It's pretty much fun.
Here researcher are using fNIR, kind of optical tomography, to compare how baby reacts to certain images. (for example familiar faces). It doesn't use ionizing radiation or electrical impulses, just light.
This particular machine is called MONSTIR.
Besides neonates they visualize insides of breasts and muscles.
Tuesday 25 May 2010
Wednesday 19 May 2010
Two words about the tragedy of the commons and "Wealth of nations"
Contrary to common misconceptions, Smith did not assert that all self-interested labour necessarily benefits society, or that all public goods are produced through self-interested labour. His proposal is merely that in a free market, people usually tend to produce goods desired by their neighbours. The tragedy of the commons is an example where self-interest tends to bring an unwanted result.
"Between ten and fifteen years ago, before the boat fishery was entirely ruined, the price is said to have run from seventeen to twenty shillings the barrel. For these last five years, it has, at an average, been at twenty-five shillings the barrel. This high price, however, may have been owing to the real scarcity of the herrings upon the coast of Scotland." [1]
1. Wealth of nations.
Adam Smith
Apophenia
Well, I don't have anything against imagination. I find that real knowledge about neurons and galaxy filaments much more amazing than baseless speculation about own crooked mind and projecting these thoughts on factual entities.
-"Everything has a meaning"
No! You just can't accept, that You are story-telling agent and Your mind isn't suitable to accept facts without any connections. Now You are just stupid, by rejecting everything that would be hard for You to learn and appreciate.
1. Some Preliminary Reflections on the Biological Substrate of Meaning-Making
L Petchkovsky
Rant about worthlessness of social ideas.
This always strikes me. Do You people are really so uncreative? Ideas are cheap. Everyone have some ideas, but ideas about social issue are worthless. Everyone can think about thousands social ideas. You can ask some women in 17 century Inn in France (or any other people in any other times in history) and they would imagine tens of new ways how people can interact with each other.
How many novels had been written about orphan discovering magical powers and going to a school for special children? Thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands? Rowling isn't prized for idea, but for actual work.
Only work matters!
How many novels had been written about orphan discovering magical powers and going to a school for special children? Thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands? Rowling isn't prized for idea, but for actual work.
Only work matters!
Somalia
Somalia is a big place. One story cannot make it justice.
"HARGEYSA, Somalia — When the sun rises over the craggy hills of Hargeysa, it sheds light on a different kind of Somalia.
Ice cream trucks hit the streets. Money changers, unarmed and unguarded, push cash through the market in wheelbarrows. Politicians from three distinct parties get ready for another day of debate, which recently included animated discussion on registering nomadic voters."
BTW, merging of whole variety of African counties in only 40 or so entities was one of most stupid geopolitical moves in history. It was like merging Europe into three entities: Prussia, Russia and Roman Empire with capitol in Istanbul.
In short:
* Puntland - oil, fisheries and piracy
* Somaliland - tourism, livestock and large diaspora.
Maybe thankfully to emigrants in Somaliland is sound government with diplomacy contacts abroad, large English speaking population, better education and transport.
Jeffrey Gettleman
Tuesday 18 May 2010
Nudibranch
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This is branch of marine molluscs different than Navanax sp. they are famous for their remarkable colours and high toxicity.
Lake Toba
Supervulcano with 100 km on 30 km caldera. Localized in the middle of Sumatra. Around 70.000 years ago brought human specie on edge of extinction.
Jeeney
http://www.jeeney.com/
Chatbots are software representation of ongoing effort to creative intelligent machines. Most famous of them is Jabberwacky created by Rollo Carpenter.
Kelvin–Helmholtz instability.
Charged particle thrust engine.
Patent
Tristram Walker Metcalfe
Ion engine is an propulsion system used in space missions for tens of years. To this day it wasn't enough powerful to move objects in Earth's atmosphere.
Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity In Words of Four Letters or Less
http://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/txt/al.html
Author is named Brian Reiter. It's more funny than informative, but worthwhile nevertheless.
Skin colour
"
| Skin coloration in Geographic distribution of George Chaplin |
Friendly Floatees.
10 January 1992 on Northern Pacific near International Data Line during storm cargo ship released containers with bath toys.
Oceanographers, Curtis Ebbesmeyer and James Ingraham, used their drift to research flow of ocean currents.
Product warning labels.
