mind bloggling: August 2011

A Web-Based Microscope for the Pros is Open to All Students | MindShift

“The whole idea is allowing a classroom to be like research investigators. The kids are the main actors. We are just support.”

One of the promises of the Internet is to put resources into the hands of those who wouldn’t otherwise be able to access them. We often think of that in terms of information and data. But as the Imaging Technology Group at the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign demonstrates, the Internet can also enable people to access hardware resources, not just software or information.

In the case of the Beckman Institute, it’s a $600,000 electron microscope that can now be used remotely. Called Bugscope, the project allows K-12 and undergraduate students to access and control the electron microscope from their classroom and view — as the name suggests — bug samples at up to a 20,000-fold magnification.

Classes can mail in their insect specimens or use those provided by Bugscope. Doing so allows them to examine insect anatomy that’s too small for regular classroom microscopes (which typically magnify up to 1000 times).

H2O: Dangerous Chemical! water

This was found on the newsgroup: rec.humor.funny

H₂O: Dangerous Chemical!

A student at Eagle Rock Junior High won first prize at the Greater Idaho Falls Science Fair, April 26. He was attempting to show how conditioned we have become to alarmists practicing junk science and spreading fear of everything in our environment. In his project he urged people to sign a petition demanding strict control or total elimination of the chemical “dihydrogen monoxide.”

And for plenty of good reasons, since:

it can cause excessive sweating and vomiting
it is a major component in acid rain
it can cause severe burns in its gaseous state
accidental inhalation can kill you
it contributes to erosion
it decreases effectiveness of automobile brakes
it has been found in tumors of terminal cancer patients

He asked 50 people if they supported a ban of the chemical.

Forty-three (43) said yes,
six (6) were undecided,
and only one (1) knew that the chemical was water.

The title of his prize winning project was, “How Gullible Are We?”

He feels the conclusion is obvious.

The Moon Illusion

Have you ever seen a dramatically large moon on the horizon, just as it rises?

Pretty, isn’t it?

Then say you go out later that night, the moon is higher in the sky, and it looks tiny…

The giant moon on the horizon is an illusion completely made up in your brain. As I said in the post about “the color illusion” - you can’t even trust your own perception.

So, how can you prove it’s an illusion?

Take your fingers and “pinch” them in front of the moon while it looms huge on the horizon…

Suddenly right before your eyes, the moon is tiny! As small as it is when it’s “high” up in the sky!

The moon’s angular diameter in the sky varies between 33.5 and 29.43 arc minutes depending on where it is in it’s orbit around earth (the moon’s orbit isn’t perfectly circular).

This is the angular diameter of the moon no matter where it is in the sky.

Actually, that’s not 100% true, the moon appears about 1.5% smaller when it’s near the horizon because it is actually further away from the observer’s position.

So.. wait a moment… the moon is actually smaller by a minute percentage when it’s near the horizon! So why does it look bigger?

We can prove it’s not actually huge by “pinching” it but why does your mind construct this illusion in the first place?

The truth is we don’t know!

In the book, The Mystery of the Moon Illusion (2002 Helen Ross and Cornelis Plug) the conclusion is “No single theory has emerged victorious”.

The same conclusion is reached in the book The Moon Illusion (1989 - Various Authors - Edited by Maurice Hershenson)

For right now it remains a mystery, an error of perception in the brain, and an interesting little trick to show people that you can’t always trust what you see!

Glow-in-the-dark mushroom rediscovered after 170 years

Spotted once in 1840 and then never seen again, one of the world's most bioluminescent mushrooms has been rediscovered deep in the Brazilian wilderness.

Why does the Valley want designers that can code? Because the Valley doesn’t understand what designers do.

Jared Spool recently posted about “Why the Valley wants designers that can code.” Basically, he makes the good point that hiring managers at startups are always looking for ways to get more value for their dollar. And so based on that understanding he recommends “If you’re a designer, you don’t have to learn to code. But if you do, and you get good at it, you’ll find more opportunities as time goes on.” And in this he’s right. But of course his comments would be just as valid if he wrote a post titled “Why the Valley Wants Marketers That Can Code.” Or Engineers that can write press releases. Or any other combination of useful skills.

