Parasitic Beetle Mimics Ants By “Speaking” Three Different “Languages” Ant colonies act like fortresses, protecting the bounty within from marauding invaders. Some animals have evolved blunt tools such as large claws to tear into the nests, but others have evolved far more subtle ways that allow them to wander into the colony uncontested. Called “myrmecophily” – literally “ant-love” – many species of insects and plants have evolved associations to live alongside ants, most of which are sympatric (where both species benefit), but some of which are parasitic (where only one benefits at the expense of the other). One such parasitic association is with what are called ant nest beetles (Paussus). Ants communicate with each other through various complex mechanisms, mainly through smell, but also through sound. This is not the first time that insects have been found to mimic the sounds of ants to gain acceptance. The ant nest beetle Paussus is seen on the right, surrounded by its host ants. Main image: Tim Keppens/Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
Hypercomplex Fractals Here is a 4th order inverse Juliabulb set with 600 million spheres. The triplex raised to the 4th power has 16 unique valid roots. Garth Thornton was the first person to point out that, in general, the triplex raised to the nth power has n2 unique valid roots. I posted a formula for all integer powers here.
Answering Cancer Quackery: The Sophisticated Approach to True Believers Answering Cancer Quackery: The Sophisticated Approach to True Believers You can lead a true believer to facts, but can you make him think? I got an e-mail with a link to a video featuring “Dr.” Leonard Coldwell, a naturopath who has been characterized on RationalWiki as a scammer and all-round mountebank. Here are just a few examples of his claims in that video: Every cancer can be cured in 2-16 weeks.The second you are alkaline, the cancer already stops. My correspondent recognized that this video was dangerous charlatanism that could lead to harm for vulnerable patients. He asked, “How do I best represent what’s happening to someone who is either a) emotionally invested in this and/or b) casually approving of it? Here’s how I answered him You can’t change someone else’s mind; they have to change their own mind. If alkalinization works so well to eliminate cancer, why do you suppose he bothers to recommend a lot of other ways to cure cancer, with vitamin C, oxygen, a vegan diet, etc?
Watch These Famous Landmarks Change Over Time Using "Mined" Tourists' Photos Been on holiday lately? Researchers from Google and the University of Washington have created this fascinating video below of famous landmarks changing and disappearing over time, using a whopping 86 million photos uploaded by tourists and travelers onto image-sharing sites. The tourists’ photos were publicly available on Flickr and Picasa, so researchers collated images and assembled them into a mini time-lapse video of each landmark. To counteract filters and lighting effects, the images were color-balanced and warped to show scenes from the same angle. The video of several time-lapses shows how famous landscapes, buildings and cityscapes change around the world over several years. The flora alongside the legendary hairpin bends of Lombard Street in San Francisco, California repeatedly burst into bloom and cede over four years. Gif composed from video uploaded by YouTube user Ricardo Martin Brualla The snow-capped tops of Mount St. [H/T Telegraph]
The Rise and Fall of Placebo Medicine I am just getting back from The Amazing Meeting (TAM9 from Outer Space) – it was awesome but I had no time to blog while there. One of the events I participated in at TAM was a panel discussion on placebo medicine. We decided to focus on placebos for our science-based medicine panel because it increasingly looks like this will be the front lines for the next phase of the battle against pseudoscience in medicine. I began the panel discussion by declaring victory, of a sorts. Well – a couple a decades and a few billions of dollars worth of research later, and the CAM community has essentially nothing to show for it. A review of the research funded by the NCCAM, to the tune of over 2 billion dollars, found that all that research has not added one proven modality to the tools of health care. I agree that negative studies of existing treatments are valuable. What we are seeing now is a transition to the next strategy. Conclusion The next rhetorical battleground seems to be placebo medicine.
