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Mars Base

Scientists analyse global Twitter gossip around Higgs boson discovery - 0 views

phys.org/...yse-global-twitter-gossip.html

scibyte79 twitter

shared by Mars Base on 23 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • A model of the spread of gossip on Twitter prior to the Higgs boson discovery announcement
  • For the first time scientists have been able to analyse the dynamics of social media on a global scale before, during and after the announcement of a major scientific discovery.
  • According to the analysed data, the rumours that the Higgs boson had been discovered started around 1st July 2012
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • one day before the announcement at Tevatron, and three days before the official announcement from CERN on 4th July.
  • research shows that rumours started to spread on Twitter firstly in the USA, UK, Spain, Canada, Australia, as well as Italy, France, Switzerland and Germany, all countries with strong scientific connections to the experiments at the LHC.
  • Other researchers on the project are also interested in how information spreads on social media
  • how messages can be placed and controlled. 'If you can understand the dynamics of an event, you can try to control it, and keep the interest in the topic going
  • This is really useful for practical applications such as marketing
  • For example if you want to run a global marketing campaign you can identify key people on social media to help you to spread your message
  • Once you have identified these key advocates, you can change and steer the message in a different direction, potentially modifying opinions of millions of people
  • Videos of the rumours spreading
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

NASA's Opportunity Rover Begins Year 10 on Mars | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/over-opportunity-year-ten.html

scibyte79 opportunity

shared by Mars Base on 24 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • NASA's Opportunity rover landed on Mars the night of Jan. 24, 2004 PST (just after midnight EST on Jan. 25), three weeks after its twin, Spirit, touched down
  • irit stopped operating in 2010, but Opportunity is still going strong
  • The car-size Curiosity weighs about 1 ton — five times more than either Spirit or Opportunity.
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  • Spirit and Opportunity were originally supposed to spend three months searching for evidence of past water activity on the Red Planet
  • The golf-cart-size robots found plenty of such signs at their separate landing sites, showing that Mars was not always the cold and arid planet we know today
  • in 2007 Spirit uncovered an ancient hydrothermal system in Gusev Crater, suggesting that two key ingredients for life as we know it — liquid water and an energy source — were both present in some parts of Mars long ago
  • Opportunity is currently inspecting clay deposits along the rim of Mars' huge Endeavour Crater. Clays form in relatively neutral (as opposed to acidic or basic) water, so the area may once have been capable of supporting primitive microbial life
  • Spirit finally stopped communicating with Earth in March 2010, after getting mired in soft sand and failing to maneuver into a position that would allow it to slant its solar panels toward the sun over the 2009-2010 Martian winter. NASA declared the rover dead in 2011
  • Opportunity keeps chugging along. It has put 22.03 miles (35.46 kilometers) on its odometer since landing on Mars
  • just 1 mile (1.6 km) off the all-time record for most ground covered on the surface of another world
  • Soviet Union's unmanned Lunokhod 2 rover holds that mark, traveling 23 miles (37 km) on the moon back in 1973
Mars Base

Distance Traveled, Extraterrestrial Vehicles | Wheeled Vehicles, Moon & Mars | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/es-driven-on-other-worlds.html

scibyte79 opportunity

shared by Mars Base on 24 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • So far, robotic rovers have reached out to the moon and Mars, with astronauts actually driving a lunar car on the moon during NASA's Apollo program
  • Leading the pack is an oldie of a space mission: the Soviet-era Lunakhod 2. This huge moon rover drove 23 miles (37 kilometers) on the moon during its 1973 mission and is currently the world champion for off-world driving, winning the gold medal
  • In second place
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  • is NASA's Apollo 17 moon rover, which was driven by astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt in 1972
  • 22.3 miles (35.89 km) during their mission, which was the last moon landing of NASA's Apollo program.
  • bronze medal for space driving goes to NASA's Mars rover Opportunity,
  • driving across the plains of Meridiani Planum on the Red Planet since 2004
  • Opportunity has driven more than 22.03 miles (35.46 km) and is still going today.
  • The latest to enter the race is Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity, which is just getting started with only 0.4 mile (0.7 km) traveled so far.
Mars Base

