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On “Media Refusal and Conspicuous Non-Consumption: The Performative and Political Dimensions of Facebook Abstention” | Talking back. I just did something that I’m sure is not on any “helpful tips” list for aspiring science bloggers. Some users have "unliked" Facebook To write this post, I just copied a title from an academic journal and hit <CTRL> V in the headline field of WordPress. I wouldn’t usually do a cut and paste, but this title brought a big smile and, after all, isn’t consummate fascination the sine qua non of search engine optimization?

The headline above also happened to top an article by Laura Portwood-Stacer, a visiting professor at NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development, an article published online in the journal New Media and Society. The study kept me amused throughout because of my familiarity with the “WooHoo!!!” “Awesome!!!” According to Portwood-Stacer, those who commit “Facebook suicide” or frequent the @NotOnFacebook Twitter account, or post to the hashtag #facebooksucks (Facebook no, Twitter si?)

Image Source: Enoc vt. On Ethics and Self-Policing in (Citizen) Science | The Urban Scientist. Science is experiencing a boost in enthusiasm and participation from the Citizen Science Movement. For those familiar it conjures up images of kids, adults and seniors counting birds or counting stars at night. Having thousands of eyes and ears all over the globe helping a team of scientists collect or sort through piles of data is so amazing. And impactful and evolving. Not only can you help collect data but you can be apart of the research, too.

Projects like Your Wild Life allow you sample species in your navel, under your arm and on your kitchen counter. However, decentralizing the scientific process doesn’t mean that the rules of ethics don’t apply. Meet uBiome! World’s FIRST citizen science project to sequence the human microbiome. Now enter the IRB Ethical Debate. uBiome from uBiome on Vimeo. It sounds awesome, right? Well, it’s a little thing, but it matters SO much: You must have ALL of your bases covered, even the ones nobody will likely reach. In Chapter 12. Your Wild Life. Bees under the Microscope | Guest Blog. Honey Bee Mid and Hind Gut Much has been written about the continuing disappearance of the honey bee, the corresponding demise of commercial beekeeping and the various culprits that account for the decline or colony collapse disorder (CCD) as it is known in the trade. Ask a dozen beekeepers what is causing CCD and you will receive as many responses: Pesticides, fungi, excessive antibiotics, poor husbandry, loss of habitat, cell phones or the inevitable repetition of History.

Hang on! History? Noah Wilson-Rich Ph.D, the founder of Best Bees, has found that honey bees have endured ‘great die offs’ on a regular basis. Gut sample of Beebread Meanwhile, the backyard beekeeper – the humble amateur – has quietly been on the rise. Bee Hairs, Nosema Ceranae Spores (white ovals) and Pollen (larger) This confluence of urban beekeepers and the search for explanations into CCD has led to another trend. Nosema Ceranae Spores Many beekeepers, however, still rely on experience and perception alone. Why Humans Like to Cry. Mind & Brain :: Mind Matters :: January 29, 2013 :: :: Email :: Print The anguished tear, a British scientist argues in a new book, is what makes us uniquely human By Gareth Cook Michael Trimble Image: Courtesy of Michael Trimble Michael Trimble , a British professor at the Institute of Neurology in London, begins his new book with Gana the gorilla.

Cook: How did you first become interested in crying? Cook: What is known about crying in the animal world? Cook: How is crying different in humans? Cook: What do you find most interesting about the neuroscience of crying? Health - Do we all see the same colours? Are the colours you see the same as the ones I see? Future's resident psychologist has a moment of doubt and wonders if science can help ease his worries. Imagine the two of us, arm in arm, looking at a sunset, where the horizon is fretted with golden fire and the deep blue night encroaches from the opposite side of the sky. "What beautiful colours", I say, and you agree. And then, in the space of the following silence, I am struck by a worry. I can point at the sky and say it is blue, and you will concur. But are you really seeing that blue the way I am seeing it?

Perhaps you have just learnt to call what you see "blue", but in actual experience you are seeing nothing like the vivid, rich, blue I see. Now I admit that this worry lies in the realm of philosophy, not neuroscience. How green is my valley? Our colour vision starts with the sensors in the back of the eye that turn light information into electrical signals in the brain – neuroscientists call them photoreceptors. How walking through a doorway increases forgetting. Like information in a book, unfolding events are stored in human memory in successive chapters or episodes.

One consequence is that information in the current episode is easier to recall than information in a previous episode. An obvious question then is how the mind divides experience up into these discrete episodes? A new study led by Gabriel Radvansky shows that the simple act of walking through a doorway creates a new memory episode, thereby making it more difficult to recall information pertaining to an experience in the room that's just been left behind. Dozens of participants used computer keys to navigate through a virtual reality environment presented on a TV screen.

The virtual world contained 55 rooms, some large, some small. The key finding is that memory performance was poorer after travelling through an open doorway, compared with covering the same distance within the same room. But what if this result was only found because of the simplistic virtual reality environment? What does this smell like? Wine snobbery made easy | Oscillator. We can see millions of variations in color but we split up the rainbow into just six main colors when trying to describe what we see–red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple.

For the thousands of odors that we can smell we have barely any words at all, usually resorting to simile–smells like fresh cut grass, lemon, wet dog, stinky cheese. Chemists, sensory psychologists, and snobs of all types have been trying to define and categorize smells for decades, settling on seven main categories: musky, putrid, pungent, campohoraceous, ethereal, floral, pepperminty. These categories do a good job for most things, but every kind of smelly thing can have its own connoisseurs and its own categories, none more so than wine. While most people (over the age of 21) can tell the difference between red and white wine, the words that sommeliers and wine critics use to describe wine can seem wacky at best. Vacuum Tube: Kids under 2 Should Not Watch Television. Every parent needs a break from time to time—a few minutes to prepare dinner, do the laundry or quickly check e-mail. That's when the television suddenly becomes the best invention ever—an instant free babysitter that enthralls even the youngest infants and might, fingers crossed, even teach them a thing or two.

