Cosmic Inflation Explained Free excerpt from The PHD Movie 2! - Watch this free clip from the movie that Nature called "Astute, funny"! Watch the new movie! - The PHD Movie 2 screenings are in full swing! Check out the schedule to catch the screening nearest you. Summer Hiatus - PHD has been on Summer Hiatus while Jorge finishes the new PHD Movie. The PHD Movie 2 OFFICIAL TRAILER - is out!! Filming is done! Coming to Campuses this Fall! The Science Gap - Watch Jorge's TEDx Talk:
Scientists use brain imaging to reveal the movies in our mind BERKELEY — Imagine tapping into the mind of a coma patient, or watching one’s own dream on YouTube. With a cutting-edge blend of brain imaging and computer simulation, scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, are bringing these futuristic scenarios within reach. Using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and computational models, UC Berkeley researchers have succeeded in decoding and reconstructing people’s dynamic visual experiences – in this case, watching Hollywood movie trailers. As yet, the technology can only reconstruct movie clips people have already viewed. The approximate reconstruction (right) of a movie clip (left) is achieved through brain imaging and computer simulation “This is a major leap toward reconstructing internal imagery,” said Professor Jack Gallant, a UC Berkeley neuroscientist and coauthor of the study published online today (Sept. 22) in the journal Current Biology. “We need to know how the brain works in naturalistic conditions,” he said.
Audio Frequencies Create Amazing Visual Patterns Seen through Vibrating Sand Youtube user Brusspup who often explores the intersection between art and science just released this new video featuring Amazing Resonance Experiment of The Visual Patterns of Audio Frequencies Seen through Vibrating Sand… Via Brusspup on Youtube Huge Underwater Pyramid Discovered Near Portugal – The Navy is Investigating Portuguese news reported the discovery of a very large under water pyramid first discovered by Diocleciano Silva between the islands of São Miguel and Terceira in the Azores of Portugal. According to claims, the structure is said to be perfectly squared and oriented by the cardinal points. Current estimates obtained using GPS digital technology put the height at 60 meters with a base of 8000 square meters. The Portuguese Hydrographic Institute of the Navy currently has the job of analyzing the data to determine whether or not the structure is man-made. “The pyramid is perfectly shaped and apparently oriented by the cardinal points,” Silva told Diário Insular, the local newspaper. The pyramid was found in an area of the mid-Atlantic that has been underwater for about 20,000 years. While the Portuguese Navy still hasn’t determined the origins, many might question why this hasn’t been first reported on sooner than late 2012. Right: The actual pyramid, as scanned with high-tech device
How Trees Calm Us Down In 1984, a researcher named Roger Ulrich noticed a curious pattern among patients who were recovering from gallbladder surgery at a suburban hospital in Pennsylvania. Those who had been given rooms overlooking a small stand of deciduous trees were being discharged almost a day sooner, on average, than those in otherwise identical rooms whose windows faced a wall. The results seemed at once obvious—of course a leafy tableau is more therapeutic than a drab brick wall—and puzzling. That is the riddle that underlies a new study in the journal Scientific Reports by a team of researchers in the United States, Canada, and Australia, led by the University of Chicago psychology professor Marc Berman. Are such numbers fanciful? What is most interesting about this data, though, is one of its subtler details. In the late nineteenth century, the pioneering psychologist and philosopher William James proposed a distinction between “voluntary” and “involuntary” attention.
La fisica della buccia d'arancia, lo schizzo in super slow motion Spesso le più efficaci soluzioni tecnologiche si ottengono "copiando" la natura, anche quella presente sulle nostre tavole. Per trovare nuovi sistemi per somministrare farmaci in caso di emergenza, i ricercatori della University of Central Florida hanno analizzato con particolare attenzione un aspetto molto noto dell'arancia. Con una camera ad altissima velocità (2.500 frame per secondo) hanno ripreso lo schizzo di olio essenziale che produce la buccia quando viene schiacciata. Il filmato è un super slow motion quasi ipnotico che mostra con straordinario dettaglio il liquido che fuoriesce in sottili fiotti e si separa in gocce. La velocità che possono raggiungere questi "getti" arriva a circa 10,5 metri al secondo (quasi 38 km/h) ma con una accelerazione sorprendente: maggiore di 1000 volte quella necessaria a spedire gli astronauti nello spazio. (a cura di Matteo Marini) Video Andrew Dickerson - University of Central Florida
Study confirms that Neanderthals and humans got it on The genetic similarities between certain human populations and Neanderthals are striking. Indeed, many researchers think the Europeans and Asians inherited between 1 and 4 percent of their DNA from Neanderthals, yet scientists have struggled to demonstrate with a high degree of certainty that these genetic similarities are the result of interbreeding between these two species. Now, a pair of European scientists say that they have confirmed the human-Neanderthal reproduction hypothesis using statistical modeling — and these results, the researchers add, should go a long way to change the way we think of other human-like species. In the past, genetic similarities between Neanderthals and humans have been associated with two possible scenarios. "A model that involves interbreeding is much more likely." "We did a bunch of math to compute the likelihood of two different scenarios," says Laurent Frantz, study co-author and evolutionary biologist at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.
