background preloader

School stuff

Facebook Twitter

Why Are Human Powered Helicopters So Big? - Wired Science. Recently, a Canadian team won the $250,000 Sikorsky Human Powered Helicopter Prize – details here. The prize is for the first human powered helicopter that can hover for 1 minute and reach an altitude of 10 feet while staying in a 10 foot by 10 foot area. If you look at their flying machine or if you take a look at the University of Maryland’s Gamera II, you might notice that both have HUGE rotors.

The Atlas helicopter in the video has a rotor radius of 10.2 meters. Why do they make these things so big? How Does It Hover? Ok, I am going to skip over many of the bigger details. But in short, how do you get a helicopter to hover? In order to throw the ball, you have to push on it for some time. If that force changes the momentum of the ball, it will also change your momentum by the same amount. If you threw the medicine ball straight down, it would push straight up on you. Of course there is a way to solve this problem. But Why Is Bigger Better? Both hover, but which is better? Great. Breakthrough study reveals biological basis for sensory processing disorders in kids. Sensory processing disorders (SPD) are more prevalent in children than autism and as common as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, yet it receives far less attention partly because it's never been recognized as a distinct disease.

In a groundbreaking new study from UC San Francisco, researchers have found that children affected with SPD have quantifiable differences in brain structure, for the first time showing a biological basis for the disease that sets it apart from other neurodevelopmental disorders. One of the reasons SPD has been overlooked until now is that it often occurs in children who also have ADHD or autism, and the disorders have not been listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual used by psychiatrists and psychologists.

"Until now, SPD hasn't had a known biological underpinning," said senior author Pratik Mukherjee, MD, PhD, a professor of radiology and biomedical imaging and bioengineering at UCSF. 'Out of Sync' Kids Imaging the Brain's White Matter. What is graphene? Here’s what you need to know about a material that could be the next silicon. Graphene, an emerging material that could change the way electronic components are made and help computing performance continue to grow, is everywhere in the research world these days. This month alone, advancements suggested it could boost internet speeds, serve as a touch sensitive coating and extend the lives of computers.

It is stronger than diamond and conducts electricity and heat better than any material ever discovered, and it will likely play an important role in many products and processes in the future. What is graphene? Graphene is made of a single layer of carbon atoms that are bonded together in a repeating pattern of hexagons. Graphene is one million times thinner than paper; so thin that it is actually considered two dimensional. Carbon is an incredibly versatile element. Depending on how atoms are arranged, it can produce hard diamonds or soft graphite. These single layers of carbon atoms provide the foundation for other important materials.

How was it discovered? 25 Awesome Thoughts: Read It. @kkoolook — Be brave. Even if you’re not, pretend to be. No... #random but #inspirational by @koqoo #kkoolook series by @koqoo. We Choose the Moon: Lunar Excursion Module Separates. Excerpt from Ian Doescher’s blank-verse William Shakespeare’s Star Wars.

Illustration by Nicholas Delort. Courtesy of Quirk Books An excerpt from William Shakespeare's Star Wars®: Verily, A New Hope by Ian Doescher, published this month by Quirk Books. ACT V, Scene 5, lines 279-329. Space. BIGGS Make haste, O Luke. Methinks they do approach E’en faster than before. LUKE —Now, R2, straight increase The pow’r. BIGGS —Make haste, Luke. [Darth Vader shoots. LUKE That ever I should see this day, O woe! VADER The leader now is mine. C-3PO —Take care Sweet R2-D2! CHORUS Luke’s ship comes closer to the little port While Vader and his crew draw all too near. Enter Ghost of Obi-Wan Kenobi. GHOST O use the Force, dear Luke. VADER I sense the Force in this one here, almost As if I did my younger self espy. GHOST I prithee, trust me, Luke. LUKE The hearing of these words is like a balm Unto my soul.

[Luke turns off computer. COMPUTER What is this, Luke? LUKE Nay, all is well. [Darth Vader shoots. LUKE —Small R2-D2 hath been lost! VADER Now face thy death, thou rebel. Scientific Curiosity Captured in Photos. Caleb Charland is a Maine-based photographer who combines a love of scientific experiments and photographs into wonderful and amazing photographs. If Isaac Newton or Benjamin Franklin were into photography, their photographs might look something like these: “Wooden Box with Horseshoe Magnet” “Atomic Model” “Demonstration with Hair Dryer and Aluminum Foil” “Candle in a Vortex of Water” “Fifteen Hours” Regarding his work, Charland tells us, Wonder is a state of mind somewhere between knowledge and uncertainty.

To check out more of his work, you can visit his website. Image credits: Photographs by Caleb Charland and used with permission. One year in 40 seconds. Graphic Organizers. Thsrs - The Shorter Thesaurus. Exercise reorganizes the brain to be more resilient to stress.

Physical activity reorganizes the brain so that its response to stress is reduced and anxiety is less likely to interfere with normal brain function, according to a research team based at Princeton University. The researchers report in the Journal of Neuroscience that when mice allowed to exercise regularly experienced a stressor -- exposure to cold water -- their brains exhibited a spike in the activity of neurons that shut off excitement in the ventral hippocampus, a brain region shown to regulate anxiety. These findings potentially resolve a discrepancy in research related to the effect of exercise on the brain -- namely that exercise reduces anxiety while also promoting the growth of new neurons in the ventral hippocampus.

