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Love Of Spicy Food Is Built Into Your Personality | Popular Science - 0 views

www.popsci.com/...cy-food-built-your-personality

scibyte74 Personality

shared by Mars Base on 06 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • But the science of spicy food liking and intake
  • shows there’s more to it than just increased tolerance with repeated exposure
  • research dating back at least to the 1980s
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • Personality, researchers say, is also a factor in whether a person enjoys spicy meals and how often he or she eats them
  • desensitization to capsaicin, the plant chemical that gives peppers their burn, is well documented, there’s also evidence that the effect is surprisingly small
  • researchers have previously linked chili liking to thrill seeking, specifically an affinity for amusement park rides and gambling
  • investigators found a relationship between chili liking and sensation seeking when using a more formal measure of personality called Zuckerman’s Sensation Seeking Scale
  • In both cases, however, the associations were fairly weak, and neither study looked at intake -- how often a person eats spicy foods, versus how much a person likes spice.
  • used an updated measure of sensation seeking that avoided gender- and age-biased questions
  • Sensation seeking emerged as a much stronger predictor of spicy food liking than in the previous studies
  • it also predicted how often a person ate chili-laden meals
  • personality trait, however, was not associated with high liking of non-spicy foods, which reduced the possibility that thrill seekers are just crazy about food in general
  • frequent chili eaters didn’t feel the burn from the capsaicin sample any less than people who ate peppers less often
  • The study group may not have been large enough to show a desensitization effect
  • lack of evidence for desensitization in the study boosts the argument for personality as an important factor
  • combination of factors influences who goes for the mild wings on Super Bowl Sunday and who reaches for hot
  • childhood exposure and learning all play a critical role in liking for spicy foods
  • also individuals who acquired an entirely [new] set of food preferences as adults once they moved away from home
  • may have been a disconnect between reported frequency of intake and actual dose
  • Ninety-seven male and female participants ranging in age from 18 to 45 filled out a food-liking questionnaire
  • rated the intensity of sensations after sampling six stimuli, including capsaicin mixed in water
Mars Base

Study: Facebook profile beats IQ test in predicting job performance - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...3-facebook-profile-iq-job.html

scibyte36 Facebook

shared by Mars Base on 03 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Can a person's Facebook profile reveal what kind of employee he or she might be? The answer is yes, and with unnerving accuracy,
  • Other things a prospective employer might be able to glean from your Facebook profile is openness to new experiences (vacation pictures from a glacier off New Zealand), emotional stability (are your friends constantly offering you words of comfort?) and agreeableness (are you constantly arguing with "friends?").
  • series of two studies
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • six people with experience in human resources were asked to rate a sample of 500 people in terms of key personality traits using only the sample group's Facebook pages as a guideline.
  • rate members of the sample group on what is known as the "Big Five" personality traits
  • extroversion, conscientiousness, emotional stability, agreeableness and openness to new experiences
  • High scores
  • indication of future good job performance.
  • Members of the sample group were asked to give a self-evaluation and took an IQ test.
  • followed up with the employers of people in the sample group six months after their personality traits were rated, to ask questions about job performance.
  • raters were generally in agreement about the personality traits expressed in the sample group's Facebook page
  • ratings correlated strongly with self-rated personality traits
  • also found that the Facebook ratings were a more accurate way of predicting a person's job performance than an IQ test
  • employers need to tread carefully here
  • Facebook page can provide a lot of information that it would be illegal for an employer to ask of a candidate in a phone interview
  • gender, race, age and whether they have a disability
  • a 2011 study
  • found that 90 percent of recruiters and hiring managers look at an applicant's Facebook page whether they should or not.
  • one study should be used as a reason to start using Facebook in hiring.
Mars Base

Library of Congress Acquires Sagan's Personal Collection, Thanks to Seth MacFarlane - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...tion-thanks-to-seth-macfarlane

scibyte53 cosmos CarlSagan SethMacFarlane

shared by Mars Base on 27 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • Carl Sagan’s personal archive — a comprehensive collection of papers contained within 798 boxes — was delivered to the Library of Congress recently for sorting… thanks in no small part to “Family Guy” creator Seth MacFarlane
  • MacFarlane provided an “undisclosed sum of money” to the Library to purchase the collection from Sagan’s widow Ann Druyan, who had kept the papers preserved in storage
  • MacFarlane has been working to bring Sagan’s Cosmos series back to television, with Neil deGrasse Tyson reprising Sagan’s role
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Tyson who introduced MacFarlane to Druyan, and apparently got a peek at the astrophysicist’s impressive collection of papers, which “ranges from childhood report cards to college term papers to eloquent letters written just before his untimely death in 1996 at age 62.”
  • organization, a process expected to take several months
  • files labeled F/C, for ‘fissured ceramics,’ Sagan’s code name for letters from crackpots
Mars Base