Megapixels: Car Airbags That Could Save A Cyclist's Life | Popular Science - 0 views

www.popsci.com/...at-could-save-a-cyclists-life+

scibyte79 AirBags

shared by Mars Base on 22 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • In the United States, only 1 percent of trips are made by bicycle
  • In the Netherlands, which has only 1/18 of the U.S.’s population, that number is close to 26 percent
  • With so many bikes on the road, Dutch company
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • is working on a car airbag that deploys outside the vehicle to reduce bicyclist injuries
  • Upon impact, the airbag, housed under the hood, inflates to cover parts of the windshield and cushion a biker
  • In tests last November, engineers drove a track-guided car into a dummy on a bike at 25 mph, the average speed of a crash
  • Accelerometers in the dummy’s head and neck and pressure sensors embedded in its limbs indicated brain damage and broken bones
  • Dummies in collisions with the airbag had fewer and less severe injuries up to 45 percent of the time
Mars Base

Curiosity's Robotic Arm Camera Snaps 1st Night Images - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...-camera-snaps-1st-night-images

scibyte79 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 25 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • This image of a Martian rock illuminated by white-light LEDs (light emitting diodes) is part of the first set of nighttime images taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera at the end of the robotic arm of NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity
  • image was taken on Jan. 22, 2013, after dark on Sol 165. It covers an area about 1.3 inches by 1 inch (3.4 by 2.5 centimeters
  • The Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera is located on the tool turret at the end of Curiosity’s 7 foot (2.1 m) long robotic arm
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  • Curiosity’s high resolution robotic arm camera has just snapped the 1st set of night time images of a Martian rock of the now 5 1/2 month long mission – using illumination from ultraviolet and white light emitting LED’s.
  • the close-up images of a rock target named “Sayunei” on Jan. 22 (Sol 165), located near the front-left wheel after the rover had driven over and scuffed the area to break up rocks in an effort to try and expose fresh material, free of obscuring dust
  • image of a Martian rock illuminated by ultraviolet LEDs
  • is part of the first set of nighttime images taken by the MAHLI camera on the robotic arm.
  • It covers an area about 1.3 inches by 1 inch (3.4 by 2.5 centimeters).
  • The purpose of acquiring observations under ultraviolet illumination was to look for fluorescent minerals
  • If something looked green, yellow, orange or red under the ultraviolet illumination, that’d be a more clear-cut indicator of fluorescence
Mars Base

Star Trek's 'tractor' beam created in miniature by researchers - 0 views

phys.org/...ar-trek-tractor-miniature.html

scibyte79 TractorBeam

shared by Mars Base on 25 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • Although light manipulation techniques have existed since the 1970s, this is the first time a light beam has been used to draw objects towards the light source, albeit at a microscopic level.
  • Researchers
  • have found a way to generate a special optical field that efficiently reverses radiation pressure of light.
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  • The new technique could lead to more efficient medical testing, such as in the examination of blood samples
  • The team
  • discovered a technique which will allow them to provide 'negative' force acting upon minuscule particles
  • Normally when matter and light interact the solid object is pushed by the light and carried away in the stream of photons
  • Such radiation force was first identified by Johanes Kepler when observing that tails of comets point away from the sun
  • Over recent years researchers have realised that while this is the case for most of the optical fields, there is a space of parameters when this force reverses.
  • scientists
  • have now demonstrated the first experimental realisation of this concept together with a number of exciting applications for bio-medical photonics and other disciplines
  • The exciting aspect is that the occurrence of negative force is very specific to the properties of the object, such as size and composition
  • allows optical sorting of micro-objects in a simple and inexpensive device
  • optical fractionation has been identified as one of the most promising bio-medical applications of optical manipulation allowing
  • scientists identified certain conditions, in which objects held by the "tractor" beam force-field, re-arranged themselves to form a structure which made the beam even stronger
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
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  • 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
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