Except… the Valley doesn’t want marketers to write code or engineers to write press releases. Because, they don’t trust marketers to write code, and they feel that writing press releases would be a waste of the engineers’ valuable time and skills.

So what’s the real reason that many companies look for designers who can code? Because fundamentally they don’t understand and therefore properly value what great software designers do.

Spool says: “If you’re in a room filled with designers, bring up the topic of whether it’s valuable for a designer to also code. Immediately, the room will divide faster than Moses split the Red Sea. One side will tell you coding is an essential skill, while the other will vehemently argue how it dilutes the designer’s value.” If I’m in a room full of designers and any of take either of these positions, then I’m in a room full of designers I would prefer never to work with.

High quality software designers are true singer-songwriters. They can deliver a combination of interaction and visual design that don’t just make a product shine, they make the product what it is. They create its essence, its DNA. Should they have deep empathy for the software development process? Yes. Should they understand technology and be “technical” to a degree? Yes. Should they have passion for software as their medium? Yes. Much like a designer focused on print projects should understand how various ink/paper/press combinations will impact their final product’s design as well as cost, software designers should understand the canvas on which they are painting. But do I want a true software designer spending time fighting the various inconsistencies between browser CSS implementations to get the UI perfect? Nope. It’s a waste of their time. They should be doing more designing.

(If you’re annoyed by the previous paragraphs, this next one will make you crazy.)

Are there true singer-songwriter software designers that can write high quality code? Yes. But they are the exception. Anecdotally, I’ve found that most (not all) “designers” who can code are in fact coders who have empathy and passion for design, and may even have some good interaction design chops. But often they are weak when it comes to visual design. In our left-brain dominated industry, visual design is often looked at as fluff. Often people will say things like “art is the last step” or “that’s the lipstick”. I believe that when you treat the visual elements as some sort of layer of paint, then all the visuals can be is a layer of paint. And I believe that most “designers that can code” aren’t really designers at all.

The worst part is that design schools are complicit in this misunderstanding of what software designers should do. They’re busy teaching HTML, CSS, and Flash (yes Flash) to art students as if these skills are mandatory for them to succeed as high end software designers. These potentially talented software designers have an allergic reaction to spending their careers writing markup instead of drawing and decide to focus on “print”! Print! Pardon the profanity, but… WHAT THE FUCK??? The most incredible canvas in the world for designers — software — exists, and needs them. It lets them combine text and images and video and audio and user interaction in incredible ways, but they want to go make business cards and annual reports. Our industry needs a fleet of talented software designers and design schools are failing to produce them.

At some point, we will have more than a smattering of true software designers in this industry. They won’t be employees either. They’ll be founders and co-founders. And their companies will produce beautiful usable products that stand out from their competitors. And some of these designers will even be able to code. But we won’t let them, because we’ll want them spend every minute designing beautiful software.

A note: I’m sure that some of you will take exception to this post. Many of you will be annoyed because you either subscribe to the notion that designers should code and that it’s a good thing, or that you are designer that writes code and you are annoyed that I question your visual skills. Understood. I hear you. Please know, just because someone doesn’t fit the model of the designer I think we should be replicating, doesn’t mean I think they aren’t a valuable contributor.

And finally, some of you may criticize me and say that it’s easy for me to lobby for this model for software designers when my co-founder Jenny Lam exemplifies it. And to that I will say… you’re right.

phantom limb

Recently, I have been reading up on some research works done by Dr. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran and found it to be really inspiring. I chanced upon this article from Scientific American Mind July/August issue last week and thought that I should share part of the article here. This article generally talk about how something as common as a mirror can help us to understand about the brain and sense of self without using any fancy brain-imaging machines.

I hope it intrigues you as much as it did for me.