Personalized medicine closer to reality: Study uses stem cells to study variants of Par... - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...icine-closer-reality-stem.html

GrabBag Parkinson's

shared by Mars Base on 16 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • A nationwide consortium of scientists at 20 institutions, led by a principal faculty member at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI), has used stem cells to take a major step toward developing personalized medicine to treat Parkinson’s disease
  • scientists created induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) from the skin cells of patients and at-risk individuals carrying genetic mutations implicated in Parkinson’s disease
  • used those cells to derive neural cells
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • researchers report that although approximately 15 genetic mutations are linked to forms of Parkinson
  • researchers determined that certain compounds or drugs could reverse some signs of disease in the cultured cells with specific genetic mutations
  • suggest new opportunities for clinical trials of Parkinson’s disease, wherein cell reprogramming technology could be used to identify the patients most likely to respond to a particular intervention
  • this study points the way to screening patients with Parkinson’s for their particular variation of the disease
  • drugs shown effective to work on that variation
Mars Base

Red Bull Stratos Targets Oct. 8 for Record-Setting Freefall Attempt - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...ecord-setting-freefall-attempt

scibyte64 RedBullStratos

shared by Mars Base on 26 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • Mars Base on 26 Sep 12
     
    person to break the sound barrier, alone
Mars Base

Kicksat: Crowd-funded, DIY spacecraft to float into low-Earth orbit - 0 views

phys.org/...-diy-spacecraft-low-earth.html

scibyte74 crowdsourcing

shared by Mars Base on 06 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • It'll look like hundreds of postage stamps fluttering toward Earth—each an independent satellite transmitting a signal unique to the person who helped send it to space
  • Sprites are the size of a cracker but are outfitted with solar cells, a radio transceiver and a microcontroller (
  • launching unit, is a CubeSat
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Using Kickstarter
  • raised nearly $75,000 as more than 300 people sponsored a sprite that will transmit an identifying signal, such as the initials of the donor
  • In 2013, about 250 sprites will be sent into space
  • One person, who donated $10,000, Manchester added, will get to "push the big red button" on the day of the launch.
  • NASA's Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNA) program, which provides a free launch (normally $300,000) for university space research
  • KickSat will hitch a ride in September 2013 (subject to change) from Cape Canaveral on CRS-3, the third SpaceX Falcon 9 flight destined for the International Space Station
  • A large part of the project is helping people track their own satellites with a simple software radio interface
  • From a research standpoint, Manchester is interested in the dynamics and behavior of the satellites, and plans to test how to track their positions and determine their orbits
  • KickSat is set to launch more than 200 of these tiny satellites, nicknamed "sprites," into low-Earth orbit
Mars Base

Could scientists peek into your dreams? (w/ video) - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...2013-04-scientists-peek.html

scibyte89 Dreams

shared by Mars Base on 05 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • small new study suggests
  • Visual experiences you have when dreaming are detectable by the same type of brain activity that occurs when looking at actual images when you're awake
  • The scientists created decoding computer programs based on brain activity measured while wide-awake study participants looked at certain images
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • right after being awakened from the early stages of sleep, the researchers asked the subjects to describe the dream they were having
  • used functional MRI to monitor brain activity of the participants and polysomnography to record the physical changes that occur during sleep
  • compared evidence of brain activity when participants were awake and looking at real images to the brain activity they saw when participants were dreaming
  • the study shows it may be possible to use brain activity patterns to understand something about what a person is dreaming about
  • current approach requires the data of image viewing and sleep within the same [person
  • methods being developed for aligning brain patterns across people
  • there are practical applications to the research
  • evidence suggesting that the pattern of spontaneous brain activity is relevant to health issues
  • researchers chose to awaken the subjects in light sleep rather than in deeper "rapid eye movement" (REM) sleep solely to make the research easier to do
  • it takes at least an hour to reach first REM stage, it would be difficult to get sleep and dream data from multiple participants
  • why it is so hard to remember a dream minutes after waking up
  • thinks it is because particular neurotransmitters or brain regions involved in memory are not active during sleep
  • During sleep and dreaming, part of the brain—the higher visual cortex—is working as if seeing images
  • one expert said the results are intriguing, he was cautious
  • previous disappointments relating brain activity to complex visual experience
  • like to see this replicated
Mars Base

