert.com

Clip Source: quotations.about.com

1. Mark Twain

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

2. Luigi Pirandello

In bed my real love has always been the sleep that rescued me by allowing me to dream.

3. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.

4. Zig Ziglar

People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing - that's why we recommend it daily.

5. T. S. Elliot

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.

6. Buddha

All that we are is the result of what we have thought.

7. Ralph Waldo Emerson

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

8. Peter F. Drucker

We know nothing about motivation. All we can do is write books about it.

'Mind's eye' influences visual perception

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 10:14:20 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: ..even a single instance of imagery can tilt how you see the world one way or another..

Clip Source: www.physorg.com

Letting your imagination run away with you may actually influence how you see the world. New research from Vanderbilt University has found that mental imagery—what we see with the "mind's eye"—directly impacts our visual perception.

"We found that imagery leads to a short-term memory trace that can bias future perception," says Joel Pearson, research associate in the Vanderbilt Department of Psychology. and lead author of the study. "This is the first research to definitively show that imagining something changes vision both while you are imagining it and later on."

"You might think you need to imagine something 10 times or 100 times before it has an impact,"

Our results show that even a single instance of imagery can tilt how you see the world one way or another, dramatically, if the conditions are right."

"These findings are important because they suggest a potential mechanism by which top-down expectations or recollections of previous experiences might shape perception itself,"

Tags: 'mind's eye', visual perception, brain, imagination

MN judge finds against WalMart in 2 MILLION labor violations

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 06:14:55 GMT

clipped by: masbury
clipper's remarks: Will WalMart ever stop leeching American workers?

Clip Source: www.truthdig.com

Wal-Mart may face up to $2 billion in fines after a Minnesota state judge found a total of 2 million contractual violations by the retail giant.

The judge also ruled on Monday that Wal-Mart owed $6.5 million to 56,000 current and former employees because of contractual violations, including a failure to give workers promised rest breaks at least 1.5 million times. The judge also found that Wal-Mart managers in Minnesota had systematically broken the law by having employees take in-house training while off the clock.

“It’s only through a decision like this that Wal-Mart can be held to its contractual agreements and to complying with Minnesota law.”

Tags: walmart

What You Eat Might Actually Improve Your Intelligence

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 01:00:54 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: Am going to find something smart to eat.
brb

Clip Source: www.physorg.com

New research findings published online in The FASEB Journal provide more evidence that if we get smart about what we eat, our intelligence can improve.

According to MIT scientists, dietary nutrients found in a wide range of foods from infant formula to eggs increase brain synapses and improve cognitive abilities.

In the study, gerbils were given various combinations of three compounds needed for healthy brain membranes: choline, found in eggs; uridine monophosphate (UMP) found in beets; and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), found in fish oils. Other gerbils were given none of these to serve as a baseline. Then they were checked for cognitive changes four weeks later.

The scientists found that the gerbils given choline with UMP and/or DHA showed cognitive improvements in tasks thought to be relevant to gerbils, such as navigating mazes.

"Now that we know how to make gerbils smarter,"

it's not too far a stretch to hope that people's intelligence can also be improved.

Tags: nutrition, intelligence, health