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thinkahol *

How your memories can be twisted under social pressure | KurzweilAI - 1 views

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    Listen up, Facebook and Twitter groupies: how easily can social pressure affect your memory? Very easily, researchers at the Weizmann Institute and University College London have proved, and they think they even know what part of the brain is responsible. The participants conformed to the group on these "planted" responses, giving incorrect answers nearly 70% of the time. Volunteers watched a documentary film in small groups. Three days later, they returned to the lab individually to take a memory test, answering questions about the film. They were also asked how confident they were in their answers. They were later invited back to the lab to retake the test. This time, the subjects were also given supposed answers of the others in their film-viewing group (along with social-media-style photos) while being scanned in a functional MRI (fMRI) that revealed their brain activity. Is most of what you know false? Planted among these were false answers to questions the volunteers had previously answered correctly and confidently. The participants conformed to the group on these "planted" responses, giving incorrect answers nearly 70% of the time. To determine if their memory of the film had actually undergone a change, the researchers invited the subjects back to the lab later to take the memory test once again, telling them that the answers they had previously been fed were not those of their fellow film watchers, but random computer generations. Some of the responses reverted back to the original, correct ones, but get this: despite finding out the scientists messed with their minds, close to half of their responses remained erroneous, implying that the subjects were relying on false memories implanted in the earlier session. An analysis of the fMRI data showed a strong co-activation and connectivity between two brain areas: the hippocampus and the amygdala. Social reinforcement could act on the amygdala to persuade our brains to replace a strong memory wi
Skeptical Debunker

New Rocket Engine Could Reach Mars in 40 Days - Yahoo! News - 0 views

  • A mission trajectory study estimated that a VASIMR-powered spacecraft could reach the red planet within 40 days if it had a 200 megawatt power source. That's 1,000 times more power than what the current VASIMR prototype will use, although Ad Astra says that VASIMR can scale up to higher power sources. The real problem rests with current limitations in space power sources. Glover estimates that the Mars mission scenario would need a power source that can produce one kilowatt (kW) of power per kilogram (kg) of mass, or else the spacecraft could never reach the speeds required for a quick trip. Existing power sources fall woefully short of that ideal. Solar panels have a mass to power ratio of 20 kg/kW. The Pentagon's DARPA science lab hopes to develop solar panels that can achieve 7 kg/KW, and stretched lens arrays might reach 3 kg/KW, Glover said. That's good enough for VASIMR to transport cargo around low-Earth orbit and to the moon, but not to fly humans to Mars. Ad Astra sees nuclear power as the likeliest power source for a VASIMR-powered Mars mission, but the nuclear reactor that could do the job remains just a concept on paper. The U.S. only ever launched one nuclear reactor into space back in 1965, and it achieved just 50 kg/kW.
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    Future Mars outposts or colonies may seem more distant than ever with NASA's exploration plans in flux, but the rocket technology that could someday propel a human mission to the red planet in as little as 40 days may already exist. A company founded by former NASA astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz has been developing a new rocket engine that draws upon electric power and magnetic fields to channel superheated plasma out the back. That stream of plasma generates steady, efficient thrust that uses low amounts of propellant and builds up speed over time. "People have known for a long time, even back in the '50s, that electric propulsion would be needed for serious exploration of Mars," said Tim Glover, director of development at the Ad Astra Rocket Company.
thinkahol *

Graphene may reveal the grain of space-time - physics-math - 13 May 2011 - New Scientist - 1 views

