Want to Know If Someone Likes You? Ever wondered if someone you're attracted to likes you or not, whether someone is your friend or foe, or whether your employees respect you? There's an easy way to find out... try to make them laugh . If the laughter comes easy, the answer is likely yes. If it doesn't, the answer is likely no. In my bachelor days, I spent many years slowly learning about the ins and outs of the mating market. In my first corporate job, I was working on a project team for a few months where I didn't really like my two supervisors all that much. Many years later in grad school (my advisor was Prof. When we meet new people, it may take a while to figure out whether a relationship (of any kind) is desirable. Humor may serve many functions, but the "interest indicator" theory says that an important one is to indicate relationship interest, whether among potential or ongoing mates, friends, and allies, or among family members.
Researchers now able to stop, restart light By William J. Cromie Gazette Staff "Two years ago we slowed it down to 38 miles an hour; now we've been able to park it then bring it back up to full speed." Less than five years ago, the speed of light was considered one of the universe's great constants. Hau, 41, a professor of physics at Harvard, admits that the famous genius would "probably be stunned" at the results of her experiments. "It's nifty to look into the chamber and see a clump of ultracold atoms floating there," Hau says. She and her team continued to tweak their system until they finally brought light to a complete stop. Inspired by Hau's success at slowing light, researchers working on a wooded hill a few miles away at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) used a similar technique to stop, then restart, a light beam. "We didn't have much contact," she notes, "just a few e-mails." Stopping cold "We hope for wonderful things," says David Phillips, who worked on the CfA "stop light" project.
Clearing the Way for Cheap, Flexible Solar Panels For years solar companies have wanted to make lightweight, flexible panels that are cheap to ship and easy to install (by unrolling them over large areas). But they’ve been held up by a lack of good and affordable glass substitutes. Now 3M thinks it’s found a solution. The protective film is a multilayer, fluoropolymer-based sheet that can replace glass as the protective front cover of solar panels, says Derek DeScioli, business development manager for 3M’s renewable energy division. The film is 3M’s answer to demand by solar-panel makers–particularly manufacturers of certain thin-film solar cells–for an alternative to glass. “Flexible solar panels have all these great-sounding benefits, but then you come to the question of how you encapsulate them. Using plastic to protect solar cells isn’t a new idea. United Solar Ovonic is the only major thin-film maker that has been shipping flexible panels for years.
5 Psychological Experiments That Prove Humanity is Doomed Cracked.com's new book is now on sale. What follows is one of 22 classic articles that appear in the book, along with 18 new articles that you can't read anywhere else. Psychologists know you have to be careful when you go poking around the human mind because you're never sure what you'll find there. Oh, we're not talking about the occasional psychopath who turns up. The Asch Conformity Experiment (1953) The Setup: Solomon Asch wanted to run a series of studies that would document the power of conformity, for the purpose of depressing everyone who would ever read the results. Subjects were told that they would be taking part in a vision test, along with a handful of people. The Result: Questions the subjects were asked were like the puzzle shown here: All they had to do was say which line on the right matched the one on the left. Yet, sadly, 32 percent of subjects would answer incorrectly if they saw that three others in the classroom gave the same wrong answer. "Wait, you're right! C.
7th Grader mimics Nature 13 year old copies Nature to Improve Solar Performance Thirteen year old Aidan Dwyer was walking in the woods in Upstate New York in the winter and noticed a spiral pattern to tree branches. Aidan realized the tree branches and leaves had a mathematical spiral pattern that could be shown as a fraction. After some research he also realized the mathematical fractions were the same numbers as the Fibonacci sequence. "On the oak tree, the Fibonacci fraction is 2/5, which means that the spiral takes five branches to spiral two times around the trunk to complete one pattern. Other trees with the Fibonacci leaf arrangement are the elm tree (1/2); the beech (1/3); the willow (3/8) and the almond tree (5/13) Aidan's backyard in Northport, NY. The 7th grader next wondered why nature used such a pattern? Aidan discovered that the Fibonacci pattern helps deciduous trees, in higher latitudes, efficiently track the Sun and collect the most sunlight even in the thickest forest, on the cloudiest days.
11 cheap gifts guaranteed to impress science geeks Science comes up with a lot of awesome stuff, and you don't need a Ph.D, a secret lab, or government funding to get your hands on some of the coolest discoveries. We've got a list of 11 mostly affordable gifts that are guaranteed to blow your mind, whether or not you're a science geek. Click on any image to see it enlarged. 1. Aerogel Also known as frozen smoke, Aerogel is the world's lowest density solid, clocking in at 96% air. Aerogel isn't just neat, it's useful. Price: $35 2. Inside these sealed glass balls live shrimp, algae, and bacteria, all swimming around in filtered seawater. EcoSpheres came out of research looking at ways to develop self-contained ecosystems for long duration space travel. Price: $80 3. NASA has been trying to figure out how to get a sample of rock back from Mars for a while now. Every once in a while, a meteorite smashes into Mars hard enough to eject some rocks out into orbit around the sun. Price: $70+ 4. Price: $150 5. Price: $110 6. Price: $80 7. Price: $15 8.