- LiveScience.com When Ants Go Marching, They Count Their Steps
They glued stilt-like extensions to the legs of some ants to lengthen stride. The researchers shortened other ants' stride length by cutting off the critters' feet and lower legs, reducing their legs to stumps. By manipulating the ants' stride lengths, the researchers could determine whether the insects were using an odometer-like mechanism to measure the distance, or counting off steps with an internal pedometer. The ants on stilts took the right number of steps, but because of their increased stride length, marched past their goal. Stump-legged ants, meanwhile, fell short of the goal.
By putting some ants on stilts and lopping the legs off others, researchers conclude an internal pedometer is at work.
ant ants cataglyphis fortis insect leg legs march odometer pedometer stilts
in Public bookmarks - MetaFilter - Flash meditations
Agents - one of many Flash experiments and projects by Sébastien Chevrel.
in Public bookmarks - MIT News Office: Goodbye wires…
MIT team experimentally demonstrates wireless power transfer, potentially useful for powering laptops, cell phones without cords Imagine a future in which wireless power transfer is feasible: cell phones, household robots, mp3 players, laptop computers and other portable electronics capable of charging themselves without ever being plugged in, freeing us from that final, ubiquitous power wire. Some of these devices might not even need their bulky batteries to operate.
MIT team experimentally demonstrates wireless power transfer, potentially useful for powering laptops, cell phones without cords
and electrical electronics engineering institute massachusetts mit nanoscience nanotechnology news office physics technology
in Public bookmarks - New Scientist Environment: Giant microwave turns plastic back to oil
A US company is taking plastics recycling to another level – turning them back into the oil they were made from, and gas. All that is needed, claims Global Resource Corporation (GRC), is a finely tuned microwave and – hey presto! – a mix of materials that were made from oil can be reduced back to oil and combustible gas (and a few leftovers).
A US company is taking plastics recycling to another level - zapping them with a variety of frequencies to break down the hydrocarbon chains
autofluff cars gas oil plastic recycling
in Public bookmarks - On the Effectiveness of Aluminium Foil Helmets: An Empirical Study. Rahimi & al, Electrical Engineering & Computer Science MIT
Abstract: Among a fringe community of paranoids, aluminum helmets serve as the protective measure of choice against invasive radio signals. We investigate the efficacy of three aluminum helmet designs on a sample group of four individuals. Using a $250,000 network analyser, we find that although on average all helmets attenuate invasive radio frequencies in either directions (either emanating from an outside source, or emanating from the cranium of the subject), certain frequencies are in fact greatly amplified. These amplified frequencies coincide with radio bands reserved for government use according to the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). Statistical evidence suggests the use of helmets may in fact enhance the government's invasive abilities. We s
in Public bookmarks - Space.com: Giant Crater Found: Tied to Worst Mass Extinction Ever
An apparent crater as big as Ohio has been found in Antarctica. Scientists think it was carved by a space rock that caused the greatest mass extinction on Earth, 250 million years ago.
An apparent crater as big as Ohio has been found in Antarctica. Scientists think it was carved by a space rock that caused the greatest mass extinction on Earth, 250 million years ago.
antartica crater dinosaurs extinction ohio
in Public bookmarks - The Essential Difference front page | Science | Guardian Unlimited
Baron-Cohen's theory is that the female brain is predominantly hard-wired for empathy, and that the male brain is predominantly hard-wired for understanding and building systems. He calls it the empathising-systemising (E-S) theory. Empathising is the drive to identify another person's emotions and thoughts, and to respond to these with an appropriate emotion. The empathiser intuitively figures out how people are feeling, and how to treat people with care and sensitivity. Systemising is the drive to analyse and explore a system, to extract underlying rules that govern the behaviour of a system; and the drive to construct systems.