Chipmaker Races to Save Stephen Hawking's Speech as His Condition Deteriorates: Sc... - 0 views

www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm

scibyte80 StephenHawking

shared by Mars Base on 01 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking has long relied on technology to help him connect with the outside world despite the degenerative motor neuron disease he has battled for the past 50 years
  • a highly respected computer scientist indicated at last week’s International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) that he and his team may be close to a breakthrough that could boost the rate at which the physicist communicates, which has fallen to a mere one word per minute in recent years.
  • For the past decade Hawking has used a voluntary twitch of his cheek muscle to compose words and sentences one letter at a time that are expressed through a speech-generation device connected to his computer.
  • ...25 more annotations...
  • Each tweak stops a cursor that continuously scans text on a screen facing the scientist.
  • Intel chief technology officer
  • noted that Hawking can actually make a number of other facial expressions as well that might also be used to speed up the rate at which the physicist conveys his thoughts
  • Even providing Hawking with two inputs would give him the ability to communicate using Morse code
  • Intel has since the late 1990s supplied Hawking with technology to help the scientist express himself
  • The latest chapter in their work together began in late 2011 when Hawking reached out to
  • inform
  • the Intel co-founder and father of Moore’s law that the physicist’s ability to compose text was slowing and inquiring whether Intel could help.
  • met with Hawking early last year around the time of the latter’s 70th birthday celebration in Cambridge, where the Intel CTO was one of the speakers
  • After meeting with Hawking
  • he wondered whether his company’s processor technology could restore the scientist’s ability to communicate at five words per minute, or even increase that rate to 10
  • Intel is now working on a system that can use Hawking’s cheek twitch as well as mouth and eyebrow movements to provide signals to his computer
  • built a new, character-driven interface in modern terms that includes a better word predictor
  • company is also exploring the use of facial-recognition software to create a new user interface for Hawking that would be quicker than selecting individual letters or words
  • A black box beneath his wheelchair contains an audio amplifier, voltage regulators and a USB hardware key that receives the input from an infrared sensor on Hawking’s eyeglasses, which detects changes in light as he twitches his cheek
  • current setup includes a tablet PC with a forward-facing Webcam that he can use to place Skype calls
  • A hardware voice synthesizer sits in another black box on the back of the chair and receives commands from the computer via a USB-based serial port
  • Intel’s work with Hawking is part of the company’s broader research into smart gadgets as well as assistive technologies for the elderly
  • The key to advancing smart devices—which have been at a plateau over the past five or six years—is context awareness
  • Devices will really get to know us the way a friend would, understanding how our facial expressions reflect our mood
  • Intel’s plan for identifying personal context requires a combination of hardware sensors—camera, accelerometer, microphone, thermometer and others
  • with software that can check one’s personal calendar, social networks and Internet browsing habits, to name a few.
  • use this [information] to reason your current context and what's important at any given time [and deliver] pervasive assistance
  • One approach to “pervasive assistance” is the Magic Carpet, a rug that Intel and GE developed with embedded sensors and accelerometers that can record a person’s normal routine and even their gait, sounding an alert when deviations are detected.
  • Such assistance will anticipate our needs, letting us know when we are supposed to be at an appointment and even reminding us to carry enough cash when running certain errands
Mars Base

