Hello everyone! Here is more science to tantalize your synapses and neurons!
- Keep Your Fingers Crossed: How Superstition Improves Performance
- More Than Half the World’s Population Gets Insufficient Vitamin D, Says Biochemist
- Low Vitamin D Levels Associated With Cognitive Decline
- Team Develops Non-Toxic Oil Recovery Agent
- Smoking Mind Over Smoking Matter: Surprising New Study Shows Cigarette Cravings Result from Habit, Not Addiction
- Light and Moderate Physical Activity Reduces the Risk of Early Death
- New Antibacterial Material for Bandages, Food Packaging, Shoes
- A Blood Test for Depression?
- 3-D Gesture-Based Interaction System Unveiled
Keep Your Fingers Crossed: How Superstition Improves Performance: New research shows that having some kind of lucky token can actually improve your performance — by increasing your self-confidence. …Volunteers who had their lucky charm did better at a memory game on the computer, and other tests showed that this difference was because they felt more confident. They also set higher goals for themselves. Just wishing someone good luck — with “I press the thumbs for you,” the German version of crossing your fingers — improved volunteers’ success at a task that required manual dexterity.
~Of course, this is still a form of delusion. Everyone tested in the study was superstitious and had a lucky charm. I’d like to see a study or two that involved people who don’t rely on superstition as well. I think if a person understands the delusion of superstition, they will therefore not need the “lucky” feather in their cap. They will have appropriate self-confidence based on their actual abilities. Still, it’s an interesting study. Read the rest of this entry »
Happy Darwin Day everyone! Today is Darwin’s birthday and in honor of him, I thought I’d post this article about Liquid Glass, which could possibly be the coolest nanotech material I’ve seen in some time. I think it’s so cool mainly because of its versatility and the fact that it’s already in use in Germany, the UK and Turkey.
Why am I talking about nanotech on Darwin’s birthday? If you think about it, without evolution, we wouldn’t be able to manipulate our world so deftly and with such finesse. About 195,000 years ago homo sapiens first appeared in the fossil record. We started leaving Africa about 70,000 years ago, and migrated as far as the Americas 14,500 years ago.
A mere 10,000 years ago, we were mostly hunter-gatherers in nomadic groups. The first proto-states were developed only 6,000 years ago. Think of that! Look how far we’ve come in such a short time!
Think of how we lived just 100 years ago in 1910.
- By 1910 many suburban homes were wired up with power and new electronic gadgets.
- Vacuum cleaners and washing machines had just become commercially available, though still expensive for middle class folks
- The telephone was new, and millions of American homes were connected by manual switchboard
- People relied on the paper for their news, but radio technology was in its infancy
- The age of the airship was in full swing. Only 7 years previously, the Wright brothers had flown at Kitty Hawk
- Henry Ford introduced the Model T 2 years before and sold about 10,000 of them this year
- Advances in the use of gases meant the first electric refrigerators and air conditioning units.
- Neon lighting was debuted in Paris
- Inventions included: escalators, teabags, cellophane, instant coffee and disposable razor blades
- Women still had another 3 years of corsets
Things they didn’t have in 1910: Read the rest of this entry »
The other day, I watched a 3 part special about what makes us uniquely human from the rest of the animals on the planet, namely chimps. It was very interesting and I wanted to share it with you. I’m linking to each full length video and then below I will link to Science Talk’s interviews with Alda about the show and other interesting things.
Here’s some information from PBS:
After some three and a half billion years of life’s evolution on this planet – and after almost two million years since people recognizable as human first walked its surface – a new human burst upon the scene, apparently unannounced.
It was us.
Until then our ancestors had shared the planet with other human species. But soon there was only us, possessors of something that gave us unprecedented power over our environment and everything else alive. That something was – is – the Human Spark.
What is the nature of human uniqueness? Where did the Human Spark ignite, and when? And perhaps most tantalizingly, why?