Because these young neurons are typically more excitable than their more mature counterparts, exercise should result in more anxiety, not less. The brains of active and sedentary mice behaved differently almost as soon as the stressor occurred, an analysis showed. Robugtix's 3D-printed T8 spiderbot will terrify your friends for $1,350 (video) Whether they run, jump or swim, there are plenty of robots around to be fearful of. None have quite exacerbated our arachnophobia as much as Robugtix's T8 octopod, however. The 3D-printed spiderbot not only looks the part, but employs 26 servo motors to drive its unnervingly life-like movement. Bigfoot's baked-in "Inverse Kinematics Engine" deals with all of the background computations, so you don't have to be a coding genius to work it. Instead, users send "short and simple commands" to the bot via wireless XBee or any other method you can hook up to its Rx / Tx pins.

Expected to ship at the end of September, the T8 is available now for a special pre-order price of $1,350, and you can add $85 to that if you want one of Robugtix's analog-stick controllers for real-time direction. If that sounds a bit pricey, there's another option in the much cuter $250 iitsii hexapod, which is predicted to ship late August. Comments. Who Wants to Be a Cognitive Neuroscientist Millionaire? Ogi correctly answers the $250,000 question. Courtesy of Valleycrest Productions. Boston University’s doctoral program in cognitive neuroscience prepares students for a career in brain modeling, robot design, or biomedical engineering—or for winning cash on the television quiz show Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?.

Researchers in my department, Cognitive and Neural Systems (CNS), seek to understand the brain’s mechanisms, including three cognitive systems that happen to be essential for a profitable performance on Millionaire: learning, memory, and decision-making. This summer—the start of my final year in the CNS Ph.D. program—I decided to apply my graduate skills to a decidedly practical purpose and auditioned for a turn in the show’s perilous hot seat. I went to New York, where I passed a multiple-choice audition test. Two weeks later, I received the call to appear on the syndicated version of Millionaire, hosted by the empathic and playful Meredith Vieira. “A, watches, final answer.” JOHN GREEN: Make gifts for people. John and his brother, Hank, are the Vlogbrothers. They helped pioneer video blogging when they communicated only through YouTube videos for a year. They’ve since produced a wide variety of video series and have attracted a devoted army of fans known as the Nerdfighters.

I discovered John Green when a reader sent me the link to the awesome Crash Course World History series, which Green hosts and co-writes. The series tells the entire history of civilisation in over forty, very entertaining 10-minute videos. I was totally addicted to it and I highly recommend it. There have since been a Literature series and Green is currently updating a series on American History. This quote is taken from a 2009 Vlogbrothers video. RELATED COMICS: Advice for Beginners by Ira Glass. . – Green’s official website. – DFTBA! California judge allows yoga in public schools, rejects church-state fight. SAN DIEGO – A judge ruled Monday that a public school district can teach yoga, siding with administrators who argued the practice is a secular way to promote strength, flexibility and balance and rejecting pleas of parents who said the classes are inherently religious and violate the constitutional principle of separating church and state. Yoga is a religious practice, but not the way that it is taught by the Encinitas Union School District at its nine campuses, San Diego Superior Court Judge John S.

Meyer said. Meyer emphasized that the school district stripped classes of all cultural references, including the Sanskrit language. The lotus position was renamed the "crisscross applesauce" pose. The judge said parents who objected relied on personal opinions, some culled from Internet searches. "It's almost like a trial by Wikipedia, which isn't what this court does," said Meyer, who took nearly two hours to explain a decision that explored yoga's Indian roots and philosophy. Portland's New Streetlights Are Psychedelic, Carnivorous Plants.

Marines Walk 'Big Dog' Robot | Video. Falling Chain of Beads. Class Of 2011: If Social Media Were a High School. This post was written by Jenny Urbano, our Social Media Manager. Here at Demandforce, we love seeing and celebrating your ideas! And more than that, we love to hear from YOU. We want to bridge the gap between us and you, so that’s why we’re offering a once in a lifetime opportunity to win a trip to San Francisco, sightsee in this amazing city, visit Demandforce headquarters and share your ideas with us!

6 winners, and a guest of their choice will be flown out to San Francisco, California on March 12-14th, 2014, where they will stay in Union Square, spend a day at Demandforce, have dinner with the team, and explore the lovely City by the Bay! For contest rules, and how to enter, please visit our post in the Generation Demandforce Community here. Good luck! 17 things no one probably have told you yet (comics by alex noriega) 10 Psychology Tricks You Can Use To Influence People. Before we get started, it’s important to note that none of these methods fall under what we would term the dark arts of influencing people. Anything that might be harmful to someone in any way, especially to their self esteem, is not included here.

