BlogCadre - research

Daily Geek News RoundUp, March 8, 2010

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:01:26 +0000

Social Media Dorks Get an Anthem [VIDEO] - Mashable

How the Inbred Lab Mouse Helps Reprogram the Human Genome - Wired

New Gran Turismo 5 screens emerge - CVG

Humunga Stache Dog Toy - Dog Milk

Foursquare Just Made Your Location History A Lot More Interesting - TechCrunch

Iron Man 2 Trailer Hits YouTube [VIDEO] - Mashable

How Mark Zuckerberg Hacked Into The Harvard Crimson - Business Insider

Pentagon-Backed Venture Aims for 'Google Underground' - Wired

Be A Martian and Help NASA

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 03:21:10 +0000

Help NASA sort through thousands of Mars images and have fun learning about space exploration at the same time! There have been so many images taken of Mars that scientists cannot sort through all of them by themselves. So, they have asked the public to help them sort through the images through their website Be A Martian, which was created with the help of Microsoft.

From BBC News article:

Players at Be A Martian can earn points in one game by helping Nasa examine and organize the images into a more complete map of the planet.

Another game gets users to count impact craters to help scientists understand better the relative age of rocks on Mars' surface.

Nasa hopes the mix of real data and fun will also inspire the planetary scientists of tomorrow.

"We really need the next generation of explorers," says Michelle Viotti, from the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which oversees Mars missions.

"And we're also accomplishing something important for Nasa. There's so much data coming back from Mars. Having a wider crowd look at the data, classify it and help understand its meaning is very important."

Have fun and make your own discoveries!

[via BBC and Nerd Salad]

True Love Discovered

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 03:20:11 +0000

How do you know when you are truly in love? Scientists from Stony Brook University in New York claim they have discovered true love.

Previous research suggested that the first stages of romantic love, a rollercoaster ride of mood swings and obsessions that psychologists call limerence, start to fade within 15 months. After 10 years the chemical tide has ebbed away.

The scans of some of the long-term couples, however, revealed that elements of limerence mature, enabling them to enjoy what a new report calls “intensive companionship and sexual liveliness”.

The researchers nicknamed the couples “swans” because they have similar mental “love maps” to animals that mate for life such as swans, voles and grey foxes.

The reactions of the swans to pictures of their beloved were identified on MRI brain scans as a burst of pleasure-producing dopamine more commonly seen in couples who are gripped in the first flush of lust.

“The findings go against the traditional view of romance – that it drops off sharply in the first decade – but we are sure it’s real,” said Arthur Aron, a psychologist at Stony Brook.

Link to full article

Circadian Clock Driven By Food Availability

Thu, 29 May 2008 03:00:36 +0000

Jason wrote up a post over at Hackszine.com about an interesting study that was conducted over at Harvard Medical School about a second circadian clock in mammals.

There was an interview with Clifford Saper, a professor of Neurology and Neuroscience at Harvard Medical School, in last week's Science Friday. The discussion was about a study which was just published in the journal Science about a second circadian clock in mammals that is driven by food availability. The research suggests that this second clock evolved as a sleep-cycle "reset" mechanism which allows mammals to very quickly adapt to optimize their wake period and maximize the chances of finding food during times when food is scarce.

This starvation override can take effect after only 16 hours of fasting. When the fast is cancelled by a sufficient caloric intake (read: real food), the body will shift its natural wake time to coincide with the event. So if you want to ditch your jet lag, or if you want to get up earlier in the morning, it might be as simple as fasting for the 16 hours prior to the time you would like to wake up, then eat a big meal. Your body will then override its normal light-based rhythm and wake at that same time going forward.

Link [via Hackszine.com]

Scientists find Solar System's 'look-alike'

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 20:03:37 +0000

Planetary systems much like our own may be more common than what we thought:

Dr Dominik told BBC News: "We found a system with two planets that take the roles of Jupiter and Saturn in our Solar System. These two planets have a similar mass ratio and similar orbital radius and a similar orbital period.

"It looks like this may have formed in a similar way to our Solar System. And if this is the case, it looks like [our] Solar System cannot be unique in the Universe. There should be other similar systems out there which could host terrestrial planets."

Link to full article.

Catch Malaria for $4000

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 18:22:53 +0000

The Seattle Biomedical Research Institute is seeking volunteers who are willing to be bitten by mosquitoes infected with malaria. Volunteers could be paid up to $4000.

Scientists say no lives are in danger because the volunteers can be cured. The institute is testing which vaccines work fastest.

The head of the program, Dr. Patrick Duffy, said volunteers will spend several nights under medical supervision in a hotel.

Link.

140-year-old math problem solved

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 22:02:25 +0000

The Schwarz-Christoffel formula is a mathematical tool that translates information from a complicated shape to a simpler circular shape. Although useful, for 140 years it only worked for shapes that did not contain any holes or irregularities.

Professor Darren Crowdy has solved this mathematical problem and complicated shapes can now be used with this formula.

"This formula is an essential piece of mathematical kit which is used the world over. Now, with my additions to it, it can be used in far more complex scenarios than before. In industry, for example, this mapping tool was previously inadequate if a piece of metal or other material was not uniform all over - for instance, if it contained parts of a different material, or had holes."

Professor Crowdy's work has overcome these obstacles and he says he hopes it will open up many new opportunities for this kind of conformal mapping to be used in diverse applications.

"With my extensions to this formula, you can take account of these differences and map them onto a simple disk shape for analysis in the same way as you can with less complex shapes without any of the holes," he added.

Link.

Electron Filmed for First Time

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 03:43:28 +0000

By using a new technique which uses attosecond pulses, scientists can now film an electron in motion.

