30 Sunday Dec 2012
30 Sunday Dec 2012
Posted in Education, Learning Tools, Science
There’s really no breath of fresh air fresher than when someone answers a question you never even thought to ask. That’s what Robert T. Gonzalez from io9 did when he asked
Why do mirrors reverse left and right, but not top and bottom?
check it below or see the original here:
Position yourself in front of a mirror and you’ll notice it immediately. The text on your sweatshirt is reversed. The part in your hair has switched to the other side of your reflection’s head. The mole on your left ear stares back at you from your mirror image’s right earlobe. Before you stands a bauplan reversed; what was once left is now right, and vice versa. And yet, up remains up and down is still down — as though the mirror knows to switch left and right, but not top and bottom.
This, of course, is not the case. The mirror doesn’t “know” anything about your position; it simply reflects the light that hits it, doing so as objectively as any inanimate object knows how. Why, then, when that reflected light reaches the photoreceptors in your eyes, has your mirror image been reversed from left-to-right?
The short answer is that it hasn’t. In fact, the question of what makes the horizontal axis so special in the context of mirrors is itself flawed. That’s because a mirror does not reverse images left-to-right or top-to-bottom, but from front-to-back. In other words, your mirror image hasn’t been swapped, but inverted along a third dimension, like a glove being turned inside out.
Here’s a thought experiment to help illustrate the concept of front-to-back reversal. Assume, for a second, that you are capable of squeezing your body perfectly flat. Imagine, also, that your body is able to pass through itself, without damaging any of its various tissues. When you stand with the tip of your nose pressed gently against a mirror, it’s easy to assume that the image you see looking back at you is the result of non-mirror you turning in-place 180 degrees and stepping backwards, through the mirror, into mirror-land. This is not the case.
In actuality, the back half of non-mirror you has been pressed flat in the direction of the mirror. As your form began to pancake, the front half of your body (that is, all parts of your body situated behind the tip of your nose, but still in front of the back half of your body), the back half of your body and the tip of your nose all came to reside within the same plane (i.e., the plane occupied by the mirror). But then your back half kept pushing, continuing on its journey through the plane of the mirror and passing right through your body’s front half before re-acquiring its “normal” shape on the other side of the mirror (probably with a satisfying *POP* sound). This new, inverted you is symmetrical to you, but your two bodies cannot be superimposed. In chemistry, such entities are said to be “chiral.”
Here’s another way to think of it, widely popularized by physicist Richard Feynman (see the interview response featured here). Stand in front of a mirror, and note which direction you’re facing. For the sake of this thought experiment, let’s assume you’re facing North. Point due East with your right hand, and your reflection points East as well. Point due west with your left hand, and your reflection gestures in the same direction. That’s because these directions both lie along a plane parallel with the mirror. Similarly, point up or down and your reflection will follow suit, motioning in the same direction.
But deviate from that parallel plane even a little and thinks go wonky. Remember: your image has been reversed along the axis perpendicular to the mirror. Try pointing directly at the mirror, such that your fingertip is now directed due North. Your reflection is now pointing directly at you — not North, like your finger, but South.
29 Saturday Dec 2012
Posted in Geek Culture, Science, Space, Videos
Tags
Yet another nerdalicious 2012 countdown. This Time around we’re looking at the top Space stories… Well, technically we’re looking at Scientific American which is looking at space stories:
29 Saturday Dec 2012
Tags
One of my favourite parts of the end of the calendar year are the many lists that everyone and their grandma seems to produce… As it turns out, this is something a lot of people hate about the new year… Nevertheless, here’s more!
From Mashable, here’s a list of scientific dreams that came true in 2012:
Bionic Limbs
The term “cyborg” was coined in 1960 by Manfred E. Clynes and Nathan S. Kline, in an article they wrote for the journal Astronautics. Since then bionic limbs have been a trope in many pieces of fiction -– The Six Million Dollar Man of the 1970s, the Borg of the Star Trek franchise, and even Darth Vader. In 2012 for the first time, a paralyzed woman was able to control a robotic limb and feed herself directly with her brain. Continuing work with primates demonstrated that it’s possible to make the brain-computer interface efficient enough to design more realistic movement into the limbs. The bionic limbs so far don’t look anything like their fictional counterparts, as they are still connected via external electrodes to the skull. But that dream seems to be a lot closer than it was even a decade ago.
Quantum Teleportation and Communication
While it’s not possible — yet — to “beam” an object around as in Star Trek, new records for zapping photons instantly from one place to another were set this year. Quantum teleportation has been done in the lab for some time, but the distances were on the order of a few yards. In 2012 the new record was 89 miles. In addition to teleporting, scientists built the first quantum Internet. It’s only a beginning, but teleporting photons for miles would enable communications that can’t be hacked or eavesdropped.