Using two bricks, or some duct tape, prop up an 18-inch-square mirror vertically on a table. Sit on that the edge faces you (a). Now put your left hand on the table at the left side of the mirror (either palm up or down) and match your right hand position on the right side. If you now look into the right side of the mirror, you will see the right hand’s reflection optically superimposed in the same place where you feel your left hand to be. (You may need to adjust the position of the left hand to achieve this sensation.) It will now look like you are viewing your own left hand, but of course you are not. Now try the following experiments.
While continuing to look in the mirror on the right side and keeping your left hand perfectly still, move your right hand, wiggle its fingers to make a fist. The “left hand” in the mirror will appear to move in perfect synchrony with the right but, paradoxically, feel completely still. The conflict creates a slight jolt; it feels spooky, sometimes mildly uncomfortable. The brain abhors discrepancies.
Now do the opposite; keep the right hand still and move the left hand. The left hand appears still but feels like it is moving. You will feel the same kind of jarring sensation, but it will be less powerful than in the preceding case. The reason for the asymmetry is not clear.
Why the jolt? The answer resides in the right superior and interior parietal lobules (located above your right ear), where signals from your various senses—visuals, somatic— converge to create your internal sense of body image. Stand up now and close your eyes. Either raise your arms or let them dangle by your side. Obviously you have a vivid sense of being “anchored” in your body except under special circumstances (such as ketamine, anesthesia). Now open your eyes, and you have visual confirmation of what your other senses are telling you: you see your hand where you felt it to be. In short, your senses normally blend different sensory inputs to create a vivid dynamic image of your body moving in space and time.
The mirror experiment you did earlier disrupts this consistency of signals in the right superior parietal lobule. The discrepancy is picked up in part by the right insular cortex (buried in the temporal lobe), and that information is then relayed to the right frontal lobe, where it can be picked up through brain imaging (shown by Richard Frackowiak, Ray dolan and Chris Frith, all at University College London, and Peter Halligan of Cardiff University in Wales).

Source: Ramachandran, V. S., & Rogers-Ramachandran, D. (2011, June 23). Reflections on the mind. Scientific American Mind, 22, 18-22.

body mapping on the brain

Does Marijuana Make You Stupid? | Wired Science | Wired.com

Does Marijuana Make You Stupid? | Wired Science |

Think You're An Auditory Or Visual Learner? Scientists Say It's Unlikely : Shots - Health Blog : NPR

Studies show that when students pay closer attention, they learn better.

EnlargeiStockphoto.com

We've all heard the theory that some students are visual learners, while others are auditory learners. And still other kids learn best when lessons involve movement.

But should teachers target instruction based on perceptions of students' strengths? Several psychologists say education could use some "evidence-based" teaching techniques, not unlike the way doctors try to use "evidence-based medicine."

Psychologist Dan Willingham at the University of Virginia, who studies how our brains learn, says teachers should not tailor instruction to different kinds of learners. He says we're on more equal footing than we may think when it comes to how our brains learn. And it's a mistake to assume students will respond and remember information better depending on how it's presented.

For example, if a teacher believes a student to be a visual learner, he or she might introduce the concept of addition using pictures or groups of objects, assuming that child will learn better with the pictures than by simply "listening" to a lesson about addition.

In fact, an entire industry has sprouted based on learning styles. There are workshops for teachers, products targeted at different learning styles and some schools that even evaluate students based on this theory.

This prompted Doug Rohrer, a psychologist at the University of South Florida, to look more closely at the learning style theory.

When he r eviewed studies of learning styles, he found no scientific evidence backing up the idea. "We have not found evidence from a randomized control trial supporting any of these," he says, "and until such evidence exists, we don't recommend that they be used."

Willingham suggests it might be more useful to figure out similarities in how our brains learn, rather than differences. And, in that case, he says, there's a lot of common ground. For example, variety. "Mixing things up is something we know is scientifically supported as something that boosts attention," he says, adding that studies show that when students pay closer attention, they learn better.

And recent studies find that our brains retain information better when we spread learning over a longer period of time, say months or even a year, versus cramming it into a few days or weeks. Rohrer and colleagues nationwide are currently researching what teaching methods work best for all students, but only using the evidence.

A pileus iridescent cloud was captured by photographer Esther Havens in Ethiopia. According to NASA this phenomenon is a result of "a group of water droplets that have a uniformly similar size and so together diffract different colors of sunlight by different amounts". iridescent cloud_a

Where Will the Next Earthquake Hit? (Raw Image)

Surprising Salvaged Transformations Sunset

Biggest data drive ever built by IBM can back up 60 copies of Wayback Machine

A 120 petabyte drive is being built by researchers at IBM's Almaden, California, R&D lab. It will be the largest data repository ever built, and will comprise 200,000 hard disk drives strung together.