In a three-part series broadcast on PBS in January 2010, Alan Alda takes these questions personally, visiting with dozens of scientists on three continents, and participating directly in many experiments – including the detailed examination of his own brain. Read the rest of this entry »
You probably have to be American to get the joke in the title. Do other countries have Life cereal? I have no idea. That’s a phrase of my husband Butch’s anyway. I personally think the original Life cereal is the best, not the fancy versions that they also make, like cinnamon, chocolate oat crunch, etc.
Anyhoo, this is a roundup post in which I cover several topics that are tenuously connected at best. Here’s what I’m rambling on about:
- I’m a citizen scientist now! WOOT!
- Encyclopedia of Life!
- My Flickr
- Moving the body affects how we think – a study
- Prayer and meditation may reshape the brain – a study
First, I want to talk about a ScienceDaily report: Massive Online ‘Macroscopic Observatory’ Of Earth’s Biodiversity To Be Created. “Wanted (soon): observations from environment-minded citizens that will allow science to study biodiversity at a planetary level in a massive, comprehensive virtual observatory of historic importance.”
This guy, Edward O. Wilson, created a website, Encyclopedia of Life (eol). His dream: “Imagine an electronic page for each species of organism on Earth…” and they are starting to do just that. A page for every species. If you read the ScienceDaily article, it will be amazing. You’ll be able to get information from the Deep Web from images, maps, classification, common and scientific names, links to research and papers, etc.
It’s already there now, and growing all the time. In the future you’ll also be able to get genome sequences and much much more. Basically anything you want to know about a species will be there, at your fingertips, all on one page, for free. My scientific geekiness is giggling with delight! Read the rest of this entry »
Charles Darwin celebrated his 200th birthday February 12 of this year. So of course many of the science podcasts I listen to, as well as many of the science and skeptic sites I visit, have been talking about evolution and Darwin and all that good stuff. Evolution is often paraphrased as the term, survival of the fittest, which is inaccurate. Here is how Dictionary.com defines it, as well as some other terms, just so we’re all on the same page:
- Survival of the Fittest
a 19th-century concept of human society, inspired by the principle of natural selection, postulating that those who are eliminated in the struggle for existence are the unfit.
- Natural Selection
n. The process in nature by which, according to Darwin’s theory of evolution, only the organisms best adapted to their environment tend to survive and transmit their genetic characteristics in increasing numbers to succeeding generations while those less adapted tend to be eliminated.
- Evolution
Biology. change in the gene pool of a population from generation to generation by such processes as mutation, natural selection, and genetic drift.
I’ve been slowly forming some random thoughts regarding the human population and evolution and I thought I’d write them down. Your input would be most welcome, as usual. Read the rest of this entry »
In a giant leap for clean energy, MIT professor Daniel Nocera and his team, have developed a simple method to split water molecules and produce oxygen gas. This paves the way for large scale use of solar power.
Getting energy from the sun isn’t the hard part, it seems. It’s storing that energy that has been a problem.
These guys at MIT were inspired by how plants perform photosynthesis. Their revolutionary method uses abundant, non-toxic natural materials.
I won’t get into all the details, but I just wanted to share it with you because it seems pretty important and wonderful.
Here’s a link to MIT where they have a video of Daniel Nocera describing the new process and a lot more details.
This is just the beginning though. It’s still not really cost effective, but other scientists will be able to run with it and we’ll see where it all leads us in the near future.
Nocera hopes that within 10 years, we’ll be able to power our homes in daylight through photovoltaic cells, while using excess solar energy to produce hydrogen and oxygen to power our own household fuel cell.
Of course, the power companies will not like this. But hopefully it will all happen anyway.
How about a self contained living river ecosystem in your living room? I love the idea of combining art into something practical, useful and also great for the environment, so this really fits the bill. Read the rest of this entry »
Hello everyone! Here is more science to tantalize your synapses and neurons!