Study shows red pen use by instructors leads to more negative response - 0 views

phys.org/...ructors-negative-response.html

scibyte79 RedPen

shared by Mars Base on 23 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • Sociologists
  • claim in a paper they've had published
  • that when teachers use a red pen to add comments to student papers, students perceive them more negatively than if they use another color pen
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • the two researchers enlisted the assistance of 199 undergraduate students – each was given four versions of an already graded essay by an unknown instructor
  • graded remarks were deemed as high or low in quality with some written in red, others in blue
  • students were asked to read the essay and the remarks given by the instructor and then to rate how they felt about what the instructor had written and to suggest what grade they would have given the essay
  • also asked how they felt about the instructor that had written the original remarks
  • After they'd finished with their opinions, each was also given a questionnaire designed to provide the researchers with more concrete data.
  • the researchers found that the student volunteers didn't seem to be impacted one way or another by pen color when they agreed with the instructor's comments and grade
  • But when they disagreed, there were definitely some differences – mainly negative
  • When the instructors' comments were written in red versus blue the volunteers judged them more harshly and as a result, rated them lower in "bedside manner."
  • the volunteers didn't seem to judge the quality of the comments any differently – their negative feelings were aimed at the person that had written the remarks when they wrote in red ink
  • theorize that red ink is akin to using all caps when writing e-mail or text messages – it's like shouting at a person
  • those on the other end quite naturally feel a little bit abused and respond by growing angry or sad, which, they note, doesn't really promote the learning process
  • suggest instructors stop using red pens and go with a shade of blue instead
Mars Base

Frequent multitaskers are bad at it: Motorists overrate ability to talk on cell phones ... - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...rs-bad-motorists-overrate.html

scibyte79 multitasking

shared by Mars Base on 24 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • Most people believe they can multitask effectively, but a
  • study indicates that people who multitask the most – including talking on a cell phone while driving – are least capable of doing so.
  • data suggest the people talking on cell phones while driving are people who probably shouldn't. We showed that people who multitask the most are those who appear to be the least capable of multitasking effectively
  • ...22 more annotations...
  • The people who are most likely to multitask harbor the illusion they are better than average at it, when in fact they are no better than average and often worse
  • The study ran 310 undergraduate psychology students through a battery of tests and questionnaires to measure actual multitasking ability, perceived multitasking ability, cell phone use while driving, use of a wide array of electronic media, and personality traits such as impulsivity and sensation-seeking.
  • people who score high on a test of actual multitasking ability tend not to multitask because they are better able to focus attention on the task at hand
  • 70 percent of participants thought they were above average at multitasking, which is statistically impossible
  • The more people multitask by talking on cell phones while driving or by using multiple media at once, the more they lack the actual ability to multitask, and their perceived multitasking ability "was found to be significantly inflated
  • People with high levels of impulsivity and sensation-seeking reported more multitasking
  • there was an exception: People who talk on cell phones while driving tend not to be impulsive, indicating that cell phone use is a deliberate choice
  • research suggests that people who engage in multitasking often do so not because they have the ability, but "because they are less able to block out distractions and focus on a singular task
  • The study participants were 310 University of Utah psychology undergraduates – 176 female and 134 male with a median age of 21 – who volunteered for their department's subject pool in exchange for extra course credit.
  • To measure actual multitasking ability, participants performed a test named Operation Span, or OSPAN.
  • The test involves two tasks: memorization and math computation
  • Participants must remember two to seven letters, each separated by a math equation that they must identify as true or false
  • A simple example of a question: "is 2+4=6?, g, is 3-2=2?, a, is 4x3=12." Answer: true, g, false, a, true.
  • Participants also ranked their perceptions of their own multitasking ability by giving themselves a score ranging from zero to 100, with 50 percent meaning average.
  • Study subjects reported how often they used a cell phone while driving, and what percentage of the time they are on the phone while driving
  • also completed a survey of how often and for how many hours they use which media, including printed material, television and video, computer video, music, nonmusic audio, video games, phone, instant and text messaging, e-mail, the Web and other computer software such as word processing
  • researchers looked for significant correlations among results of the various tests and questionnaires
  • people who multitask the most tend to be impulsive, sensation-seeking, overconfident of their multitasking abilities, and they tend to be less capable of multitasking
  • 25 percent of the people who performed best on the OSPAN test of multitasking ability "are the people who are least likely to multitask and are most likely to do one thing at a time
  • 70 percent of participants said they were above-average at multitasking, and they were more likely to multitask
  • Media multitasking – except cell phone use while driving – correlated significantly with impulsivity, particularly the inability to concentrate and acting without thinking.
  • Multitasking, including cell phone use while driving, correlated significantly with sensation-seeking, indicating some people multitask because it is more stimulating, interesting and challenging, and less boring – even if it may hurt their overall performance
Mars Base

