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Freaky Face Painting

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 08:43:25 GMT

clipped by: willhelm

Riding the Waves

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 08:59:40 GMT

clipped by: n2sooners

Riding big waves or small, or riding the wind and catching some air, people across the world have been busy surfing over the past few months - in competitions, as therapy, or just for serious fun. Here, you'll find a collection of images of people recently enjoying the surf in several ways. (23 photos total)

Tags: big picture, photography, surfing

The hottest water on Earth

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 03:42:03 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: "Black smokers deep in the Atlantic are spouting 'supercritical' water at over 407 °C – something never before been seen in nature."

Clip Source: environment.newscientist.com

Even Jules Verne did not foresee this one. Deep down at the very bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, geochemist Andrea Koschinsky has found something truly extraordinary: "It's water," she says, "but not as we know it."

At over 3 kilometres beneath the surface, sitting atop what could be a huge bubble of magma, it's the hottest water ever found on Earth. The fluid is in a "supercritical" state that has never before been seen in nature.

Tags: science, geology, water, black smokers

Original Alice

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 21:29:25 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman

Clip Source: www.bl.uk

THE ORIGINAL ALICE

Written and illustrated by Lewis Carroll

Clip Source: www.bl.uk

Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures Under Ground - Introduction

Audio

This manuscript - one of the British Library's best - loved treasures - is the original version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll, the pen-name of Charles Dodgson, an Oxford mathematician.

Clip Source: www.bl.uk

Audio

Chapter one

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, and where is the use of a book, thought Alice, without pictures or conversations? So she was considering in her own mind, (as well as she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid,) whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain was worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies, when a white rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her.

Clip Source: www.bl.uk

Audio

Clip Source: www.bl.uk

Audio

Clip Source: www.bl.uk

Audio

Clip Source: www.bl.uk

Audio

Clip Source: www.bl.uk

Tags: literature, alice, lewis carroll, wonderland, alice's adventures underground

Transistors in Space

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 10:17:53 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: NASA tests new radiation-proof chips

Clip Source: spectrum.ieee.org

Space Test: New radiation-resistant transistors, attached to the International Space Station for evaluation, orbit Earth.

Mission planners for future flights to the moon, Mars, and beyond rightly worry about how to keep astronauts safe from the hazards of high-energy protons, neutrons, and ions streaming through space. These particles can cause cancer and brain damage, but they can be just as damaging to a spacecraft's electronics.

NASA is now testing how well a new type of transistor, shown to be radiation-resistant on Earth, will hold up in space. The transistors went up on the space shuttle Endeavor, and astronauts placed them in a test setup on the outside of the International Space Station on 22 March. After a year, researchers will check how radiation affects the transistors' operating voltages and currents.

A typical transistor is made up of a gate separated from the channel between the source and the drain by an insulating dielectric, usually silicon dioxide

Tags: nasa, radiation-proof, chips, space

Smell Ya Later?

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 13:06:08 GMT

clipped by: debbyski
clipper's remarks: "Knowing this makes me want to run outside, capture a butterfly, and inhale its scent. •

Clip Source: www.thesmartset.com

Who out there knows that butterflies are scented? Their aroma can be that of flowers like honeysuckle or jasmine, herbs and spices like lemon verbena or cinnamon, or confections like vanilla or chocolate, depending on the species.

Gilbert’s new book examines why the sense of smell is so underappreciated, and why it should be valued at least as much as seeing or hearing.

Darwin thought smell was important to our early ancestors, but of only minimal service to modern man. Freud believed that the smell became obsolete when humans started walking upright and no longer had their noses close to the ground. He asserted that repression of smell led to the repression of wild sexual impulses, which was a vital condition of civilization.

Scientific research has found that while humans can detect thousands upon thousands of distinct scents, our brains quickly reduce that sensitivity. “

But words cannot recapture a scent once it is gone and forgotten

English Bulldog Is A Hero: Saves Kittens From Lake

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 11:14:08 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: Napoleon got a much deserved hero’s welcome at the adoption center as crowds gathered to praise the brave bulldog and cuddle the rescued kittens.

English Bulldogs are notoriously bad swimmers. With a giant head and chest compared to a lighter tail end, they have a tendency to go bottoms up in the water. It’s hard to keep that head up above the waves when it’s the largest part of your body!