Genetic Disease Prevented
Genetic engineering for “better” humans is a theme that’s appeared repeatedly ever since Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World in 1931 — although at that point nobody knew what DNA really was. Later, films such as Gattaca and novels such as Beggars in Spain explore the implications of widely available genetic alterations. In 2012, we saw a proof-of-concept for mitochondrial diseases. About one in 200 people are born with a disorder of the mitochondria, the energy factories of cells. For the first time scientists were able to transfer the nuclear DNA of one human egg cell to another. Two groups independently found a way to transplant nuclei between human egg cells, leaving behind the mitochondrial DNA, which is passed from mother to child. The finding means that mitochondrial disorders could be cured before a child is born. Such techniques won’t cure something like Down’s syndrome, which involved nuclear DNA. But it shows that some manipulation of the human genome is not only possible, but happening.
The Universal Translator
Most of the time when intrepid explorers in fiction meet aliens, they always seem to speak perfect English. Doctor Who’s TARDIS generates a field that allows travelers to be understood, while the crew of the Enterprise never seem to need a dictionary. Kim Stanley Robonson’s Mars trilogy features one, but he didn’t think it would appear until late in the 21st century (the novels were written in the 1990s). While they won’t let you talk to aliens, in the last year several speech-to-speech translators have managed to reach real consumer devices — and even one type that uses your own voice. Most of the apps require an internet connection, though some, such as Jibbigo, can store their dictionaries locally. (If they ever add Klingon I’m taking it to the next ComicCon).
Head-mounted Computer Glasses
Readers of Charles Stross’ novel Accelerando would have eagerly anticipated Google Glasses — the Internet giant’s foray into augmented reality. In the novel, “venture altruist” Manfred Macx carries his data and his memories in a pair of glasses connected to the Internet. Google Glasses allow the wearer to access data, the Internet and capture life via a head-mounted digital camera. Memories will have to wait.
Private Space Flight
In many science fiction stories, space travel is private. In Ridley’s Scott latest movie, Prometheus, the Weyland Corporation funds an expedition to follow a star map to the distant moon LV-223. In real life, Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched the first of a dozen planned missions to the International Space Station. The Dragon capsule is designed to resupply the ISS, but Musk, who made his fortune as founder of PayPal, has bigger plans: a colony on Mars. Is 2013 going to be the year human spaceflight becomes an enterprise like railroads? We won’t know that for a while, but SpaceX is a heck of a start.
29 Saturday Dec 2012
Tags
NASA scientists were sure to minimize any chances of a collision with Santa on Christmas night, and successfully launched its newest telescope from the National Science Foundation’s Long Duration Balloon (LDB) facility in Antarctica? The über sensitive telescope called BLAST, short for the Balloon-borne Large-Aperture Submillimeter Telescope, measures submillimeter light waves from stellar nurseries in our Milky Way and will do so for the next 12 to 14 days…
29 Saturday Dec 2012
Commander Kevin Ford and Flight Engineers Chris Hadfield and Tom Marshburn of the International Space Station’s Expedition 34 crew send down their best wishes for a happy new year.
Clearly they had trouble deciding where to put the Christmas Tree this year. How many spots do you think they tried before they settled on this.
28 Friday Dec 2012
Tags
… Pretty damn far! I first saw this video by Veritasium on the Bad Astronomy blog, where Phil Plait hit the nail on the head: “Most people don’t really grasp just how far away the Moon is, and it’s the closest astronomical object in the sky!” True, most people don’t, myself included. Enjoy!
27 Thursday Dec 2012
Wanna feel smart? Jeanna Bryner , Stephanie Pappas and LiveScience have gone ahead and summed up the 12 most obvious discoveries of 2012 via Scientific American. Most you probably already knew… It’s just good to have a confirmation.
1. Good partners make good parents
Perhaps not the most shocking news in the world: Marry a good, secure partner, and you can expect them to become a good, secure parent.
The same skills that make people good in romantic relationships make them good at building relationships with their kids, researchers reported Dec. 6 in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Among the key traits are cooperation and communication. [10 Scientific Tips for Raising Happy Kids]
While this may seem self-evident, researchers say that empirically linking the same skills to the two types of relationships may translate to better self-help and therapy. Fix one relationship, and you may fix them both.
2. We all want to date a hottie
Sure, you may say you look for a good sense of humor and a sweet disposition, but deep down, you have to admit a pretty face wouldn’t go amiss.
Both men and women unconsciously desire a sexually attractive partner, a study released in January found.
Using a high-speed word association test, the researchers found that people responded faster to words linked to sexiness, no matter how low they claimed to prioritize the physical. The mismatch between what we say we want and what we want may be why online dating meet-ups sometimes go astray, the researchers said.