These are ways to win friends and influence people using psychology without being a jerk or making someone feel bad. Trick: Get someone to do a favor for you—also known as the Benjamin Franklin effect. Legend has it that Benjamin Franklin once wanted to win over a man who didn’t like him. He asked the man to lend him a rare book and when the book was received he thanked him graciously. As a result, this the man who had never wanted to speak to him before, became good friends with Franklin.

Scientists decided to test this theory and found that those who were asked by the researcher for a personal favor rated the researcher much more favorably than the other groups did. Trick: Ask for way more than you want at first then scale it back later. Amazing Pictures From the National Geographic Traveler Photo ContestDaily News Dig. Tweet National Geographic Traveler Photo contest is a yearly event were people send in photos of wildlife.

So lets look at some of this year’s top contenders. The first prize winner will go on an expedition to the Galápagos with the National Geographics team, while runner-ups will receive the publicity and honor of having his or her photo published in the National Geographic Traveler magazine or website. SEE ALSO – Amazing Pictures Of Nature You Wont Believe Are Real Fénec the Soul of the Desert “The fennec, or desert fox is a canine mammal species of the genus Vulpes, which inhabits the Sahara Desert and Arabia. The Power of the Criollo “The power of the Criollo horses at the Cabanha Ipuã located in Paranà, Brazil. Portrait of an Eastern Screech Owl “Masters of disguise. Hungry Hummingbird “A very hungry humming bird drinking from the mouth of a person in Wyoming during an extreme drought in 2012.” ( Photo by Sundell Larsen) Dueling Tigers Bird Love Curiosity of a Chimpanzee in Men Naughty Monkey.

Twenty-five Things to Know on Becoming a Teenager | Off-topic. A family I know has a tradition of making a book when their children hit 13. Everyone writes a memory, or a piece of advice. I set down to write a list of 25 things that are *actually* true. Is there anything wrong here? Is there anything I'm missing? 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. THE FIRST 20 HOURS - Josh Kaufman - Official Audiobook Preview by JoshKaufman. Cambodian city discovered. Heracleion : The Lost Egyptian City (comments) 64-equals-65.gif (GIF Image, 500 × 350 pixels) Isn't That King David? Nope, It's Just Dave : Krulwich Wonders... Lost Egyptian City found After 1,200 Years | Coolplaces. Maze Generator. Twitter. Matter - Online Tangram Puzzles @ gieson.com. Chinese Proverbs. Touch Effects. Brain hacking: using neurofeedback to master conflicting wills in your mind.

Sixty Symbols - Physics and Astronomy videos. Illustrations Of Unusual And Rarely Spoken Words. What Happens To Your Body Within An Hour Of Drinking A Coke | Nutrition Research Center. 10 Little Things That Would Make Time Travel Super Annoying. Health research : mood and intellectual performance. “To Take a Man’s Waistcoat Off Without Removing His Coat” 12 Historical Speeches Nobody Ever Heard. Engineering and Math | Things for Geeks. New Powerful Three Minute Exercise Improves Memory and Brain Health. 100 Very Cool Facts About The Human Body – Global One TV: Multimedia for Mystics. 10 places where anyone can learn to code. 8 shocking things we learned from Stephen Hawking's book. How Geniuses Think.

38 Maps You Never Knew You Needed. Words of Wisdom found in Math Formulas | images.duelos.net. Internetism2_Micael_Reynaud.gif (GIF Image, 401 × 301 pixels) An interesting interpretation of the printed word. AN OVERVIEW OF THE VIRTUES. 60 of the world's happiest facts. Silk — Interactive generative art. Hunkin's Experiments (over 200 home experiments) 8 New and Necessary Punctuation Marks. Animal Sleep. Origami For Everyone.

Mindfulness meditation heightens a listener’s musical engagement. Tiny Studio Flat For Students. Quick Lesson Plans. Logic Problems - Easy. Personalized medicine eliminates need for drug in 2 children. Quantum Levitation. Helps you remember what's happened in your life. How Police Interrogation Works" Think. Gun Shoots Criminals With DNA Tags, Marking Them For Later Arrest. The Scale of the Universe 2. Things My Father didn’t Teach Me, How to tie a Tie.

The 12 Most Beautiful Castles in Europe. The Fight Inside. 10 Sentences that Can Change Your Life. Hand Shadow Illusions. NMNH - Virtual Tour. Scribd. C# for Sharp Kids. Explanation of E=mc2. Beautiful Photographs of Star Trails Above Australian Outback.

Globe Genie - Joe McMichael. One man, 100,000 toothpicks, and 35 years: An incredible kinetic sculpture of San Francisco. Lego Printer Uses Felt Tip Pen for Ink! - Geek Stuff. Adrn | galaxy. Amazing Trick. Traffic Waves, physics for bored commuters. Arduino's co-creator explains electronic circuits for absolute beginners. Periodic Table of Elements [Interactive] CALLIHOO Writing Helps--Feelings Table. Synonyms for Beautiful. DefineTime1. 15 Incredible Conceptual Designs You Wish Existed. BallDroppings. Biomimetics and Dextrous Manipulation Lab | Main » PerchingHome.

Remember? Sky | Urban Side. Calvin and Hobbes - Stars and Infinity (Comic Strip)