06.27.06
Posted in Education, Environment, Evolution, Humor at 9:28 am by site admin
King tut’s glass beetle came from outer space. The glass beetle is piece of yellow-green glass, carved in the shape of a scarabe beetle found in the tomb of King Tut, who died in 1323BC. Fish with asymmetric brains multitask better. They can hunt for food and avoid predators more efficiently than those with more symmetric brains. This matters because humans (and well as all vertebrates) have some degree of asymmetry in their brain, with males having a higher degree than females. This is of course why many men have a hard time combining connect logic (left) with emotions (right). If thats too much thinking for you, check out this link on the 10 strangest japanese gadgets. My favorites would be the sauce dispensing chopsticks (my guess would be that one does soy and the other does ponzu?), the shower cap (its up there on the WTF?!?), and the MP3 toilet. If your not much of an indoors person, check out how to makeFire from Ice. This is perfect for your next vacation in the Artic.
If you need something closer to home, read about how Immaturity Levels Rising. This is a good read, here is a teaser:
A “child-like flexibility of attitudes, behaviors and knowledge†is probably adaptive to the increased instability of the modern world, Charlton believes. Formal education now extends well past physical maturity, leaving students with minds that are, he said, “unfinished.â€
and heres the ugly:
The faults of youth are retained along with the virtues, he believes. These include short attention span, sensation and novelty-seeking, short cycles of arbitrary fashion and a sense of cultural shallowness.
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Posted in Unfiled at 9:13 am by site admin
Heres an article about string theory. Its titled “Has string theory tied up better ideas in physics?” (and the url filename is ‘notevenwrong’). For those of you who arent familiar with string theory, its a theory in physics that states that the universe is really 10 or 11-dimensional, and that all mattter is composed of vibrations of 1-dimensional strings (in comparision to the traditional view of sub-atomic particles being basically 0-dimensional points.).
But one thing they haven’t done is coax a single prediction from their theory. In fact, “theory” is a misnomer, since unlike general relativity theory or quantum theory, string theory is not a concise set of solvable equations describing the behavior of the physical world. It’s more of an idea or a framework.
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Posted in Education, Evolution at 9:02 am by site admin
Check out the evolution of the alphabet. This was a comment submitted by another guy, so if you want a direct link, click:here.
So the interesting thing is that complex letters were depreciated for more simplistic letters. Since there is no sound available (it might be possible to look online), I’m not sure if any of the new letters correctly replaced an older letter. (I am curious to know how the phonological evolution follows the evolution of the alphabet). If you watch the animation, you’ll see how a corruption of sound resulted in a new letter. For example, a corruption of I created J, and a corruption of V created W. Also, if you watch the arrows during the evolution, you’ll see how elements of the older language reappeared in later derivations. A good example is the letter y, which is called i-grec (or the greek I) in french.
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06.22.06
Posted in health at 1:48 pm by site admin
A report on a new study that shows omega 3 fish oil may be better than medication at treating Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
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06.20.06
Posted in Education at 9:18 pm by site admin
Here is an article on cheating in China. Cheating is very important because there are approximately 9.5 million students that compete for only 2.6 million vacancies.
Another student’s earphones required an operation for their removal, the paper said, while an electronic device connected to headphones and strapped to a third student’s body exploded, leaving a bleeding hole in his abdomen.
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06.17.06
Posted in health at 8:46 pm by site admin
Wired’s Best Accidental Discoveries. Top 3 on the list are: Viagra, LSD, and X-Rays. Penicillin came in forth. Also check out this list at pbs. Did you know the pap smear was discovered and named after by Dr. George Nicholas Papanicolaou?
The seeds of great discoveries are constantly floating around us, but they only take root in minds well prepared to receive them.
-American physicist Joseph Henry
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06.12.06
Posted in Education, health at 6:33 pm by site admin
This article talks about the use of smart drugs by high school and college students. For those who dont know too much about the subject its a good read. If you’ve heard about smart drugs, then theres not much new. What I found interesting was the following discussion about how scholastic intelligence is not the only type of intelligence out there.
Howard Gardner of Harvard is the godfather of the idea that smart is more than what IQ tests test. In his seminal 1983 book, “Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences,” and later works, he laid out a then-novel model of cognition that included many other kinds of sagacity.
“I feel that what we call ‘intelligence’ is almost always ‘scholastic skill’ — what it takes to do well on a certain kind of short-answer instrument in a certain kind of Western school,” he writes in an e-mail. “Other uses of intellect — musical competence, facility in the use of one’s hands, understanding of other people, sensitivity to distinctions in the natural world, alertness to one’s own and others’ emotional states etc. — are not included in our definitions of intelligence, though I think that they should be. Unless performances in these other domains were directly tapped, we’d have no idea of whether ‘performance enhancing pills’ affect these other forms of intelligence as well.”
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06.09.06
Posted in health at 9:02 am by site admin
I’ve collected a couple random links to health related info. First, extracts of the fruit of Gardenia jasminoides Ellis, typically used in traditional Chinese Medicine, can relieve the symptoms of Type 2 diabetes. Also, another study how Alcoholic drinks reduce heart risk. Suprisingly, or not suprisingly, the effects differ for men and women. For men frequency is important. Drinking every day tops off at around 41% lower risk. For women alcohol general consumptiuon had a protective effect, but the frequency was not important. One drink a week lowered risk by 35%. The suggest that the reduce in risk can be attributed to increases in HDL, and lower plasma and fibrogen levels, which contribute to blood clotting. Heres a study that suggest that Coffe makes you more openminded. The study shows that coffee (not sure if its only the caffeine) promotes better mental function allowing you to concentrate better. And since you can concentrate better, you are more able to assimiliate a persuasive argument (and hence are more openminded). Finally, a study exploring the biological mechanism behind food comas. Our bodies have orexin neurons that monitor blood-glucose levels. These neurons keep us awake and alert when we are hungry and help us to fall asleep after we eat (to conserve energy of course). Malfunctions of glucosensing in the body can affect normal patterns of wakefulness (e.g., narcolepsy).
Also an interesting site statemaster.com showing various statistics across the US. You can see which states are the richest, most murderous, most taxed, healthiest, penny pinchers, etc. Interesting statistics include: District of Columbia is the most trigger happy, with 31.2 firearm deaths per 100,000 people, Vermont is the most Educated,
and New Jersey has the highest nest egg index.
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06.04.06
Posted in Evolution, health at 8:22 pm by site admin
This blog on wired talks about a recent study on Cesarean births. The study was conducted in South America evaluation 97,095 deliveries. It states that C-sections were associated with higher rates of maternal death and secere illness. Also, the C-section babies were also more likely to die or end up in intensive care for seven days or more after birth. The study concludes that unecessary C-sections may be harmful and should be avoided.
Of course, theres always research to the contrary. I think everything natural is best, an if you dont need surgery, etc, you should avoid it. Heck, humans have been on this earth for quite a while. If natural child birth didnt work, we wouldnt even be worrying about this problem.
Of course, this isnt completely true, b/c a baby’s cranial size (and thus its fully developed size) is limited by the diameter of the birth canal. So while natural births prevent big head babies from being born, C-sections allow more big heads (da4 tou2). Watch out!
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