Recently in Science Category

From "Smart, Curious, Ticklish. Rats?" by NATALIE ANGIER, New York Times:

In the Georgia study, rats were asked to show their ability to distinguish between tones lasting about 2 seconds, and sounds of about 8 seconds, by pressing one or another lever. If the rat guessed correctly, it was rewarded with a large meal; if it judged incorrectly, it got nothing.

For each trial, the rat could, after hearing the tone, opt to either take the test and press the short or long lever, or poke its nose through a side of the chamber designated the, “I don’t know” option, at which point it would get a tiny snack. During the trials, the rats made clear they knew their audio limits. The closer the tones were to either 2 or 8 seconds, the likelier the rats were to express confidence in their judgment by indicating they wanted to take the lever test and earn their full-course dinner. But as the tones edged into the ambiguous realms of 4 seconds, the rats began opting ever more often for modest but reliable morsels of the clueless option.

Goddamn I love animal science, esp. animal ethology (Lat., lit. "why we do stuff-ology"). I'm going to train rats to write blog posts about rats, and then I'll be out of pseudo-work and finally able to enjoy this giant spinning wheel I built. Joy!

Are aphrodisiacs, according to Penthouse.

I'm a fan of celery, and I drink enough coffee each morning (and afternoon and evening and sometimes night) to chemically lobotomize a healthy water bison.

So I was real happy about this finding until I read that, "Men who drink a cup a day are twice as likely to describe themselves as sexually active." Meaning the surveyed men only think they're sack-tigers (that phrase doesn't work when inverted, does it?). They could be lying, exaggerating, or drinking decaff.

Perhaps the effects of celery and coffee at the same time should be tested... Or [roommate's name omitted] should stop buying Penthouse.

The photography's terrible, and the wooden articles about "guy stuff" feel as if they were written by either small boys fantasizing about "real manly adult life" and all the "cars" and "hot chicks" and "coffee" they'd eventually encounter...

or by very intelligent rhesus monkeys, perhaps the subjects of advanced cognitive research, deep in the heart of New "Old" Jersesy... In which case... I don't mean to be a dick, but everyone knows chocolate's an aphrodisiac, Siwwa. And give Jetal her damn ornamental mirror back or we'll have to tranq you with the Mystery Juice again!

And no one likes the Mystery Juice...

"Remote viewing is the magical ability to transcend time and space and gather information about a target, which can be located at: anytime, anyplace and anywhere."

Meaning, after I learn how to remote view, I will be able to see you... in the past... taking a shower... Mmmm, bath bubbles...

[Ahem.] I found this site rummaging around on Skilluminati, a treasure trove of bizarre science, curated by one of my friend Dan Briggs' friends, a neo-hippie rapper who's, as far as I can tell, the king of psychedelic future-ghost blog-land.

Let me know if anyone out there's already remote viewing me. Or just take a picture of Future Wythe and post it. Wonder if I'll ever lose the moustaches....

In other news, I recently faxed an invoice to a mile-deep trench in the Pacific; a camel just sent me a "lolcat" pic from his Blackberry wireless device (tm); Apple's new i-Juniper trees come with built-in BlueTooth; the petri dish on my desk has completed two low-income-housing blocs playfully entitled "Park Place" and "Boardwalk;" etc.

From today's New York Times, "Conquering the Peak Test of Technology," by NOAM COHEN:

AFTER weeks of climbing, Rod Baber recently reached the summit of Mount Everest, ... took off his oxygen mask and called his voice mailbox, leaving an exuberant, if weary, message.

“Hi, this is Rod, making the world’s highest phone call. It’s the 21st of May, I have no idea what time it is.” He then looked at his watch. “It’s 5:37. It’s about minus 30. It’s cold. It’s fantastic. The Himalayas are everywhere.”

It was either the first mobile phone call made from the top of Mount Everest, as Mr. Baber and Motorola, which set up his voice mail, proclaim, or the umpteenth, as climbing experts who track the comings and goings there say.