Game on! Researchers use online crowd-sourcing to diagnose malaria - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...ne-crowd-sourcing-malaria.html

scibyte45 crowdsourcing medical

shared by Mars Base on 03 May 12 - No Cached
  • Online crowd-sourcing — in which a task is presented to the public, who respond, for free, with various solutions and suggestions — has been used to evaluate potential consumer products, develop software algorithms and solve vexing research-and-development challenges. But diagnosing infectious diseases
  • crowd-sourced online gaming system in which players distinguish malaria-infected red blood cells from healthy ones by viewing digital images obtained from microscopes.
  • recognize infectious diseases with the accuracy of trained pathologists
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science
  • Working on the assumption that large groups of public non-experts can be trained to recognize infectious diseases with the accuracy of trained pathologists
  • School of Medicine at UCLA
  • found that a small group of non-experts playing the game (mostly undergraduate student volunteers) was collectively able to diagnosis malaria-infected red blood cells with an accuracy that was within 1.25 percent of the diagnostic decisions made by a trained medical professional.
  • The game, which can be accessed on cell phones and personal computers, can be played by anyone around the world, including children
  • if you carefully combine the decisions of people — even non-experts — they become very competitive
  • if you just look at one person's response, it may be OK, but that one person will inevitably make some mistakes. But if you combine 10 to 20, maybe 50 non-expert gamers together, you improve your accuracy greatly in terms of analysis
  • could potentially help overcome limitations in the diagnosis of malaria
  • current gold standard for malaria diagnosis involves a trained pathologist using a conventional light microscope to view images of cells and count the number of malaria-causing parasites
  • process is very time-consuming, and given the large number of cases in resource-poor countries, the sheer volume presents a big challenge
  • significant portion of cases reported in sub-Sahara Africa are actually false positives, leading to unnecessary and costly treatments and hospitalizations
  • t the same platform could be applied to combine the decisions of minimally trained health care workers to significantly boost the accuracy of diagnosis, which is especially promising for telepathology, among other telemedicine field
  • By training hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of members of the public to identify malaria through UCLA's crowd-sourced game, a much greater number of diagnoses could be made more quickly — at no cost and with a high degree of collective accurac
  • research group created an automated algorithm for diagnosing the same images using computer vision, as well as a novel hybrid platform for combining human and machine resources toward efficient, accurate and remote diagnosis of malaria.
  • Before playing the game, each player is given a brief online tutorial and an explanation of what malaria-infected red blood cells typically look like using sample images
  • one of the major challenges will be the skepticism of traditional microscopists, pathologists and clinical laboratory personnel, not to mention malaria experts, who will initially view with suspicion a gaming approach in malaria diagnostics
Mars Base

Mars-Bound NASA Rover Carries Coin for Camera Checkup - NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory - 0 views

www.jpl.nasa.gov/...news.cfm

scibyte33

shared by Mars Base on 09 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • Mars Base on 09 Feb 12
     
    instruments. The spacecraft, launched Nov. 26, 2011, will deliver Curiosity to a landing site inside Mars' Gale Crater in August to begin a two-year investigation of whether that area has ever offered an environment favorable for microbial life. The "hand lens" in MAHLI's name refers to field geologists' practice of carrying a hand lens for close inspection of rocks they find. When shooting photos in the field, geologists use various calibration methods. "When a geologist takes pictures of rock outcrops she is studying, she wants an object of known scale in the photographs," said MAHLI Principal Investigator Ken Edgett, of Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego. "If it is a whole cliff face, she'll ask a person to stand in the shot. If it is a view from a meter or so away, she might use a rock hammer. If it is a close-up, as the MAHLI can take, she might pull something small out of her pocket. Like a penny."
Mars Base

Student's 'emergency stretcher' invention could prove a lifesaver - 0 views

phys.org/...gency-stretcher-lifesaver.html

scibyte51 MedicalDevice StudentDesign

shared by Mars Base on 13 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • The Rapid Evacuation Stretcher (RES) device was created by Craig Ball as a final year project for his BA
  • talked to firefighters at Shropshire Fire and Rescue Service
  • , before designing
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • returned with the prototype stretcher, which is fitted with carry handles, so its officers could suggest further practical improvements
  • idea is that the rolled-up RES could be strapped up alongside the firefighter's breathing apparatus
  • two-person team enter a building
  • the RES could be unrolled and secured around the injured person
  • product as far as I can as a degree project, fashioning it in the same heat resistant materials the fire services use
Mars Base

