MaKey MaKey: An Invention Kit for Everyone by Jay Silver. Amusing Quotation on Creationism and the Bible | The Intersection. The Energy Lie (Suppression of Technological Evolution) - Home. 'Space Chronicles': Why Exploring Space Still Matters. After decades of global dominance, America's space shuttle program ended last summer while countries like Russia, China and India continue to advance their programs.
But astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, author of the new book Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier, says America's space program is at a critical moment. He thinks it's time for America to invest heavily in space exploration and research. "Space exploration is a force of nature unto itself that no other force in society can rival," Tyson tells NPR's David Greene. "Not only does that get people interested in sciences and all the related fields, [but] it transforms the culture into one that values science and technology, and that's the culture that innovates," Tyson says. "And in the 21st century, innovations in science and technology are the foundations of tomorrow's economy.
" He sees this "force of nature" firsthand when he goes to student classrooms. Today, Mars is bone-dry; it once had running water. Your Next Prescription Might Be For A Microchip. Imagining the Tenth Dimension part 1 of 2. Science News, Videos, Reviews and Gossip - Gizmodo. The Black Hole. Georges Lemaître. Monseigneur Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître, (French: [ʒɔʁʒə ləmɛtʁ] ( ); 17 July 1894 – 20 June 1966) was a Belgian Roman Catholic priest, astronomer and professor of physics at the Université catholique de Louvain.[1] He was the first known academic to propose the theory of the expansion of the Universe, widely misattributed to Edwin Hubble.[2][3] He was also the first to derive what is now known as Hubble's law and made the first estimation of what is now called the Hubble constant, which he published in 1927, two years before Hubble's article.[4][5][6][7] Lemaître also proposed what became known as the Big Bang theory of the origin of the Universe, which he called his 'hypothesis of the primeval atom or the "Cosmic Egg".[8] Biography[edit] According to the Big Bang theory, the universe emerged from an extremely dense and hot state (singularity).
Space itself has been expanding ever since, carrying galaxies with it, like raisins in a rising loaf of bread. Work[edit] Neil deGrasse Tyson on life in the universe. Pentagon-backed 'time cloak' stops the clock. New Study: Smart People More Likely to Use Drugs. I have a feeling they won’t be mentioning this in DARE class. A new British study finds children with high IQs are more likely to use drugs as adults than people who score low on IQ tests as children. The data come from the 1970 British Cohort Study, which has been following thousands of people over decades. The kids' IQs were tested at the ages of 5, 10 and 16. The study also asked about drug use and looked at education and other socioeconomic factors. Then when participants turned 30, they were asked whether they had used drugs such as marijuana, cocaine and heroin in the past year.Researchers discovered men with high childhood IQs were up to two times more likely to use illegal drugs than their lower-scoring counterparts.
Girls with high IQs were up to three times more likely to use drugs as adults. Does Marijuana Make You Stupid? | Wired Science Marijuana is currently regulated by the United States government as a Schedule I drug, placing it in the same category as heroin, MDMA and LSD. This is largely due to the first condition of Schedule I drugs, which is that the substance “has a high potential for abuse.” The language in that clause is deliberately vague. Does abuse equal addiction? Probably not, since marijuana is not addictive like other Schedule I drugs. Rather, the case for marijuana “abuse” has always stemmed from its cognitive effects. That, at least, has been the collective stereotype for decades. The lower education levels of the pot smokers — and their greater likelihood of being male — had made it look like marijuana had significantly affected their intelligence. Once these population differences were corrected for, the long-term effects of marijuana use disappeared: The scientists found that “there were no significant between group differences.”
Cottage Swiss cake This answer is pretty obvious: cheese. Michio Kaku | Professor of Theoretical Physics, CUNY. How to File a Patent for Your Invention - Creating, Patenting and Filing an Invention. Media Platforms Design Team Lesson A: Fabrication Nation Inventors have traditionally turned their ideas into prototypes with plenty of sketches and endless iterations in wood, clay or metal. But the digital age has introduced a totally new toolkit. Computer-aided design (CAD) software allows rapid and highly precise blueprinting, computed numerical control (CNC) milling and routing equipment transfers that precision to the physical world, and 3D printers can create fully formed objects on demand. Plus, the cost of both hardware and software has fallen dramatically.