The real Lord of the Flies: what happened when six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months | Books For centuries western culture has been permeated by the idea that humans are selfish creatures. That cynical image of humanity has been proclaimed in films and novels, history books and scientific research. But in the last 20 years, something extraordinary has happened. Scientists from all over the world have switched to a more hopeful view of mankind. This development is still so young that researchers in different fields often don’t even know about each other. When I started writing a book about this more hopeful view, I knew there was one story I would have to address. On the very first day, the boys institute a democracy of sorts. By the time a British naval officer comes ashore, the island is a smouldering wasteland. This story never happened. I first read Lord of the Flies as a teenager. I began to wonder: had anyone ever studied what real children would do if they found themselves alone on a deserted island? The article did not provide any sources. I was bursting with questions.
DNA Analysis of Paracas Elongated Skulls Released: Unknown To Any Human, Primate, or Animal Paracas is located in the Pisco Province in the Inca Region on the Southern coast of Peru. Home of the ground breaking discovery in 1928 by Julio Tello of a massive graveyard containing tombs filled with the remains of individuals with elongated skulls, now known as the famous Paracas Skulls. They are approximately 3000 years old, and initial DNA analysis of them has revealed that they may not have come from humans, but from a completely new species, according to Paracas Museum assistant director, researcher and author Brien Foerster. “Whatever the sample labeled 3A has came from – it had mtDNA with mutations unknown in any human, primate or animal known so far. It’s always been thought that the skulls were a result of cranial deformation, where the head is bound or flattened to achieve the shape. “From the doctors that I have spoken to, they have said that you can alter the shape of the skull but you cannot increase the size of the skull. Sources: Free Happiness Training!
Orion Magazine - Speaking of Nature A CEMETERY SEEMED AN ODD PLACE to contemplate the boundaries of being. Sandwiched between the campus and the interstate, this old burial ground is our cherished slice of nearby nature where the long dead are silent companions to college students wandering the hilly paths beneath rewilding oaks. The engraved names on overgrown headstones are upholstered in moss and crows congregate in the bare branches of an old beech, which is also carved with names. Reading the messages of a graveyard you understand the deep human longing for the enduring respect that comes with personhood. Tiptoeing in her mud boots, Caroline skirts around a crumbling family plot to veer into the barberry hedge where a plastic bag is caught in the thorns. We have a special grammar for personhood. For me, this story began in another classroom, in another century, at the Carlisle Indian School where my Potawatomi grandfather was taken as a small boy. So, bit by bit, I have been trying to learn my lost language.
Saturday, May 24, 2008 In Time and the Technosphere, Jose Arguelles presents a groundbreaking study that distinguishes the natural time of the cosmos from the artificial mechanistic time under which we currently live. Arguelles defines the actual nature of time as the frequency of synchronization. Applying this Law of Time to an understanding of the entire system of life on Earth, he shows that in order to not destroy Earth's ability to sustain life, we must change our definition of time and adopt a natural harmonic calendar based on the 13-moon 28-day cycle. Until the creation of the Gregorian calendar and the 60-minute hour, most of humanity lived by the 28-day cycle of natural time. The adoption of artificial time has subjected us to a 12:60 time frequency that governs the entire global industrialized civilization-the technosphere. First Excerpt:A science or any scientist that unquestioningly follows the Gregorian calendar is, in reality, not worthy of the name. End Excerpt. Thanks to Shekinah Radha
First Americans The first face of the first Americans belongs to an unlucky teenage girl who fell to her death in a Yucatán cave some 12,000 to 13,000 years ago. Her bad luck is science’s good fortune. The story of her discovery begins in 2007, when a team of Mexican divers led by Alberto Nava made a startling find: an immense submerged cavern they named Hoyo Negro, the “black hole.” At the bottom of the abyss their lights revealed a bed of prehistoric bones, including at least one nearly complete human skeleton. Nava reported the discovery to Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History, which brought together an international team of archaeologists and other researchers to investigate the cave and its contents. Together these remnants may help explain an enduring mystery about the peopling of the Americas: If Native Americans are descendants of Asian trailblazers who migrated into the Americas toward the end of the last ice age, why don’t they look like their ancient ancestors?