Casual marijuana use linked to brain abnormalities in students - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...inked-brain-abnormalities.html

scibyte127 marijuana

shared by Mars Base on 19 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • Young adults who used marijuana only recreationally showed significant abnormalities in two key brain regions that are important in emotion and motivation
  • This is the first study to show casual use of marijuana is related to major brain changes
  • the degree of brain abnormalities in these regions is directly related to the number of joints a person smoked per week
  • ...19 more annotations...
  • The more joints a person smoked, the more abnormal the shape, volume and density of the brain regions
  • Some of these people only used marijuana to get high once or twice a week
  • think a little recreational use shouldn't cause a problem
  • data directly says this is not the case
  • Scientists examined the nucleus accumbens and the amygdala—key regions for emotion and motivation, and associated with addiction—in the brains of casual marijuana users and non-users
  • chers analyzed three measures: volume, shape and density of grey matter
  • to obtain a comprehensive view of how each region was affected.
  • Both these regions in recreational pot users were abnormally altered for at least two of these structural measures
  • The degree of those alterations was directly related to how much marijuana the subjects used
  • Through different methods of neuroimaging, scientists examined the brains of young adults
  • ages 18 to 25, from Boston-area colleges; 20 who smoked marijuana and 20 who didn't. Each group had nine males and 11 females
  • The users underwent a psychiatric interview to confirm they were not dependent on marijuana
  • The changes in brain structures indicate the marijuana users' brains are adapting to low-level exposure to marijuana
  • The study results fit with animal studies that show when rats are given tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) their brains rewire and form many new connections. THC is the mind-altering ingredient found in marijuana
  • think when people are in the process of becoming addicted, their brains form these new connections
  • In animals, these new connections indicate the brain is adapting to the unnatural level of reward and stimulation from marijuana. These connections make other natural rewards less satisfying
  • The brain changes suggest that structural changes to the brain are an important early result of casual drug use
  • researchers did not know the THC content of the marijuana, which can range from 5 to 9 percent or even higher
  • The THC content is much higher today than the marijuana during the 1960s and 1970s, which was often about 1 to 3 percent
Mars Base

Could Chance for Life on Gliese 581g Actually Be "100%"? - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...on-gliese-581g-actually-be-100

scibyte135 exoplanet

shared by Mars Base on 05 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • quotes from one of the scientists involved in the discovery
  • “Personally, given the ubiquity and propensity of life to flourish wherever it can, I would say, my own personal feeling is that the chances of life on this planet are 100 percent,”
  • . “I have almost no doubt about it.”
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • discovery of the closest Earth-sized planet found so far that also exists in the habitable zone
  • September 30, 2010
  • it was phrased unfortunately, and the media have jumped on it, of course
Mars Base

Astronauts Hail Skydiver Felix Baumgartner's Record-Breaking Supersonic Jump | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/eaction-felix-baumgartner.html

scibyte67 RedBullStratos

shared by Mars Base on 15 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • " I didn't feel a sonic boom because I was so busy just trying to stabilize myself,"
  • went into a tough spin at the jump's beginning. "It was really a lot harder than I thought it was going to be.
  • Several NASA and ESA astronauts
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • noted that the skydiver was the fourth-highest person near Earth, beat only by the three astronauts living on the International Space Station,
Mars Base

Reseachers develop holographic technique for bionic vision - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...c-technique-bionic-vision.html

scibyte84 BionicEye

shared by Mars Base on 27 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Researchers
  • are testing the power of holography to artificially stimulate cells in the eye, with hopes of developing a new strategy for bionic vision restoration
  • optogenetics
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • uses gene therapy to deliver light-sensitive proteins to damaged retinal nerve cells
  • The basic idea of optogenetics is to take a light-sensitive protein from another organism, typically from algae or bacteria, and insert it into a target cell, and that photosensitizes the cell
  • Intense pulses of light can activate nerve cells newly sensitized by this gene therapy approach
  • researchers around the world are still searching for the best way to deliver the light patterns so that the retina "sees" or responds in a nearly normal way
  • The plan is to someday develop a prosthetic headset or eyepiece that a person could wear to translate visual scenes into patterns of light that stimulate the genetically altered cells.
  • The key, they say, is to use a light stimulus that is intense, precise, and can trigger activity across a variety of cells all at once.
  • The researchers turned to holography after exploring other options, including laser deflectors and digital displays
  • Digital light displays can stimulate many nerve cells at once, "but they have low light intensity and very low light efficiency
  • The genetically repaired cells are less sensitive to light than normal healthy retinal cells, so they preferably need a bright light source like a laser to be activated
  • Lasers give intensity, but they can't give the parallel projection
  • needed to see a complete picture
  • researchers have tested the potential of holographic stimulation in retinal cells in the lab
  • done some preliminary work with the technology in living mice with damaged retinal cells
  • The experiments show that holography can provide reliable and simultaneous stimulation of multiple cells at millisecond speeds.
  • implementing a holographic prosthesis in humans is far in the future
  • holography itself "also provides a very interesting path toward three-dimensional stimulation
Mars Base