"
As scientists and concerned citizens, we applaud the recent trend towards legislation which requires the prominent placing of warnings on products that present hazards to the general public. Yet we must also offer the cautionary thought that such warnings, however well-intentioned, merely
We are therefore proposing that, as responsible scientists, we join together in an intensive push for new laws that will mandate the conspicuous placement of suitably informative warnings on the packaging of every product offered for sale. Our suggested list of warnings appears below.
WARNING:
This product warps space and time in its vicinity.
WARNING:
This product attracts every other piece of matter in the universe, including the products of other manufacturers, with a force proportional to the product of the masses and
CAUTION:
The mass of this product contains the energy equivalent of 85 million
HANDLE WITH EXTREME CARE:
This product contains minute
ADVISORY:
There is an extremely small but nonzero chance that, through a process known as tunneling, this product may spontaneously disappear from its present location and reappear at any random place in the universe, including your neighbor’s domicile. The manufacturer will not be responsible for any damages or inconvenience that may result.
READ THIS BEFORE OPENING PACKAGE:
According to certain suggested versions of the
THIS IS A 100% MATTER PRODUCT:
In the unlikely event that this merchandise should contact antimatter in any form, a catastrophic explosion will result.
PUBLIC NOTICE AS REQUIRED BY LAW:
Any use of this product, in any manner whatsoever, will increase the amount of disorder in the universe. Although no liability is implied herein, the consumer is warned that this process will ultimately lead to the
NOTE:
The most fundamental particles in this product are held together by a “gluing” force about which little is currently known and whose adhesive power can therefore not be permanently guaranteed.
ATTENTION:
Despite any other listing of product contents found hereon, the consumer is advised that, in actuality, this product consists of 99.9999999999% empty space.
NEW
The manufacturer may technically be entitled to claim that this product is ten-dimensional. However, the consumer is reminded that this confers no legal rights above and beyond those applicable to three-dimensional objects, since the seven
PLEASE NOTE:
Some
COMPONENT EQUIVALENCY NOTICE:
The
HEALTH WARNING:
Care should be taken when lifting this product, since its mass, and thus its weight, is dependent on its velocity relative to the user.
IMPORTANT NOTICE TO PURCHASERS:
The entire physical universe, including this product, may one day collapse back into an
The
Susan Hewitt and
Curious case of Lydia Fairchild.
Woman accused of surrogacy scan happened to be chimera. Her reproductive organs had different set of DNA than rest of her body.
Baader-Meinhof phenomenon
"You may have heard about Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon before. In fact, you probably learned about it for the first time very recently. If not, then you just might hear about it again very soon. Baader-Meinhof is the phenomenon where one happens upon some obscure piece of information– often an unfamiliar word or name– and soon afterwards encounters the same subject again, often repeatedly. Anytime the phrase “That’s so weird, I just heard about that the other day” would be appropriate, the utterer is hip-deep in Baader-Meinhof."
Beta carbon nitride
This picture describes stable crystal lattice of this compound. Beta-C3N4 is material considered to be harder than diamond. Recently synthesized by milling graphite powder in NH3 atmosphere.
Long-Wei Yin , Mu-Sen Li , Yu-Xian Liu , Jin-Ling Sui and Jing-Min Wang
Aquariums
Famous for its exceptionally large plexiglass tunnel deep below tank's surface.
Largest in the world.
Second largest and truly breathtaking. Successful in keeping large sharks and rays.
This gives a taste of journey through Great Barrier Reef.
Monday 17 May 2010
"Hotel" by Boichi
"It's very rare that you come across a one-shot that tells a tale so much more poignant, so much deeper and thought-provoking that manga with dozens of volumes could ever hope to accomplish in telling.
Hotel tells the story of a world that is being ravaged by mankind. Humanity has done its worst, and now must pay the price: the world is ending. The story is unique in that it is actually very informative without being boring when the explanations of how Man has destroyed the world are given. It certainly does pick up as the plot progresses and we see exactly how the world ends.
The art is excellent. Sweeping landscapes, hailstorms, wind storms, metal and dust--the apocalypse is very well-drawn. You'll just want to sit back and admire the destruction, almost.
And here's where it gets interesting. The main character of this one-shot is a computer, not human beings, not animals. It sort of makes you feel very saddened that the one thing that would survive is artificial intelligence (as we have clearly been shown that human intelligence has completely failed the earth). But the computer's AI actually has a personality, if you can believe. It has hopes, dreams, aspirations. You can boil it down to its programming, and it probably is, but I do think that the computer genuinely learned something more than just new ways to be efficient.