It has taken a couple of generations of technological improvements, but Mount Everest, one of the most remote places on earth, is now officially overexposed.

Tom Sjogren who with his wife, Tina, founded mounteverest.net, a news site that reports on ascents of the mountain, estimated that at least 70 teams on Mount Everest “did more or less daily Internet updates with images, text, positions and videos from the mountain.”

The effort to digitally connect Everest has been aided by a series of technological breakthroughs, including a faster, cheaper satellite modem for sending files destined for the Internet, and the introduction this spring of a light, relatively inexpensive Thuraya satellite phone that can take pictures and video and upload them. (The Thuraya, with a long antenna, is already a favorite of insurgents around the world, too.)

As my brother Zac notes, "holy shit. we must get our hands on these projects."

From Kenneth Chang's "Light Fantastic: Flirting With Invisibility," in today's New York Times:

[Picture caption:] Duke researchers built a simplified version of their cloaking device out of copper rings and wires patterned onto fiberglass sheets and demonstrated that it successfully diverted microwaves.

Increasingly, physicists are constructing materials that bend light the "wrong" way, an optical trick that could lead to sharper-than-ever lenses or maybe even make objects disappear.

Last October, scientists at Duke demonstrated a working cloaking device, hiding whatever was placed inside, although it worked only for microwaves.

In the experiment, a beam of microwave light split in two as it flowed around a specially designed cylinder and then almost seamlessly merged back together on the other side. That meant that an object placed inside the cylinder was effectively invisible. No light waves bounced off the object, and someone looking at it would have seen only what was behind it.

I needn't point out to you good dames and gents that this is fucking amazing. Soon we will have personal cloaking devices, anti-cloaking scanners, and invisi-cats (who will take petite but hard to find invisi-poops).

[Non-poop-related] downsides: Invisi-rapists, invisi-tanks, invisi-slippery banana peels.

Upsides: You will not see me walking around my apartment in my underwear, Bushwick.

Man, I love Creationism: Instead of saying, "If God can sculpt the entire fucking earth out of nothing, then maybe he could create even a complicated process like evolution," thus rendering biblical objections to natural science effectively moot, the apparent bulk of serious Creationists insist that earth is 6000 years old and that man lived in harmony with dinosaurs until L. Ron Hubbard, Marilyn Manson, Sponge Bob, and I came and fucked it all up.

Well, they're right, I guess, because they now have a 27 million dollar museum explaining that they're right. How very P.T.Barnum of them. I salute anyone willing to put $27 mil. into a wrong idea, just to prove how very right it is. Next time I'm in Kentucky, I'm definitely checkin it out.

Read the good news your(damned)self...

Ahhh, yes, we are again reminded that, sometimes, the best news is bad news (for the monkey).

As Henry "Big Pookie" James once said (I paraphrase): "Cats and monkeys, cats and monkeys... All you need to know of human life you can learn from cats and monkeys."

And poisoned plague squirrels, it turns out.

(Steve, this sounds like a board game we need to invent right now: Zombie Squirrels of Catan.)

Anyway, read the article, it's hilarious. And the monkey's name was Spanky!

(Question-Proem: Why don't we have a frickin "Animals" category? I mean, come on, guys... Let's get on the ball. In it = to win it. Anyway...)

All the bees are disappearing.

This is obviously a sign that we are all dead; the Apocalypse has already occurred; only demons and (rapidly diminishing apiary arthropods) are left; thus we are demons.

This theory of demon-hood was posited by a friend recently. We were both drunk at a party. I thought about it, forgot about it, and thought about it again after reading about the Rapture Of The Bees (see below).

I would here quote poems by Emily "Bees-n-Depression" Dickinson, but I'm too frightened:

If I'm a demon, I'm a demon who loves some muthafuckin honey...

Read about the End Times, in the Times...

Steve posted a while back about the hope-inspiring/scary/very new study that, at least in Africa, circumcision can play a significant role in the reduction of AIDS transmission through sex.