But a new policy statement published today by the American Academy of Pediatrics suggests that not only do children under age two probably learn nothing from the television, but that watching too much can actually delay language development and cause attentional problems. To be fair, it is impossible to keep kids from the TV entirely. "Screens are everywhere," remarks lead author Ari Brown, a pediatrician based in Austin, Texas. And studies have shown that some educational television programs, such as Dora the Explorer and Blue’s Clues , can improve vocabulary in older kids. Study: Associating your car with your identity leads to aggressive driving | Fox School of Business Temple University | Philadelphia, PA. Media Contact: Jodi Briden, 215-204-7993, jodiw@temple.edu For more content from the Fox School follow us on LinkedIn A new study by a Temple University Fox School of Business professor finds those who view their car as an extension of themselves have stronger aggressive driving tendencies.

The study, “Aggressive Driving: A Consumption Experience,” is thought to be the first to comprehensively examine how personality, attitude and values contribute to aggressive driving behaviors. Driving is one of the most common consumptive behaviors, and aggressive driving causes a third of all accidents that involve personal injuries and two thirds of all fatal accidents in the United States. “It explains much of the phenomenon we knew existed,” said Ayalla Ruvio, lead author and an assistant professor of marketing.

For instance, “we know men tend to be more aggressive drivers and we know men tend to see their cars as an extension of themselves more than women.” The studies found: Binary - it's digitalicious! 10 Futuristic Materials. Lifeboat Foundation Safeguarding Humanity Skip to content Switch to White Special Report 10 Futuristic Materials by Lifeboat Foundation Scientific Advisory Board member Michael Anissimov. 1. Aerogel protecting crayons from a blowtorch. This tiny block of transparent aerogel is supporting a brick weighing 2.5 kg. Aerogel holds 15 entries in the Guinness Book of Records, more than any other material.

Carbon nanotubes are long chains of carbon held together by the strongest bond in all chemistry, the sacred sp2 bond, even stronger than the sp3 bonds that hold together diamond. “Metamaterial” refers to any material that gains its properties from structure rather than composition. We’re starting to lay down thick layers of diamond in CVD machines, hinting towards a future of bulk diamond machinery. Diamonds may be strong, but aggregated diamond nanorods (what I call amorphous fullerene) are stronger. Transparent alumina is three times stronger than steel and transparent. InShare28 Materials. The rise of the 150-year-olds? S. Jay Olshansky, contributor Imagine a future in which people live happy and healthy to 150 (Image: Justin Pumery/Taxi/Getty) "THE trouble with the world is not that people know too little, but that they know so many things that ain't so. " So said Mark Twain, and his words were echoing in my head as I read 100 Plus.

The science of ageing has reached a critical phase. In the developed world we live 30 years longer, on average, than our ancestors born a century ago, but the price we pay for those added years is the rise of chronic diseases. We are engaged in battles with pernicious killers such as heart disease and cancer, and in recent decades we have gained ground in the tug-of-war against these and other diseases. This brilliant and frustrating book by Sonia Arrison is about the "next longevity revolution" - one she envisions in which everyone will live healthy and happy until 150. There is a longevity revolution on the horizon, but it is highly unlikely to be as Arrison envisions. S. Would You Eat Synthetic Meat? - StumbleUpon. How Quantum Suicide Works".

­­A man sits down before a gun, which is pointed at his head. This is no ordinary gun; i­t's rigged to a machine that measures the spin of a quantum particle. Each time the trigger is pulled, the spin of the quantum particle -- or quark -- is measured. Depending on the measurement, the gun will either fire, or it won't. If the quantum particle is measured as spinning in a clockwise motion, the gun will fire.

If the quark is spinning counterclockwise, the gun won't go off. Nervously, the man takes a breath and pulls the trigger. Go back in time to the beginning of the experiment. But, wait. This thought experiment is called quantum suicide. Because Every Country Is The Best At Something. Ancient air-conditioning cools building sustainably. Built in the arid suburbs of Jaipur, Rajasthan, The Pearl Academy of Fashion combines modern exterior styling with ancient Rajasthani architecture -- designed to keep temperatures down without artificial cooling systems.

The entire building is raised above the ground and a pool of water -- integrated into a recreation and exhibition space -- keeps temperatures low through evaporative cooling. As architect Manit Rastogi says, "When water evaporates in heat, it immediately brings down the temperature of the space around it. " This method was employed over 1,500 years ago by local Rajasthanis, who built "baoli" or stepwells -- bodies of water surrounded by a descending set of steps, helping to create a microclimate in the surrounding structure. The building is protected from the environment by a double skin which is derived from a traditional building element called the "jaali" which is prevalent in Rajasthani architecture.

Green lessons from ancient architecture. Why Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek who ever lived. Additional notes from the author: If you want to learn more about Tesla, I highly recommend reading Tesla: Man Out of Time Also, this Badass of the week by Ben Thompson is what originally inspired me to write a comic about Tesla.

Ben's also got a book out which is packed full of awesome. There's an old movie from the 80s on Netflix Instant Queue right now about Tesla: The Secret of Nikola Tesla. It's corny and full of bad acting, but it paints a fairly accurate depiction of his life. The drunk history of Tesla is quite awesome, too.

Emergency and Disaster Information Service. The Science Behind &Having a Bad Day& (and How to Solve It)

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Creative Thinking Is a Specific Process That Can Be Replicated. Bill Nye on creationism: &Your world view just becomes crazy& How Quantum Suicide Works&