Previously it was impossible to photograph electrons because of their extreme speediness, so scientists had to rely on more indirect methods. These methods could only measure the effect of an electron's movement, whereas the new technique can capture the entire event.

Extremely short flashes of light are necessary to capture an electron in motion. A technology developed within the last few years can generate short pulses of intense laser light, called attosecond pulses, to get the job done.

"It takes about 150 attoseconds for an electron to circle the nucleus of an atom. An attosecond is 10^-18 seconds long, or, expressed in another way: an attosecond is related to a second as a second is related to the age of the universe," said Johan Mauritsson of Lund University in Sweden.

Link to article.
Link to video.

Cloth Physics Simulation

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 04:28:05 +0000

This interactive cloth physics simulation may just trick you into learning. I never knew a piece of cloth could be so much fun. Link.

Sugar substitutes may not help in weight loss

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 03:39:59 +0000

Research is showing that artificial sweeteners may not be fooling our bodies into losing weight.

In a series of experiments, scientists at Purdue University compared weight gain and eating habits in rats whose diets were supplemented with sweetened food containing either zero-calorie saccharin or sugar. The report, published in Behavioral Neuroscience, presents some counterintuitive findings: Animals fed with artificially sweetened yogurt over a two-week period consumed more calories and gained more weight — mostly in the form of fat — than animals eating yogurt flavored with glucose, a natural, high-calorie sweetener. It's a continuation of work the Purdue group began in 2004, when they reported that animals consuming saccharin-sweetened liquids and snacks tended to eat more than animals fed high-calorie, sweetened foods. The new study, say the scientists, offers stronger evidence that how we eat may depend on automatic, conditioned responses to food that are beyond our control.

Link to full article.

Rare Mummified Dinosaur Found

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 16:42:39 +0000

Scientists have uncovered a rare find: a 67-million-year-old mummified plant-eater that contains fossilized bones and skin tissue, and quite possibly muscle and organs.

Preserved by a natural fluke of time and chemistry, the four-ton mummified hadrosaur, a duck-billed herbivore common to North America, could reshape the understanding of dinosaurs and their habitat, its finders say.

"There is no doubt about it that this dinosaur is a very, very significant find," said Tyler Lyson, a graduate student in geology at Yale University who discovered the dinosaur in North Dakota.

Nicknamed Dakota, the hadrosaur is one of only five naturally preserved dinosaur mummies ever discovered. Unlike previous dinosaur mummies, which typically involve skin impressions pressed into bones, Dakota's entire skin envelope appears to remain largely intact.

Link.

Cockroach Robots Infiltrate and Influence Cockroach Communities

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 23:15:21 +0000

They don't look much like cockroaches, but the robotic cockroaches created by Belgium researchers managed to infiltrate and influence cockroach colonies' behaviors.

Halloy and his colleagues suspected that a group decision emerges because every individual follows these simple rules: Wander around randomly, but spend more time in a place if you sense that it is (A) dark and (B) has other cockroaches.

So the researchers made sure their robotic cockroach could follow those rules. The robots had wheels, plus a light sensor and an infrared sensor to detect nearby roaches.

When they put these robots in with the living roaches, they all began to interact. Before long, the robots and cockroaches were huddled together under the same roof. "The robots and the cockroaches behave as a group," Halloy said.

So then the scientists decided to reprogram the robots and change one of their rules. "We change their preference for darkness," Halloy said. "We make the robots prefer lighter places than darker ones."

And they presented the group of robots and roaches with two shelters. One was dark, and one was light.

What the scientists found was that the whole group would generally end up resting in the brighter place, even though normally roaches would prefer a darker one.

The experiment, published in the journal Science, showed that just a few individuals can dramatically alter the behavior of the whole group.

Link [via digg]

Unmade beds keep away dust mites

Sun, 18 Nov 2007 05:10:40 +0000

I knew the real reason for not making my bed every morning wasn't pure laziness... it was to keep the dust mites away. Yeah, that's right.

Research suggests that while an unmade bed may look scruffy it is also unappealing to house dust mites thought to cause asthma and other allergies.

A Kingston University study discovered the bugs cannot survive in the warm, dry conditions found in an unmade bed.

The average bed could be home to up to 1.5 million house dust mites.

The bugs, which are less than a millimetre long, feed on scales of human skin and produce allergens which are easily inhaled during sleep.

The warm, damp conditions created in an occupied bed are ideal for the creatures, but they are less likely to thrive when moisture is in shorter supply.

Link [via Neatorama]

How to evolve a watch

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 21:17:15 +0000

Here is an interesting video that demonstrates a thought and modeling experiment on how to evolve a watch.

This is a fascinating video which shows that, Paley's hoary old argument notwithstanding, a fully functioning watch could evolve - if there were a population of watches subject to mutation and natural selection.

Obviously it's just a thought experiment, but it convincingly demolishes the cretinist dogma that complexity is prima facie proof that goddidit.

Link to video. [via Pharyngula]

Scientists kill oldest living animal

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 05:26:36 +0000

A team of Bangor University researchers were doing routine research when they stumbled upon the oldest living animal. They didn't realize it was the oldest living animal until after they killed it.

Only after researchers cut through its shell, which made it more of an ex-clam, and counted its growth rings did they realize how old it had been — between 405 and 410 years old.

Another clam of the same species had been verified at 220 years old, and a third may have lived 374 years. But this most recent clam was the oldest yet.

"Its death is an unfortunate aspect of this work, but we hope to derive lots of information from it," postdoctoral scientist Al Wanamaker told London's Guardian newspaper. "For our work, it's a bonus, but it wasn't good for this particular animal."

Link.