3. Pre-gamers drink more
Do the math: If you drink before you go out and then drink while you go out, you end up drinking more than if you hadn’t had anything to drink before you went out. In other words, those who “pre-game” get drunker than those who just belly up to the bar, according to research published online in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.
“Pre-drinking is a pernicious drinking pattern that is likely to lead people to cumulate two normal drinking occasions — one off-premise followed by one on-premise — and generally results in excessive alcohol consumption,” study researcher Florian Labhart of Addiction Switzerland, where the study was conducted, said in a statement. “Excessive consumption and adverse consequences are not simply related to the type of people who pre-drink, but rather to the practice of pre-drinking itself.”
4. People with more experience make better decisions
Okay, so pre-drinking is a bad decision — and thus, a choice the more experienced would automatically avoid, according to a study released in December in the journal Organizational Decision Making and Human Decision Processes. People with more experience in a field (in this case, basketball or designer goods), were better at making intuitive judgments about that field than newbies, the study found. But the experienced were no better at making decisions than amateurs when told to reason out their choices analytically. In other words, it’s okay to go with your gut — but only if you know what you’re talking about.
5. Keeping guns out of the hands of troubled individuals saves lives
In a report that would tragically prove very timely this year, the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health found that keeping guns away from high-risk individuals prevents gun violence. These individuals include criminals, those with a history of domestic violence, the mentally ill, people under age 21 and substance abusers.
The report also found that the availability of high-capacity magazines increased deaths in mass shootings. [The 10 Most Destructive Human Behaviors]
“Mass shootings bring public attention to the exceptionally high rate of gun violence in the U.S., but policy discussions rarely focus on preventing the daily gun violence that results in an average of 30 lives lost every day,” said study author Daniel Webster, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research. “Addressing weaknesses in existing gun laws by expanding prohibitions for criminals, perpetrators of domestic violence, youth, and drug abusers, and closing the loopholes that allow prohibited persons to obtain guns can be effective strategies to reduce gun violence. It is important to note that making these changes to our gun laws would not disarm law-abiding adults.”
6. Exercise is good for you
If you haven’t heard by now that getting moving is good for you, you might want to get with the times. Perhaps also not new news to those who enjoy a good endorphin buzz: Exercise improves mental health as well as physical.
A study published in the journal Clinical Psychological Science in September found that both the improved body image that came with exercise and the social interaction inherent in organized sports made teens less likely to suffer from mental problems such as depression, anxiety or substance abuse. The study controlled for factors such as socioeconomic background, age and gender.
7. Calling an ambulance improves heart attack survival
Think you’re having a heart attack? Dial 911. Believe it or not, paramedics really do save lives.
Research presented at the Acute Care Cardiac Congress in October found that only 29 percent of Turkish patients having heart attacks went to the hospital by ambulance, despite the fact that this service is free in Turkey. Taking a cab or driving one’s own car was slower than an ambulance ride and delayed crucial treatment, the study found.
8. Guys are more into their girl friends than vice versa
Apparently some stereotypes about guys and sex are true. It turns out that college-age guys report more sexual interest in their platonic female friends than vice versa, though these crushes are usually described as more of a burden than a boon. [Busted! 6 Gender Myths in the Bedroom & Beyond]
In post-college-age adults, about half of the participants in the study, which was released in May, spontaneously mentioned attraction as a burden to their cross-sex friendships. Nevertheless, study researchers said, male-female friendships can be successful.
9. Smoking a lot of pot can make your mind fuzzy
Yes, science has done it again: Heavy marijuana use can mess with a teen’s brain. The study, detailed in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that of the 1,000 New Zealanders followed, those who started using pot as teenagers and used it for years afterward lost some of their smarts; more specifically, they had an average decline in IQ of 8 points, between age 13 and age 38.
“The simple message is that substance use is not healthy for kids,” study researcher Avshalom Caspi, a psychologist at Duke University and the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London, said in a statement. “That’s true for tobacco, alcohol, and apparently for cannabis.”
10. Driving when drunk is unsafe
Drinking and driving really is dangerous. A study out this year showed that as a person’s blood-alcohol level increased so did their risk of being killed or involved in a fatal crash, regardless of their age. For instance, compared with sober drivers of the same age, individuals who were ages 16 to 20 with a blood alcohol between 0.02 and 0.05 were nearly three times as likely to be involved in a fatal crash. The study, detailed in May in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, also found that more underage females who have been drinking alcohol are at risk for being in a fatal car crash compared with 2007. The researchers aren’t sure what’s behind the increase, but speculate girls are taking more risks nowadays.