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    COULD the structure of space and time be sketched out inside a cousin of plain old pencil lead? The atomic grid of graphene may mimic a lattice underlying reality, two physicists have claimed, an idea that could explain the curious spin of the electron. Graphene is an atom-thick layer of carbon in a hexagonal formation. Depending on its position in this grid, an electron can adopt either of two quantum states - a property called pseudospin which is mathematically akin to the intrinsic spin of an electron. Most physicists do not think it is true spin, but Chris Regan at the University of California, Los Angeles, disagrees. He cites work with carbon nanotubes (rolled up sheets of graphene) in the late 1990s, in which electrons were found to be reluctant to bounce back off these obstacles. Regan and his colleague Matthew Mecklenburg say this can be explained if a tricky change in spin is required to reverse direction. Their quantum model of graphene backs that up. The spin arises from the way electrons hop between atoms in graphene's lattice, says Regan. So how about the electron's intrinsic spin? It cannot be a rotation in the ordinary sense, as electrons are point particles with no radius and no innards. Instead, like pseudospin, it might come from a lattice pattern in space-time itself, says Regan. This echoes some attempts to unify quantum mechanics with gravity in which space-time is built out of tiny pieces or fundamental networks (Physical Review Letters, vol 106, p 116803). Sergei Sharapov of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in Kiev says that the work provides an interesting angle on how electrons and other particles acquire spin, but he is doubtful how far the analogy can be pushed. Regan admits that moving from the flatland world of graphene to higher-dimensional space is tricky. "It will be interesting to see if there are other lattices that give emergent spin," he says.
Charles Daney

Fossils Push Back Earliest Complex Animals 40 Million Years | Wired.com - 1 views

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    A series of fossils unearthed in southwestern China has revealed the origins of complex life in unprecedented detail, and pushed its beginning back by at least 40 million years. The specimens come from the Doushantuo formation, a layer of sediments deposited about 590 million years ago, just before the Ediacaran period's primordial fauna gave way to the kaleidoscopically complex creatures of the Cambrian explosion.
Dave James

Easiest And Ideal Fiscal Backing Without Any Issues - 0 views

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    To acquire monetary hold up without following irritate paperwork and faxing it would be suitable to use the same day loans at the cash crisis time. These loans are immense arrangement for those borrowers who are agreeable to go through receiving irritate free monetary backing within round the clock through online medium.
Vanshika Jain

Online Vashikaran mantra for ex back - 0 views

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    vashikaran for lost love is service by our astrologer for needy couple who lost their love just cause of some misunderstandings and wants to get back their love
Janos Haits

TELEIOS | Virtual Observatory Infrastructure for Earth Observation Data - 0 views

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    Earth observation data have increased considerably over the last decades with satellite sensors collecting and transmitting back to Earth several terabytes of data per day. This data acquisition rate is a major challenge to existing data management, exploitation and dissemination approaches used by various agencies such as ESA, NASA and European national space agencies. To make the available petabytes of EO data easily accessible by an even larger group of end user applications, TELEIOS will design and implement a Virtual Earth Observatory by building on the following state of the art technologies:
Erich Feldmeier

About us · Sense about Science - 0 views

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    "Our ethos: We help people make sense of current discussions rather than taking them back to school We stand up for scientific inquiry, free from stigma, intimidation, hysteria or censorship We want everyone, whatever their experience, to stand up for evidence in public life"
Erich Feldmeier

Ben Young Landis How Twitter Amplifies Your Reach: Example from the "School o... - 0 views

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    "My link was shared by Bora Zivkovic, whose network is immense. And in turn, the link was shared by Twitter users in Greece, Germany, Belgium and throughout the United States. In the end, the blogpost wound up with 109 readers on January 22nd - with about 50 via Twitter, 26 via Facebook, and others via LinkedIn and elsewhere. When each person shared the link with her or his network, the momentum is carried forward, pushing out to new networks and new degrees of separation. Social sharing is a bit like the emails you would get forwarded by your relatives (you know, those emails). The deeper you scroll down the thread, the less sender names you recognize. But with Twitter, and using analytics like WordPress or Google, you can actually trace how a little link travels through different social networks, and eventually back to your website. Also, because many people embed a small bio or website link in their Twitter profile, I can quickly see who has retweeted and read my link. I can read their tweets to get an idea of their profession and passions,"
Vanshika Jain

Want to get your lost love back? – blackmagicvashikaranguru - 0 views

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    Love is a pretty or beautiful relationship when people fall in love they truly dedicated with each other or the want to spend their life with their love partner. Generally, in all the relationship …
Janos Haits