The giant data container is expected to store around one trillion files and should provide the space needed to allow more powerful simulations of complex systems, like those used to model weather and climate.
A 120 petabyte drive could hold 24 billion typical five-megabyte MP3 files or comfortably swallow 60 copies of the biggest backup of the Web, the 150 billion pages that make up the Internet Archive's WayBack Machine.

The Geopolitics of the United States, Part 1: The Inevitable Empire | The Big Picture

Take a good look at the image below. You’ll see how a picture is not only worth a thousand words, but can explain the success of an entire nation. Crops to rivers, rivers to ports – the trade foundation of a country can be summarized in a single image. Sure it stirs up memories of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and the Mighty Mississippi, but this is the foundation of the US as a global power and a fascinating look at the backbone of the American economy.

Kill Bugs With Diatomaceous Earth

Diatomaceous Earth is almost pure silica (with some beneficial trace minerals); under a microscope, it looks like shards of glass (glass is made from silica). On any beetle-type insect that has a carapace, like fleas and cockroaches, the DE works under the shell and punctures the body, which then dehydrates and the insect dies. DE is totally nontoxic. There is no buildup of tolerance like there is to poisons because the method of killing is PHYSICAL, not chemical.

It can kill any bug with an exoskeleton easily

Electric Hurricanes - NASA Science

the biggest storms of all, hurricanes, are notoriously lacking in lightning. Hurricanes blow, they rain, they flood, but seldom do they crackle.

Surprise: During the record-setting hurricane season of 2005 three of the most powerful storms--Rita, Katrina, and Emily--did have lightning, lots of it. And researchers would like to know why.

Richard Blakeslee of the Global Hydrology and Climate Center (GHCC) in Huntsville, Alabama, was one of a team of scientists who explored Hurricane Emily using NASA's ER-2 aircraft, a research version of the famous U-2 spy plane. Flying high above the storm, they noted frequent lightning in the cylindrical wall of clouds surrounding the hurricane's eye. Both cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-ground lightning were present, "a few flashes per minute," says Blakeslee.

Indeed, the electric fields above Emily were among the strongest ever measured by the aircraft’s sensors over any storm. "We observed steady fields in excess of 8 kilovolts per meter," says Blakeslee. "That is huge--comparable to the strongest fields we would expect to find over a large land-based 'mesoscale' thunderstorm."

Nevertheless, it is possible to note some similarities: (1) all three storms were powerful: Emily was a Category 4 storm, Rita and Katrina were Category 5; (2) all three were over water when their lightning was detected; and (3) in each case, the lightning was located around the eye-wall.

Actually, says Blakeslee, the reason most hurricanes don't have lightning is understood. "They're missing a key ingredient: vertical winds."

Within thunderclouds, vertical winds cause ice crystals and water droplets (called "hydrometeors") to bump together. This "rubbing" causes the hydrometeors to become charged. Think of rubbing your socked feet across wool carpet--zap! It's the same principle. For reasons not fully understood, positive electric charge accumulates on smaller particles while negative charge clings to the larger ones. Winds and gravity separate the charged hydrometeors, producing an enormous electric field within the storm. This is the source of lightning.

A hurricane's winds are mostly horizontal, not vertical. So the vertical churning that leads to lightning doesn't normally happen.

"Hurricanes are most likely to produce lightning when they're making landfall," says Blakeslee. But there were no mountains beneath the "electric hurricanes" of 2005—only flat water.

It's tempting to think that, because Emily, Rita and Katrina were all exceptionally powerful, their sheer violence somehow explains their lightning. But Blakeslee says that this explanation is too simple. "Other storms have been equally intense and did not produce much lightning," he says. "There must be something else at work."

Nobody Asked For A Refrigerator Fee | TorrentFreak

I’m going go out on a limb here and say, that even if it is true that movies can’t be made the same way with the Internet and our civil liberties both in existence, then maybe it’s just the natural progression of culture.

I spend quite a bit of time with teenagers through my work with the Pirate Party. One thing that strikes me is that they don’t watch movies, at least nowhere near the quantity I did when I was a teenager. Just like I threw out my TV set 15 years ago, maybe this is just the natural progression of culture. Nobody would be surprised if we moved from monologue-style culture to dialogue- and conversation-type culture at this point in history.