Free programs, such as BRL-CAD (which was developed by the military for weapons design) and Blender, can create 3D objects onscreen. Open-source invention organizations, such as NextFab Store and MakerBot, sell 3D desktop printers and kits through their websites, ranging from $750 to $4175. Lesson B: Patents Demystified Gaining a patent requires money, time and perseverance—and that's when everything goes smoothly. Ecstasy Kills Cancer. It may sound like a hoax, but it’s true: Recent studies show that a modified form of ecstasy kills 100% of blood cancer cells. While patient application is still a long way away, in test tube studies, the modified ecstasy killed all of leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma cells (as reported by the BBC). Your doctor probably won’t be telling you to take two hits of ecstasy anytime soon, but this exciting discovery gives hope to those suffering with blood cancers and calls into question once again our country’s perilous relationship with drugs and the true reasoning behind the ongoing War on Drugs.
Ecstasy, aka MDMA (3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine) is a designer club drug that the mainstream usually associates with all-night dance parties known as raves where young people dressed in neon fur suck on pacifiers and rub each other in waves of ecstatic pleasure. sources: LA Times image: tanjila. Misconceptions about evolution. What the Ultra-Personalized Internet Is Hiding from You - Technology. In the spring of 2010, while the remains of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig were spewing crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, I asked two friends to google "BP. " They're pretty similar—educated, white, left-leaning women who live in the Northeast.
But the results they saw were quite different. One of my friends saw investment information about BP. The other saw news. For one, the first page of results contained links about the oil spill; for the other, there was nothing about it except for a promotional ad from BP. Even the number of results returned by Google differed—about 180 million results for one friend, and 139 million for the other.
Most of us assume that when we google a term, we all see the same results—the ones that the company's famous PageRank algorithm suggests are the most authoritative based on other pages' links. For a time, it seemed that the Internet was going to redemocratize society. And its not just Google. All of this personalization isn't just shaping what we buy. Synthetic Life Is Born... Er, Synthesized - Technology. Response of cluster headache to psilocybin and LSD. [Neurology. 2006.
Study suggests little need for vitamins › News in Science (ABC Science) News in Science Tuesday, 11 October 2011 AFP Less is more There is no need for most people to take vitamin supplements and some may even be linked to an increased risk of premature death in older women, according to a new study. Iron stood out among supplements as a particular concern, while calcium appeared to be linked to lower death risk, according to the study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine .
With about half of the US population taking vitamin pills of some kind, the study aimed to examine whether the US$20 billion supplement industry was having any effect on extending lifespan in an already well-nourished population. The researchers confirmed their theory - that supplements were not helping people ward off death. "Based on existing evidence, we see little justification for the general and widespread use of dietary supplements," write the study authors from the University of Eastern Finland and the University of Minnesota .
Underlying conditions? PICS THAT DON'T SUCK!!! D: Ecstasy does not wreck the mind, study claims | Society | The Observer. Ecstasy tablets induce a sense of euphoria and intimacy with others, and diminished anxiety and depression Photograph: David Allan / Alamy/Alamy There is no evidence that ecstasy causes brain damage, according to one of the largest studies into the effects of the drug. Too many previous studies made over-arching conclusions from insufficient data, say the scientists responsible for the research, and the drug's dangers have been greatly exaggerated. The finding will shock campaigners who have claimed ecstasy poses a real risk of triggering brain damage. They have argued that it can induce memory loss, decrease cognitive performance and has long-lasting effects on behaviour. But experts who have argued that the drug is relatively safe welcomed the new paper.
The study was carried out by a team led by Professor John Halpern of Harvard Medical School and published in the journal Addiction last week. But the drug still posed risks, he said. 1977 UK makes MDMA a Class A drug. Are We Living in a Holographic Universe? This May Be the Greatest Revolution of the 21st Century. What if our existence is a holographic projection of another, flat version of you living on a two-dimensional "surface" at the edge of this universe? In other words, are we real, or are we quantum interactions on the edges of the universe - and is that just as real anyway? Whether we actually live in a hologram is being hotly debated, but it is now becoming clear that looking at phenomena through a holographic lens could be key to solving some of the most perplexing problems in physics, including the physics that reigned before the big bang,what gives particles mass, a theory of quantum gravity. Aspect and his team discovered that under certain circumstances subatomic particles such as electrons are able to instantaneously communicate with each other regardless of the distance separating them.