Science Retractions: Top 5 Withdrawn Studies Of 2012 - 0 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...ithdrawn-papers_n_2353421.html

scibyte76 Retraction

shared by Mars Base on 01 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • Hyung-In Moon is a genius, says Hyung-In Moon
  • Korean scientist Hyung-In Moon took the concept of scientific peer review to a whole new level by reviewing his own papers under various fake names
  • Moon's research — which included a study on alcoholic liver disease and another on an anticancer plant substance — can't be trusted
  • ...33 more annotations...
  • admitted to falsifying data in some of his papers
  • , 35 of his papers have been retracted in 2012.
  • Peer review is a process in which scientific peers in the same field judge the merit of a submitted journal paper
  • editors at the Journal of Enzyme Inhibition and Medicinal Chemistry grew suspicious when four of his glowing reviews came back within 24 hours. Anyone who has ever submitted a paper for peer review knows that reviewers take weeks or months to reply
  • Math paper a big, fat zero
  • "In this study, a computer application was used to solve a mathematical problem"
  • Neither the one-sentence abstract
  • nor the co-author's e-mail address, ohm@budweiser.com
  • publishing this one-page gem entitled "A computer application in mathematics"
  • published in January 2010 but not retracted until April 2012, despite silly sentences such as "Computer magnification is a Universal computer phenomenon" and "This is a problematic problem."
  • retracted the paper because it "contains no scientific content." The editors chalked it up to "an administrative error
  • Maybe his failure doesn't feel better than success
  • The Dutch social psychologist Diederik Stapel
  • has found that,
  • failure sometimes feels better than success
  • The only problem is that his research appears to be either mostly or completely fabricated
  • work has appeared in top journals
  • his good looks and clever research topics made him a media darling
  • So far, 31 papers have been retracted
  • meat eaters are absolved: One of Stapel's studies, now suspected to be fabricated, found that meat eaters are more selfish and less social than vegetarians
  • Studies proposing a link between cellphone use and cancer often rely on weak statistics. This one just used fudged data
  • in 2008, scientists published a paper
  • stating that cellphones in standby mode lowered the sperm count and caused other adverse changes in the testicles of rabbits
  • although small and published in a rather obscure journal, made the news rounds.
  • In March 2012, the authors retracted the paper
  • the lead author didn't get permission from his two co-authors and, according to the retraction notice, there was a "lack of evidence to justify the accuracy of the data presented in the article."
  • Stem-cell cure for heart disease likely faked
  • biologist Shinya Yamanaka had just won the 2012 Nobel Prize for his discovery of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells), which are adult cells that can be reprogrammed to their "embryonic" stage
  • claimed at a New York Stem Cell Foundation meeting in early October to have advanced this technology to cure a person with terminal heart failure
  • Two institutions listed as collaborating on Moriguchi's related papers
  • denied that any of Moriguchi's procedures took place there
  • origuchi has admitted only to making some "procedural" mistakes
  • He is sticking to his story, however, that one patient was cured … at a Boston hospital not yet named
Mars Base

NASA Wants To Send Your Haiku To Mars | Popular Science - 0 views

www.popsci.com/...asa-wants-send-your-haiku-mars

scibyte93 MarsHaiku

shared by Mars Base on 03 May 13 - No Cached
  • Any Earthling can submit a haiku about Mars by July 1—the DVD will include the name of each person who sends a poem, but only the three most popular haikus will eventually orbit the red planet.
  • NASA launches the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft in November, it wants to pack onboard a DVD containing three poetic messages
  • Starting July 15, an online public vote will open to select the three top haikus.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • NASA's MAVEN mission will be the first mission devoted to studying the Martian upper atmosphere
  • gather information that should help scientists figure out what happened to the atmosphere and water that once existed on Mars
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