After all, we have previously had operettes, ballets, and concerts as the high points of culture in the past. Even radio theaters (and famous ones). Nobody is particularly concerned that those expressions have had their peak and that society has moved on to new expressions of culture. There is no inherent value in writing today’s forms of culture into law and preventing the changes we’ve always had.

Everywhere I look, I see that the copyright monopolies need to be cut down to allow society to move on from today’s stranglehold on culture and knowledge. Teenagers today typically don’t even see the problem — they take sharing in the connected world so totally for granted, that they discard any signals to the contrary as “old-world nonsense”.

And they certainly don’t ask for a refrigerator fee.

— — —

Rick Falkvinge is a regular columnist on TorrentFreak, sharing his thoughts every other week. He is the founder of the Swedish Pirate Party, a whisky aficionado, and a low-altitude motorcycle pilot. His blog at http://falkvinge.net focuses on information policy.

Material of the Year: Carbon Negative Concrete

Earlier this year, Material ConneXion, a global materials consultancy, awarded Material of the Year to London-based company Novacem’s “carbon negative” cement. What looks like an assortment of homemade marshmallows above is actually a construction material slated to change the world of concrete when it hits the market in 2014. Click to learn more.

While it functions much like commonly used Portland cement, boasting the same level of performance and the same average cost, Novacem’s concrete mixture uses magnesium silicate instead of calcium carbonates. The slinging of chemistry jargon might make this seem complicated, but the concept is simple: the creation of magnesium carbonates from magnesium silicates absorbs carbon dioxide. In other words, the production process is carbon negative. Furthermore, the production process of Novacem’s concrete is low-energy, allowing it to be sustained on biomass fuels.

Photography of Insects in dew….!!

Wearable Cameras That Capture Every Moment In Life

Looxcie The Looxcie $199 bluetooth video camera, records almost exactly what you see. It can record up to one hour of video at 480p. When you see something interesting on your day, just press the little button on the side and a 30 second clip is saved to your Android or iPhone app. Is that easy!

Contour Video Camera The Contour Video Camera created a name for itself in the extreme sports community. it's something you will see on professional BMX riders, surfers and dirt bike enthusiasts. It has the largest lens of any POV camera and captures 1080p video. The 2.8" aperture and 170 degree wide-angle with rotating lens, delivers great video with minimal distortion. It records and stream full HD with a small form factor.

uCorder Pockito IRDC260 The uCorder Camcorder is tiny enough that it can even go unnoticed. It's also a webcam combo that allows you the convenience of Wearable Video Recording plus the benefit of a Webcam. The 3.5-Inch Wearable Video Camera / Recorder can easily be attached to your clothing and is ideal for recording different aspects of your life, hands-free!

Aquaovo Therm-O-Bottle Daily Find

Aquaovo Therm-O-Bottle

• $24.95 • Green Depot

This is one of the prettiest on-the-go reusable cups I've seen. Aquaovo—maker of these gorgeous water filters—now has a smaller yet no-less-stylish product to add to its line-up. The BPA-free Therm-O Bottle is a beautifully designed double-walled glass thermos which keeps drinks hot or cold. It comes with a removable stainless steel tea strainer and a water-tight twist cap.

Open access to research data a lot tougher than you think

Most Nobel Intent readers are familiar with the current effort to make research articles open access, but there is also a parallel effort to develop public archives for the research data behind them. We’ve addressed howfunding questions make this a difficult issue, and the difficulty in preserving raw experimental material (also limited by money), but the primary obstacle to widespread adoption of existing public research data repositories appears to be simply time and effort.

According to commentary that recently appeared in Nature Geoscience, the time gap between the creation of data (such as experimental measurements) and the preservation (usually at publication) creates serious problems. It means that researchers need to deal with the formatting and deposition of data, an annoying step when they would rather be focusing on their next project. Given the time lag, it's also difficult to associate the correct metadata with the material that's being archived. The authors of the commentary propose developing a new workflow focused on data preservation from the very beginning, and suggest that research institutions should support scientists with data managers and local repositories.