Pantheon - Team Pantheon is a project from the Macro Connections group at The MIT Media Lab. We are a team of designers, engineers, and scientists working collaboratively to quantify, analyze, measure and visualize global culture. César A. Hidalgo Principal Investigator Concept Data Design Summer 2012 - present Amy Zhao Yu Graduate Student Data Development Content Fall 2012 - present Kevin Zeng Hu Graduate Student Development Design Data Summer 2013 - present Ali Almossawi Mozilla Corporation Shahar Ronen Graduate Alumnus Data Summer 2012 - Summer 2013 Deepak Jagdish Graduate Student Design Video 2013 - present Andrew Mao Graduate Student at Harvard Defne Gurel Undergraduate Tiffany Lu Undergraduate Books worth reading, recommended by Bill Gates, Susan Cain and more Creativity Creative Confidence, by Tom Kelley and David Kelley Crown Business, 2013 Recommended by: Tim Brown (TED Talk: Designers — think big!) “‘Creative confidence’ is the creative mindset that goes along with design thinking’s creative skill set.”See more of Tim Brown’s favorite books. Creating Minds, by Howard Gardner Basic Books, 2011 Recommended by: Roselinde Torres (TED Talk: What it takes to be a great leader) “Gardner’s book was first published more than twenty years ago, but its insights into the creative process — told through the stories of seven remarkable individuals from different fields — remain just as relevant today. A Room of One’s Own, by Virginia Woolf Martino Fine Books, 2012 Recommended by: Liza Donnelly (TED Talk: Drawing on humor for change) “One of the most important books about women’s rights, and one that informed my thinking on creativity, is this one by Virginia Woolf.”See more of Liza Donnelly’s favorite books. Design Happiness History Language Philosophy Dr.
Astrobiology: The Living Universe - Main Page Astrobiology: The Living Universe is the web's premiere educational resource for astrobiology, featuring in-depth information and interviews on exobiology, planetary biology, the origins of life and human spaceflight. Our site doesn't end with that however - every single page within this website is also available in an enhanced PDF printable format and we have a network of forums and interactive applets as well as a number of Flash animations. Find out more about the Living Universe >> 30/1/01: We're finally back, and we're working flat-out to update every single page within this website, and not just that but also to ensure that no page is more than one month out of date. 16 of the updated articles are now online, and soon you'll be able to know that you're reading the most comprehensive and up-to-date source of information on Astrobiology on the entire Internet. Expect further news soon...
Google enregistre tout ce que vous lui dites. Voici comment écouter et effacer vos recherches Le géant américain agit avec transparence en vous donnant accès aux données qu’il possède sur vous, mais leur stockage suscite néanmoins des questions. Des millions de personnes utilisent quotidiennement les commandes vocales de leur téléphone Android. Chez Google, le développeur actuel de ce système d’exploitation mobile, on nomme cette fonction OK Google. Elle est l’équivalent Google de Siri, chez Apple. En juin dernier, lors du dévoilement du portail unique sur lequel les utilisateurs de comptes Google peuvent maintenant gérer toutes les activités qui y sont liées, on a fait bien peu de cas de la sous-section ayant trait aux saisies vocales et audio. Caverne d’Ali Baba Récemment, un journaliste du Guardiana signalé l’existence de ce sous-menu dans lequel il est possible de faire des trouvailles à la fois fascinantes et troublantes. En accédant à la page «Activité vocale et audio» de votre compte Google, vous tomberez sur toutes les recherches vocales que vous avez déjà effectuées.
Einstein Vs Quantum Mechanics ... And Why He’d Be A Convert Today Albert Einstein may be most famous for his mass-energy equivalence formula E = mc2, but his work also laid down the foundation for modern quantum mechanics. His analysis of the “spookiness” of quantum mechanics opened up a whole range of applications including quantum teleportation and quantum cryptography, but he wasn’t completely convinced by the theory of quantum mechanics – and that story is as fascinating as the theory he attempted to nail down. Quantum mechanics is downright bizarre. It implies that a particle, such as an electron, can pass through two holes at the same time. More famously, German physicist Erwin Schrödinger’s equations proved that a cat could end up in a peculiar sort of quantum state, being neither dead nor alive. None of this impressed Einstein. At the time, most quantum physicists adopted the “shut up and calculate” philosophy: get on with the job, and don’t worry about philosophical issues – just get the predictions. Gaining momentum (and position) Then Eureka!
How does the thyroid manage your metabolism? - Emma Bryce | TED-Ed For such a tiny organ that looks a lot like a butterfly, the thyroid gets a lot of attention. But it makes sense when you consider just how vital its task is: this gland helps to control the body's metabolism. If you're stuck trying to grasp why that's important and what exactly metabolism is, check out this helpful video, and read more about the thyroid's role here and here. The tools your thyroid uses to get the job done are triiodothyronine (T3) (that's a tricky word: learn how to say it!) and thyroxine (T4), the two hormones that act as messengers to all your body's cells. Since it works 24/7, it may seem like the thyroid is the boss in this situation. But when the all-powerful pituitary fails, your body really feels it, in the shape of hyperthyroidism and hypothyroidism.