11. High heels are bad for your feet
Cramming your feet into tight-fitting shoes with inches-long heels on the bottom can hurt your feet. The new finding out this year? High heel-wearing is linked to ingrown toenails. So who would’ve guessed that wearing tight-fitting shoes with a steep slope down is one of the most common causes a foot problem in which the toes get compressed so much that the big toenail grows into the skin? But seriously, while often an ingrown nail is just an annoyance, it can get infected and even require surgical removal of the entire nail.
To avoid the pesky podiatry problem, Rodney Stuck, a professor of podiatry at the Loyola University Health System, recommended buying less-tight-fitting heels (yes), and ditching the fashion statements on days when you plan to do a lot of walking and standing.
12. Screaming at your child is harmful to your child
Psychological child abuse, such as belittling, terrorizing, exploiting and neglecting emotionally, can damage a kid’s health.
“We are talking about extremes and the likelihood of harm, or risk of harm, resulting from the kinds of behavior that make a child feel worthless, unloved or unwanted,” Dr. Harriet MacMillan of McMaster University said in a statement. MacMillan added that examples would include a mother leaving her infant alone in a crib all day or a father pulling his teen into his own drug habit. Such abuse can be as harmful to children as physical harm, the researchers reported in August in the journal Pediatrics.
26 Wednesday Dec 2012
Posted in Science, Technology
My daily consumption is a meticulous balancing act of factual data, creative randomness and technology… I like to think that each compliments the other making for an enhanced, more comprehensive daily info binge. According to producer, designer and Scientific American blogger Rose Eveleth though, the exact opposite is true.
In a recent podcast Eveleth looked at volunteers who spent at least four days hiking with no communications or computing technology and how they scored on creativity tests upon their return. The following is a transcript from that podcast: the MP3 can be downloaded here.
Natural Setting and Tech Break Boost Creativity
Robert Frost famously wrote: “The woods are lovely, dark and deep.”
But such natural settings may offer more than just beauty. They might also foster creativity. A recent study suggests that a backpacking trip can substantially increase just how inventive your brain can be. The finding is in the journal PLoS ONE. [Ruth Ann Atchley, David L. Strayer and Paul Atchley, Creativity in the Wild: Improving Creative Reasoning through Immersion in Natural Settings]
Researchers sent 56 subjects out on four-to-six day wilderness hiking trips without access to electronic devices—no cell phones, no iPads, no game boys, nothing.
Upon their return, the hikers took tests designed to measure creativity. A control group that hadn’t been in the woods scored a 4.14 out of 10 on the test. But the woods wanderers scored a 6.08.
Previous studies have shown that down time in general makes people more creative. The researchers thus say that this creativity boost is probably due to not just nature, but to taking a break from the stresses of work and technology.
So the next time you get stuck on a tough problem, or can’t seem to concentrate—try a walk in the woods. It could help your creative promise.
23 Sunday Dec 2012
Posted in Education, History, Learning Tools, physics, Science, Space, Technology
NASA sure is flush with Christmas spirit this year. First we get the awkwardly awesome nerd spoof of Gangnan Style, and now we get a couple of free, super sexy e-books!
Both are iOS offerings, so you’ll need to use your favourite Apple device. The Retina display is put to good use in these gems. Check ’em out!
Hubble Space Telescope Discoveries
… takes the reader on a tour of Hubble’s most significant science successes, combined with some of the telescope’s technology and history. For more than two decades, Hubble has had a front-row seat for cosmic events: comets bombarding Jupiter, the explosive death of stars, the birth of new solar systems and more. It helped reveal the age of the universe and stunned scientists with the discovery of the still-mysterious dark energy. The book details Hubble’s work in cosmology, planetary science and galactic science. Interactive elements include a gallery of images taken by Hubble’s different instruments, an interactive showing how astronomers measure distance in space, and a short movie on the discovery of planet Fomalhaut b.
James Webb Space Telescope: Science Guide</strong
…readers will learn how the Webb telescope will reveal in much more detail mysteries of the universe that the Hubble is not able to see. With a mirror almost seven times the area of the Hubble Space Telescope's, and an orbit far beyond Earth's moon, Hubble's successor will utilize infrared light to see the first galaxies being born in the very distant universe, penetrate clouds of dust to reveal newly forming stars and solar systems, and analyze planets around other stars for traces of potentially life-giving water. The Webb book explains the innovative technology and design making the Webb a reality. Among the interactive elements are images that transform as they're seen in different wavelengths of light, a simulation of the formation of the "cosmic web" in the early universe, a 3-D fly-by interactive, and an animation of the Webb telescope unfolding in space as it nears its orbit.
Applying the power of the programmable web to the purposes of skepticism.
Video game blog about news, reviews, and rumors.
What will ET look like when we meet him/her/it?
Life. Journey. Musings. Thoughts. All Fabulous.
Blog with Journalistic and Historical articles