Most owners are very aware of this problem, and will take care to see that their dogs have a good life vest on if they’re going to be boating or there’s a chance the bulldog could end up in some deep water without someone right at hand to save them if they look like they’re starting to struggle.

Don't call me Napoleon, call me Churchill

Clip Source: www.bulldogabbie.com

Because of the breeds history of poor swimming ability, this morning’s news came as a bit of a shock to me! Napoleon, an obedient and well behaved two year old white English Bulldog in Michigan abruptly left his master’s side yesterday and raced out across a road and into a nearby lake.

Napoleon’s owner met him in the driveway as the bulldog came back up out of the lake dragging something in his mouth. It looked like a burlap sack, and Napoleon appeared determined to drag it up from the shore and back to his master’s side.

It was then that Napoleon’s owner heard the meowing and realized that there were abandoned kittens inside the bag! Six kittens in total, although two of them didn’t survive and the remaining four were in bad shape. Napoleon’s mom cared for the survivor’s for the next two weeks until they could be taken in to the city pet adoption center and found new homes.

Tags: "napoleon", english bulldog, michigan, kittens in lake, rescue

A Hamas leader's son converted to Christianity & seeks refuge in USA

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 23:13:49 GMT

clipped by: syncopath

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

Haaretz's Avi Issacharaoff traveled to California to tell the unique tale of Masad Yousef, the 30-year-old son of Hamas leader Sheik Hassan Yousef, who has converted to Christianity and is seeking refuge in the United States.

In an extended interview, Yousef, who now calls himself Joseph, castigates Hamas as morally and politically bankrupt.

"They are blind and ignorant," Yousef says in the interview. "It's true, there are good and bad people everywhere, but Hamas supporters don't understand that they are led by a wicked and cruel group that brainwashes the children and gets them to believe that if they carry out a suicide attack they'll get to Paradise."

Yousef says that his father is part of the pragmatic wing of Hamas leaders that quietly opposed suicide bombings and seeks compromise with Israel.

Gordon Moore's Next Act

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 10:27:21 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: The man behind Moore's Law is tackling biodiversity, the future of engineering education, and the secrets of the galaxies

Clip Source: spectrum.ieee.org

“ANYTHING BUT MOORE’S LAW”: Semiconductor pioneer Gordon E. Moore hopes his philanthropic work will have an enduring impact.

Gordon E. Moore, cofounder and chairman emeritus of Intel Corp., the world’s 288th richest man, and the eponymous soothsayer of one of technology’s most famous “laws,” sits across from me, eating a turkey sandwich.

Moore was a 36-year-old research physicist at Fairchild Semiconductor Corp. when he wrote his famous forecast, in the 35th anniversary issue of Electronics magazine. He predicted that the number of transistors manufacturers would be able to put on a chip would double every year. At the time, a state-of-the-art chip had about 50 transistors. In 1975, Moore revised the doubling period to two years, thinking that the pattern would last at most a decade longer. To his surprise, it still holds true today, as a new Intel chip, code-named Tukwila, hits the market with 2 billion transistors.

Tags: gordon moore

Too Good To Pass up

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 19:50:07 GMT

clipped by: skwirlinator

Clip Source: www.piclists.com

Tags: animals, pics

The Colors Of Scenic Stones

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 04:09:15 GMT

clipped by: amgumen

Clip Source: www.colourlovers.com

Imagine if an artist could take millions of years to complete a single painting.

Known under a few names, such as: scenic stone, pictorial stones, pietra paesina, marble ruiniforme, lithographic limestone, and stone Florence (there may be others too), these stones were highly prized in early modern Europe and, before that, Asia, because of the beautiful naturally created organic landscapes.

There are three areas in particular that are known (or were known at some point in time) for these types of stones: Florence, Italy; Jasper, Oregon; and Cotham, England.

Artists also used these stones as a canvas adding their own hand and transforming the natural lines and shapes of the stone’s face with their own paints, like the one on top painted by Dutch painter Hercules Segers, and the other one by Johann König.

Inspiration from Scenic Stones

Boredom a sickness or a creative tool?

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 11:07:57 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus
clipper's remarks: "In experiments in the 1970s, psychiatrists showed that participants completing word-association tasks quickly tired of the job once obvious answers were given; granted more time, they began trying much more creative solutions"

"In a recent paper in The Cambridge Journal of Education, Teresa Belton and Esther Priyadharshini of East Anglia University in England reviewed decades of research and theory on boredom, and concluded that it’s time that boredom “be recognized as a legitimate human emotion that can be central to learning and creativity.”