It doesn't matter whether they are 10 feet or 10 billion miles apart. Somehow each particle always seems to know what the other is doing. What does this mean for you? The 6 Best Ways to Learn Physics...for Free. August 6, 2006 I was listening to an excellent audiobook yesterday called The Wisdom of Huston Smith in which Huston relates a story about a visiting professor (can't recall the name right now) who came and lectured to the physics department at the university he was teaching at and spent the entire time presenting on philosophy rather than physics.
He was asked why he didn't talk about physics with the physics department and his answer was interesting. I don't draw any distinctions between physics and philosophy. This has gotten me thinking that I need to study physics a bit more. So to help me (and you!) 1. 2. 3. Richard Feynman lectures from the Vega Science Trust - Four video lectures from world-renowned physicist Richard P.
You can find more lectures like this (including lectures from MIT and the Lannan Foundation) and in the Physics subcategory of our free audio and video directory. 4. 5. 6. OK, that should be enough to make your brain hurt for a while. How Aging Might Have Evolved. A new evolutionary computer model demonstrates how aging might have evolved as an evolutionary adaptation. When the environment is changing rapidly, natural selection can favor a higher population turnover rate, and, under some circumstances, the benefit may outweigh the cost to the individual – who dies of old age and cuts short her reproduction.
In a paper published this week in PLoS One, André Martins[1] of University of Sao Paolo, Brazil, demonstrates this phenomenon and explains why it might be important. The idea that aging might be an evolutionary adaptation looks very attractive from the standpoint of genetics. The rate of aging is programmed into genes, at least some of which seem to be ancient and highly-conserved. Since the 1990s, geneticists have been puzzled to find genes that control aging in yeast cells that have homologs in worms, in fruit flies and lab mice. Evolutionists dismiss the idea that aging could be adaptive on theoretical grounds.
How to Re-program Your Memory to Become More Self-Reliant. "Cargo Cult Science" - by Richard Feynman. Richard Feynman From a Caltech commencement address given in 1974 Also in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! During the Middle Ages there were all kinds of crazy ideas, such as that a piece of of rhinoceros horn would increase potency. Then a method was discovered for separating the ideas--which was to try one to see if it worked, and if it didn't work, to eliminate it. This method became organized, of course, into science. And it developed very well, so that we are now in the scientific age. It is such a scientific age, in fact, that we have difficulty in understanding how witch doctors could ever have existed, when nothing that they proposed ever really worked--or very little of it did. But even today I meet lots of people who sooner or later get me into a conversation about UFO's, or astrology, or some form of mysticism, expanded consciousness, new types of awareness, ESP, and so forth.
Most people believe so many wonderful things that I decided to investigate why they did. Science and Education - Page 2. The Case for Parallel Universes. Editor's note: In the August issue of Scientific American, cosmologist George Ellis describes why he's skeptical about the concept of parallel universes. Here, multiverse proponents Alexander Vilenkin and Max Tegmark offer counterpoints, explaining why the multiverse would account for so many features of our universe—and how it might be tested.
Welcome to the Multiverse By Alexander Vilenkin The universe as we know it originated in a great explosion that we call the big bang. For nearly a century cosmologists have been studying the aftermath of this explosion: how the universe expanded and cooled down, and how galaxies were gradually pulled together by gravity. The nature of the bang itself has come into focus only relatively recently. Inflation is a period of super-fast, accelerated expansion in early cosmic history. The end of inflation is triggered by quantum, probabilistic processes and does not occur everywhere at once.
There is also another approach that one can follow. Astronomy Without A Telescope – Star Formation Laws. Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday on Twitter NGC 1569 - a relatively close (11 million light years) starburst galaxy - presumably the result of some fairly efficient star formation processes. Credit: NASA/HST. Take a cloud of molecular hydrogen add some turbulence and you get star formation – that’s the law. At a galactic or star cluster level, a low gas density will deliver a sparse population of generally small, dim stars – while a high gas density should result in a dense population of big, bright stars.
So firstly, the strong relationship between the density of molecular hydrogen (H2) and star formation efficiency is known as the Kennicutt-Schmidt Law. Nonetheless, in the modern universe, unbound gas can more readily cool down to molecular hydrogen due the presence of metals, which have been added to the interstellar medium by previous populations of stars. Further reading: Dib et al. Tagged as: Star formation and metallicity. George Smoot on the design of the universe.