I loved Hotel. The whole concept, the plot, the conclusion--it was all unique and very brilliant. I think I may have even cried a bit at the end.
I definitely recommend this to anyone who likes science fiction, apocalyptic themes, or just good manga on the whole. Hotel may change the way you think about the future."
Hotel tells the story of a world that is being ravaged by mankind. Humanity has done its worst, and now must pay the price: the world is ending. The story is unique in that it is actually very informative without being boring when the explanations of how Man has destroyed the world are given. It certainly does pick up as the plot progresses and we see exactly how the world ends.
The art is excellent. Sweeping landscapes, hailstorms, wind storms, metal and dust--the apocalypse is very well-drawn. You'll just want to sit back and admire the destruction, almost.
And here's where it gets interesting. The main character of this one-shot is a computer, not human beings, not animals. It sort of makes you feel very saddened that the one thing that would survive is artificial intelligence (as we have clearly been shown that human intelligence has completely failed the earth). But the computer's AI actually has a personality, if you can believe. It has hopes, dreams, aspirations. You can boil it down to its programming, and it probably is, but I do think that the computer genuinely learned something more than just new ways to be efficient.
I loved Hotel. The whole concept, the plot, the conclusion--it was all unique and very brilliant. I think I may have even cried a bit at the end.
I definitely recommend this to anyone who likes science fiction, apocalyptic themes, or just good manga on the whole. Hotel may change the way you think about the future."
Friday 14 May 2010
Thursday 13 May 2010
Symphony in blue.
This artist's concept illustrates the new view of the Milky Way , along with other findings presented at the 212th American Astronomical Society meeting.
Wednesday 12 May 2010
Several popular science sites.
http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/media - Imperial College London.
http://www.physorg.com/ - blog.
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/ -mathematics resources.
http://www.ted.com - presentations.
http://spacetelescope.org/ - Hubble Space Telescope resources.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/ - blog.
http://www.pnas.org/ - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
http://mitworld.mit.edu/ - presentations.
http://www.gcarlson.com/ - illustrations and animations.
Tuesday 11 May 2010
About oil/petroleum
About current state, origins, and development of liquid fuels.
http://peakoiljournal.com/ - current oil news.
Case of Saudi Arabia - although arguments aren't strong.
http://www.theoildrum.com/ - best source of information. Site with very lively discussion about fossil fuels upstream and downstream.
FACTBOX-Oil reserves: declining - but how fast?
Bear with me.
Firstly we need all of power sources.
Allowing fifty years to develop each replacement, one cubic mile of oil could be replaced by any one of these developments:
- 4 Three Gorges Dams, developed each year for 50 years, or
- 52 nuclear power plants, developed each year for 50 years, or
- 104 coal-fired power plants[, developed each year for 50 years, or
- 32,850 wind turbines, developed each year for 50 years, or
- 91,250,000 rooftop solar photovoltaic panels[ developed each year for 50 years need to in order to curb our carbon dioxide emissions.
- This sounds good, but nobody is doing this.
See graph. Run it forward. Everybody wants to be in right upper corner. Look there. People need to use power to live in higher standard. And they getting there quickly. Sudan have better healthcare and higher income than Japan 70 years ago and it would be surprising, if it will take Sudanese whole 70 years to reach current Japanese levels. Now realize that all this statistics were per person.This is world population trend. It will reach 9 billion in 2050 just because there are lot of teenagers now. They are going to have children and their children are going to have their own children. Not because large families. World's healthcare improved drastically and people are going to live much longer.
Now. Step back. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil
You are now aware, that by the year 2050 world may have half of today's petroleum production rate.
This means half cubic mile of oil per year less. With population growth and growing needs of average consumer we have to add two new CMO/year. Unless we take to consideration environmental impact.
Monday 10 May 2010
Sunday 9 May 2010
On-line graphical editing.
- http://darkcopy.com/fullscreen.html - text writer.
- http://fliptitle.com/ - flipping tool.
- http://www.lunapic.com/editor/
- http://www.pixlr.com/app/
- http://photofunia.com/
- http://www.splashup.com/
- http://flashface.ctapt.de/index.php - face generator.
- http://vectormagic.com/home - vector art creator.
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