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

You’re Checked Out, but Your Brain Is Tuned In

Scientists know plenty about boredom, too, though more as a result of poring through thickets of meaningless data than from studying the mental state itself. Much of the research on the topic has focused on the bad company it tends to keep, from depression and overeating to smoking and drug use.

Yet boredom is more than a mere flagging of interest or a precursor to mischief. Some experts say that people tune things out for good reasons, and that over time boredom becomes a tool for sorting information — an increasingly sensitive spam filter.

it is far from a passive neural shrug. Using brain-imaging technology, neuroscientists have found that the brain is highly active when disengaged, consuming only about 5 percent less energy in its resting “default state” than when involved in routine tasks

as if the boredom “had the power to exert pressure on individuals to stretch their inventive capacity,”

Tags: neuroscience

Skin cells from an 82-yr.-old ALS patient reprogrammed to form neurons

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 22:36:55 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks: Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a form of motor neuron disease characterized by loss of motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord. These cells are involved in movements, which are generated by the sequential activity of cells in three regions of the central nervous system: they are planned by the activity of neurons in the premotor cortex (whose activity is monitored by brain-computer interfaces), and executed when this activity is relayed to motor neurons in the ventral horn of the spinal cord, via the cells in the primary motor cortex.

Clip Source: scienceblogs.com

A team of researchers from Harvard and Columbia University Medical Center have reprogrammed skin cells from an 82-year-old woman suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis to generate first stem cells and then motor neurons. This is a significant advance which could aid in the development of drug treatments and cell replacement therapies for the condition and related neurodegenerative disorders.

The study, due to be published in the journal Science, demonstrates that skin cells from a chronically diseased elderly patient can be induced to de-differentiate into stem cells and then re-differentiate into motor neurons, which is an important technical achievement. More importantly though, because the technique used resulted in cell lines that are genetically identical to the patient, it will provide researchers with a better model with which they can investigate how the condition develops.

Tags: als, neurons, stem cells

Why do we gain weight? we eat more.

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 07:12:46 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus
clipper's remarks: i know it sounds simplistic, but before linking obesity to viruses and other sophisticated theories, one should look straight to the facts, we eat more in quantities, more processed food.
We are too reluctant to consciously restrict the availability that we face. a point to think about.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

The Overflowing American Dinner Plate

In 1970, the average American ate about 16.4 pounds of food a week, or 2.3 pounds daily. By 2006, the average intake grew by an additional 1.8 pounds a week.

Among other things, that's an extra half pound of fat weekly - mostly from oils and shortening. That doesn't count the fat in the extra quarter pound of meat Americans now eat every seven days. Those fats were somewhat offset by a steep drop in dairy consumption, the only major food group to have a decline, primarily in milk drinking. (But we do love our cheese. More and more of it.)

This portrait of the raw ingredients of the American diet is based on what the Agriculture Department calls "food availability" - the amount of food produced for the average American consumer. The data are adjusted for food losses

to provide a close approximation of what individuals eat.

overall increase in eating does suggest

15 percent of adults age 20 to 74 were obese by 1980. By 2007, that had more than doubled.

Tags: obesity

Biomimetics - Design by nature

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 16:26:25 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman
clipper's remarks: "What has fins like a whale, skin like a lizard, and eyes like a moth? The future of engineering."

Clip Source: www.core.form-ula.com

An electron micrograph reveals sharkskin’s secret to speed: tooth-like scales called dermal denticles

sharkskin denticles spurred the design of his Speedo Fastskin, whose texture functions to reduce drag, bumping up speed

via> National Geographic (April 2008)

Behind the squared-off contours of the boxfish lies a lesson in sleek design. Low drag helps the fish swim up to six body lengths per second, stabilized by the keel-like edges of its carapace.

the thorny devil lizard of the arid Australian desert demonstrates its ability to wick water to its mouth via channels between its scales. Scientists hope to mimic the mechanism to develop water-capture technologies for dry regions

burs

invention of Velcro

NASA was an early user

a fly trapped in amber

striations on its surface that seemed to reduce light reflection

has been adapted to dampen reflection on computer monitors and solar cells

the lotus leaf a naturally self-cleaning, water-repellent surface

flipper of a humpback whale

U-shaped motion