Today's NYTimes brings that study and its results much closer to home:

New York City... is planning a campaign to encourage men at high risk of AIDS to get circumcised in light of the World Health Organization’s endorsement of the procedure as an effective way to prevent the disease.

What y'all think about that? [Damn, I love any conflict in which the word's "penis" and "foreskin" play a central role...] Full text follows...

Like knowing how stuff works? Science? British People? Animation? Like tv shows from 1988-1993?

Yes? You do? Yeah, who doesn't. Then The Secret Life of Machines, which you may be able to deduce is a British programme from '88-'93, which explains how ordinary things work through experiments, diagrams, history and animation, might just be for you.

Some subjects you have to look forward to are fax machines, vaccum cleaners, elevators, quartz watches, and refridgerators. But that's just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, my friends (Don't you hate and preversely kind of love the douche bags who says proverbial like that?)

The tv series was created by and stars Tim Hunkin (who has an extensive site of his work Here. He has done all kinds of awesome stuff, including mechanical animated piggy banks, simulator rides, arcade machines, interactive exhibits, and lots of other neato stuff, worth your browse), and the show was based on a comic strip that he drew for the Observer newspaper for 19 years. He also wrote and illustrated a book of science experiments for children 8-80 called Hunkin's Experiments.

To watch, simply type The Secret Life of Machines into your friendly neighborhood Google Video, and you're on your way. Also visit the secret life of machines website to see all of the orginal comics.

And just because I know you're lazy, I'll start you off. Here's The Secret Life of Machines...THE CENTRAL HEATING SYSTEM!

This thing looks crazy. Link to story on SEE IN IN.

Last week, Dylan, Katie and I set down our Guitar Hero controllers for a few hours and headed out to one of only four days of The Theater of Science. We didn't know anything about it, hearing only that it was being compared to the Victorian "tradition in which audiences attended the theatre to see scientific demonstrations as entertainment." And it was just that. Only a little over an hour long, the show came over to us from England, with an experimental psychologist and former professional magician, Professor Richard Wiseman, and physicist and popular science author, Dr. Simon Singh (author of 'Fermat's Enigma' and 'Big Bang') as our Mc's. There was also an English contortionist who gave a demonstration of her bendy spine, her short show ending in stuffing herself into a small box (truthfully, I saw a better body-in-box-stuffing act while waiting in line for the Circle Line ferry that takes tourists to the Statue of Liberty...in fact, I saw all sorts of fantastic acts while in the line for 2.5 hours).

But besides the contortionist, who really wasn't all that bad, the show was a lot of fun. It felt a lot like Bill Nye the Science Guy for grownups. They electrocuted a pickle. There was slight of hand and card tricks. There were optical illusions and quick comedic science lessons. Both Wiseman and Singh had the audience laughing the whole time, and were great at keeping us involved and interested. Most of the show was about what a person can convince himself is true, and being able to only see that, tricking your mind. It was fascinating, and it was fun.

Its nice to know that there are others out there getting all psyched about Neo Victoriana. http://www.spookylibrarians.com/steampunk.html

Leonardo DaVinci Toys

Japanese toy manufacturer Boford specializes in weapons of war such as swords and guns. Boford released a set of toy weapons inspired by the swords of Onimusha last year. The company has an ambitious project in the works which focuses on the sketches and ideas of Leonardo Da Vinci.

This is known as the Meissner effect. It is the effect by which a weak magnetic field decays rapidly to zero in the interior of a superconductor. The distance to which the field is active is known as the London penetration depth. (Isn't that an S&M club?) Anyway, long story short, its awesome.

This effect will levitate a magnet as long as the magnetic field does not exceed the critical magnetic field. A magnet that is suspended by the superconductor has two interesting properties; it does not move, and it can spin without friction. The ability for the magnet to stay perfectly still is due to flux pinning, in which the magnetic field lines become trapped within the superconductor at sites of impurity in the crystal structure.