SETILive - 0 views

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    SETILive is taking the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) directly to you by presenting radio frequency signals LIVE from the SETI Institute's Allen Telescope Array (ATA) while it's pointed at stars that, based on Kepler exoplanet discoveries, have the best chances of being home to an alien civilization. We'll also be putting you "in the loop" where if enough of you see a potential extraterrestrial (ET) signal in the same data, then within minutes, the ATA will be interrupted and sent back to take a second look. The data you see will be from frequencies where human-made Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) crowds them and we believe the human eye will have a better chance than SETI's computer algorithms to find ET signals there.
Erich Feldmeier

@PeterSpork #epigenetik #sleep BBC News - How much can an extra hour's sleep change you? - 0 views

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    Dr Simon Archer and his team at Surrey University were particularly interested in looking at the genes that were switched on or off in our volunteers by changes in the amount that we had made them sleep. "We found that overall there were around 500 genes that were affected," Archer explained. "Some which were going up, and some which were going down." What they discovered is that when the volunteers cut back from seven-and-a-half to six-and-a-half hours' sleep a night, genes that are associated with processes like inflammation, immune response and response to stress became more active. The team also saw increases in the activity of genes associated with diabetes and risk of cancer. The reverse happened when the volunteers added an hour of sleep. So the clear message from this experiment was that if you are getting less than seven hours' sleep a night and can alter your sleep habits, even just a little bit, it could make you healthier
Erich Feldmeier

@5SeenGeno @biogarage Randy Oliver Scientific Beekeeping - 0 views

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    "In short, this site is a record of my learning process as I try to understand aspects of colony health and productivity, and the reasons why various management techniques work (or don't). If you are a beginning beekeeper looking for basic information, or an experienced beekeeper looking for a summary of mite treatment options, I suggest that you go directly to Basic Beekeeping. I started keeping bees as a hobbyist in 1967, and then went on to get university degrees in biological sciences, specializing in entomology. In 1980 I began to build a migratory beekeeping operation in California, and currently run about 1000 hives with my two sons, from which we make our livings. In 1993, the varroa mite arrived in California, and after it wiped out my operation for the second time in 1999, I decided to "hit the books" and use my scientific background to learn to fight back"
Erich Feldmeier

Bioengineered kidney makes urine - tissueengineering YouTube - 0 views

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    Harald Ott: Scientists at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston have created a bioengineered kidney that can be transplanted back into a rat, where it begins making urine"
Ivan Pavlov

Did a hyper-black hole spawn the Universe? : Nature News & Comment - 0 views

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    In our Universe, a black hole is bounded by a spherical surface called an event horizon. Whereas in ordinary three-dimensional space it takes a two-dimensional object (a surface) to create a boundary inside a black hole, in the bulk universe the event horizon of a 4D black hole would be a 3D object - a shape called a hypersphere. When Afshordi's team modelled the death of a 4D star, they found that the ejected material would form a 3D brane surrounding that 3D event horizon, and slowly expand. The authors postulate that the 3D Universe we live in might be just such a brane - and that we detect the brane's growth as cosmic expansion. "Astronomers measured that expansion and extrapolated back that the Universe must have begun with a Big Bang - but that is just a mirage," says Afshordi.
Janos Haits

WWF Species Tracker - All species - - 0 views

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    "WWF supports research on wildlife populations throughout the Arctic and around the world. Using radio devices, which transmit location data by satellite, researchers can follow individual animals to learn more about their habitats, behaviour and migration patterns. The researchers share this data with WWF regularly, so check back often to see where the animals are going!"
Dave James

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thinkahol *

The Creativity Crisis - Newsweek - 0 views

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    Back in 1958, Ted Schwarzrock was an 8-year-old third grader when he became one of the "Torrance kids," a group of nearly 400 Minneapolis children who completed a series of creativity tasks newly designed by professor E. Paul Torrance. Schwarzrock still vividly remembers the moment when a psychologist handed him a fire truck and asked, "How could you improve this toy to make it better and more fun to play with?"
thinkahol *

Short Sharp Science: Today on New Scientist: 13 October 2010 - 0 views

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    The universe bounces back, & robots fight humans: Today on New Scientist: stories from 13 October 2010
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