in Public bookmarks - The New York Times Book Review > 'Incompleteness': Waiting for Gödel
... science seemed to be tidying the mess of the real world into an eternal order beautiful and pure -- a heavenly file cabinet labeled mathematics. Then, Einstein published his relativity theory, Werner Heisenberg his uncertainty principle and Gödel his incompleteness theorem. Many thinkers -from the logical positivists with whom Gödel drank coffee in the Viennese cafes of the 1920's to existentialists, postmodernists and annoying people at cocktail parties - have taken those three results as proof that reality is subjective and we can't see beyond our noses. You can hardly blame them. But she makes a persuasive case that Gödel and Einstein understood their work to prove the opposite: reality exists, whether or not we can ever touch it
in Public bookmarks
Note: www.bugmenot.com to bypass registration <mathematics> - Visible Earth: Home
NASA's Visible Earth catalog of NASA images and animations of our home planet
in Public bookmarks by 13 users - WELCOME TO EXIT MUNDI
A COLLECTION OF END-OF-WORLD SCENARIOS
in Public bookmarks by 4 users - What do these enigmatic women want? neuroanthropology blog
In this week’s The Times Magazine of The NY Times, Daniel Bergner has a piece on women’s sexuality and research that’s already in preprint causing a bit of controversy as well as a convulsion of 1950s era humor in the online response. The title, ‘What do women want?’, that nugget of Freudian wonder, no doubt will raise the readership, as will the pictures of models simulating states of arousal (Greg Mitchell is in a bit of snit about them in, Coming Attraction: Preview of ‘NYT Magazine’ With Semi-Shocking Sex Images on Sunday. ‘Semi-Shocking’? I can imagine how that goes… ‘Are you SHOCKED by these photos?’ ‘Well, I’m at least SEMI-shocked, yes!’). In particular,
in Public bookmarks - William (Bill) Kent Document Catalog
Data and Reality, 1stBooks (excerpts) (1998) A Simple Guide to Five Normal Forms in Relational Database Theory (1983) Employee Was A Subtype Of Person (1988) About Time (1992) The Essence of Time (1993) The Null Wars: Much Ado About Something (1990) Nulls Again (1992) My Height: A Model For Numeric Information (1992) Foundations of a Theory of Measurement (1994) William Kent, Stephanie Leichner Janowski, Bruce Hamilton, Dan Hepner, "Measurement Data (Archive Report)" , April 1996. [135 pp]. (The introduction is provocative, and you might also browse some of the other sections.) The Many Forms of a Single Fact (1989) The Leading Edge of Database Technology (1989) What is an Object? (1989) The Breakdown of the Information Model in Multi-Database Systems (1991
in Public bookmarks - Ars Technica
DNA Computing - Page 1 - (4/2000)
Ars Technica. Power users and the tools they love, without computing religion. Oh yeah, did we mention we are unassailable computing enthusiasts.
2000 ars beos computing damage hardware labs linux news openforum prosumer reviews technica win2k win95 win98 windows winnt
in Public bookmarks - BBC NEWS: Europe Wildlife defies Chernobyl radiation
"The exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power tation is teeming with life. As humans were evacuated from the area 20 years ago, animals moved in. Existing populations multiplied and species not seen for decades, such as the lynx and eagle owl, began to return. There are even tantalising footprints of a bear, an animal that has not trodden this part of Ukraine for centuries[...]"
bbc british foreign international news online service world
in Public bookmarks - Carl Zimmer: Did DNA Come From Viruses? Science, May 11, 2006
Scientists who deal in the history of life have never been quite sure what to do with viruses. One measure of their uncertainty is the Tree of Life Web Project, a collective effort to record everything known about the relationships of living and extinct species. The first page of its Web site--entitled "Life on Earth"--shows the broadest view: From a single root come three branches representing the domains of life (www.tolweb.org
in Public bookmarks
Note: more: The New York Times Book Review calls Carl Zimmer "as fine a science essayist as we have - DN - Kultur - I var mans mun
Är man språkforskare känner man till bonobon (dvärgschimpansen) Kanzi. Han är en celebritet i den komparativa språkforskningens värld, och primatforskarens Sue Savage-Rumbaughs skötebarn. Vad jag vet finns ingen bonobo eller schimpans som nått i närheten av Kanzis prestationsförmåga i handhavandet av "lexigram" (symboliska tecken) och att förstå talat språk. Vid ett tillfälle när han var i en vattenbassäng blev han tillfrågad: "Kan du hämta några grapefrukter och kasta dem i bassängen?"
Är man språkforskare känner man till bonobon (dvärgschimpansen) Kanzi. Han är en celebritet i den komparativa språkforskningens värld, och primatforskarens Sue Savage-Rumbaughs skötebarn. Vad jag vet finns ingen bonobo eller schimpans som nått i n&aum
kultur nöje
in Public bookmarks - Essay Contest: Why Would You Want Your Doctor to Have Studied Evolution?
Imagine if when someone said, "I finished reading a book!" they had in actuality only read three- fourths of it. Would you ask this person for help concerning the book? Unlikely, since there is a possibility that the information you want is in the one-fourth of the book that they didn't read. This same concept can be applied to evolution and the current medical school curriculum.
in Public bookmarks - Harvard Magazine: The Physics of the Familiar (March-April 2008)
How paint dries, the way flags flutter, how Nature discovered origami, and other marvels of the physical world. “Just because something is familiar doesn’t mean you understand it. That is the common fallacy that all adults make—and no child ever does,” says Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan, England de Valpine professor of applied mathematics.
in Public bookmarks - I don't care if Monday's blue....
Monday's child is fair of face, Tuesday's child is full of grace, Wednesday's child is full of woe, Thursday's child has far to go, Friday's child is loving and giving, Saturday's child works hard for a living, But the child that works hard on the Sabbath Day, is blithe and bonny, good and gay. <calendar> <week>
in Public bookmarks - Imagining the Tenth Dimension: a new way of thinking about time and space by Rob Bryanton
Part scientific exploration, part philosophy, this unique book touches upon such diverse topics as dark matter, Feynman's "sum over paths", the quantum observer, and the soul. It is aimed at anyone interested in leading-edge theories about cosmology and the nature of reality, but it is not about mainstream physics. Rather, Imagining the Tenth Dimension is a mind-expanding exercise that could change the way you view this incredible universe in which we live.
in Public bookmarks
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