I just tried to link some film festivals to our page at work, and one of the links was wrong. Instead of simply saying, "404 error, you're wrong," the fucker proceeded to spout the following, which really offends me (and Sam--come on, Sam) because we're originally from the 404 area code, metro Atlanta:

"Ah, the ubiquitous 404 Error: you've tried to access something that isn't there. Statistically speaking, this would have to be about the most common of all errors on the Internet. In fact, the 404 Not Found error is something of an icon on the Net to the point where people register domains called 404error.com and musical groups called '404 Not Found'. It's likely that pretty soon many webmasters and web-enthusiasts who don't get enough sun will start describing real-world objects as '404' (that's 'four-oh-four') - it will become a newly-coined adjective for 'absent'. Strange, really. But the Internet is an especially strange place, as you either know already or are quickly learning from this friendly error message.

"Perhaps the link was mistyped, or perhaps you've tried to visit a page which was once here but isn't any longer because someone's moved. Or disappeared. Or maybe it's meant to be there one day but hasn't been put in place as yet. Check the spelling on the filename, delete the filename and start from the directory level perhaps."

The other day Steve asked me why he had such good luck in finding a attractive, lovely wife (fellow blogger Karen Lanyi). I suggested that it is becuase Steve has a winning personality, is a good dresser and generally is a fun guy...but there may be a more scientific answer.

A new study by Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics, suggests it may be a simple supply-and-demand issue: there are more beautiful women in the world than there are handsome men. (Which is not to suggest Steve is unhandsome)

Why? Kanazawa argues it’s because good-looking parents are 36% more likely to have a baby daughter as their first child than a baby son—which suggests, evolutionarily speaking, that beauty is a trait more valuable for women than for men. The study was conducted with data from 3,000 Americans, derived from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, and was published in the Journal of Theoretical Biology.

Via Freakonomics

"In 1996 in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Italian mineralogist Vincenzo de Michele spotted an unusual yellow-green gem in the middle of one of Tutankhamun's necklaces.
The jewel was tested and found to be glass, but intriguingly it is older than the earliest Egyptian civilisation.

Working with Egyptian geologist Aly Barakat, they traced its origins to unexplained chunks of glass found scattered in the sand in a remote region of the Sahara Desert.

But the glass is itself a scientific enigma. How did it get to be there and who or what made it?"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5196362.stm

also why the Tunguska event is responsible for global warming:

http://www.physorg.com/news11710.html

ummmmmmm... it is rumored that scientists in shandong china have succeeded in controlling mouses impulses by stimmulating micro-electrodes in their brains. I couldn't find much, just variations on this arcticle in ananova

The Edge Foundation, Inc., (not to be confused with the awesome Anthony Hopkins movie The Edge) was established in 1988 as an outgrowth of a group known as The Reality Club. Its informal membership includes of some of the most interesting minds in the world, and you know what...it's dope.

It's basically the smartest dudes in the world, shooting the shit and laying the samckdown on some psuedo intellectual bullshit.

"In the past few years, the playing field of American intellectual life has shifted, and the traditional intellectual has become increasingly marginalized. A 1950s education in Freud, Marx, and modernism is not a sufficient qualification for a thinking person in the 1990s. Indeed, the traditional American intellectuals are, in a sense, increasingly reactionary, and quite often proudly (and perversely) ignorant of many of the truly significant intellectual accomplishments of our time. Their culture, which dismisses science, is often nonempirical. It uses its own jargon and washes its own laundry. It is chiefly characterized by comment on comments, the swelling spiral of commentary eventually reaching the point where the real world gets lost. "

SCIENCE, is where its at. There is a bunch of good stuff on this site but I would pay special attention to the edge world question, where each year they ask a bunch of scientists a provacative question. This year it was "What's your dangerous idea?" and some of the answers are smart enough to make you dizzy. Check it out at http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_index.html and become a part of the third culture.

You know how when you put a mentos in a diet coke it creates a geyser? These guys used 200 2-liter bottles of diet coke, over 500 mentos and lots of artistic vision. Video

Remember when I was all like, Waaaa waaa, there's no good blogs for girls, they all make girls look like pink sparkley pony loving, barbie doll rainbow kitten kissing, butterfly heart charm bracelet ribbon wearing bffs? (if you don't, here you go, knock yourself out. But today, (fanfare of trumpets sounding) I found a great girl blog. Okay, admittedly, it's not a gadget blog, but it's so much better. It's a science blog. The three girls (based in London) who write it are experienced science journalists, and they're trying to launch a new popular science magazine aimed at women, but while that's in the works, they're busy blogging 'ideas, research, drugs, foods, fads, politics, gadgets and gizmos that change our lives, make us smile, make us angry or do all three.' (From an interview in The Londonist It's called Inky Circus (www.inkycircus.com). It's written silly like many a blog, but you can tell these girls know what they're talking about. (and they look so young in the picture!) I wish I done did some smart scientifical thinking thoughts bloggering.

This would be nice to be able do on command.

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn9019&feedId=online-news_rss20

Albinos are so hot right now.

Link and another link
Brought to us from the great Proceedings of the Athanasius Kirscher Society

So as we've said, Dylan and I just got back from the sunny beachy shores of Boston! You should see my wicked tan.
One of the highlights of the week was the MIT Museum. I'll admit, I was hesitant at first (I imagined row upon row of framed mathematical equations), but I am so glad I went. It was awesome! First of all, it only cost $2 to get in, second of all, it was totally empty, and third of all, it was really cool.

My personal favorite part of the museum was the Arthur Ganson exhibit. If you don't already know his work, he creates kinetic machines that are either motor powered, or are wound up by the viewer. They are beautiful, you can see every gear and sprocket working to make something move, and somehow, his sculptures never look mechanical; they move fluidly, almost organically, and are totally mesmorizing. Most of them have a great touch of humor.

Dylan filmed one of the sculptures with my digital camera, and I'm going to try my hand here at a little something I like to call embedded video. I'm very excited about it. What you are about to see looks like a tiny wishbone sauntering along, appearing to pull a clanking contraption behind it. (if the camera work sucks, you know who to blame, he really needs a lesson in focus). You can see the professional video of this here, along with videos of his other works.

Hey, did you know that this past December some scientists found out that the Narwhal tusk is used to detect changes in water temperature, pressure and particle gradient? Doesn't that seem lame? But I bet there's some badass narwhals down there that totally use their tusks as a skewer and make a delicious sea creature shish kabob.

So here it is...Physicists announced Thursday that they now have the smoking gun that
shows the universe went through extremely rapid expansion in the
moments after the big bang, growing from the size of a marble to a
volume larger than all of observable space in less than a
trillion-trillionth of a second....
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/starsgalaxies/wmap_pol.html
What do you say to that? The size of a fucking marble? That’s hot. I wish I had a universe in a jar. That would be cool. I'd be all, "YO don't make me big bang your ass!" and they would all "Big bang my ass? Dude, that’s gross" and I'd be all... "Whatever, I'll do it."

Speaking of Big Banging, apparently that’s exactly what physicists were doing when they were uncovering this whole cosmic truth thing. "Schrödinger, Curie, Einstein, Feynman, Oppenheimer…the finest names of pre-Cold War 20th-century physics, some of whom gave us the most concise theories ever posited, form a roster of lamentable philanderers. Albert Einstein was completely “given to flirtation” and had legions of affairs. Caltech professor and bestselling raconteur Richard Feynman was probably the only Nobel Prize winner to befriend porn stars, claim a foolproof manner for bedding women and do his calculations on napkins in strip clubs. And it wasn’t just the guys: Marie Curie was relentlessly hounded by the press for seducing away her late-husband’s former student from his wife and kids."
http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/03/getting_physical.php

So here’s to the big bang, both cosmic and personal, may they be ever expanding, explosive and plentiful.