Rick Kaiser

"MOST neuroscientists, philosophers of the mind and science journalists feel the time is near when we will be able to explain the mystery of human consciousness in terms of the activity of the brain. There is, however, a vocal minority of neurosceptics who contest this orthodoxy. Among them are those who focus on claims neuroscience makes about the preciseness of correlations between indirectly observed neural activity and different mental functions, states or experiences." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

"Our failure to explain consciousness in terms of neural activity inside the brain inside the skull is not due to technical limitations which can be overcome. It is due to the self-contradictory nature of the task, of which the failure to explain "aboutness", the unity and multiplicity of our awareness, the explicit presence of the past, the initiation of actions, the construction of... more... - Rick Kaiser

I'm not buying the most in "MOST neuroscientists, philosophers of the mind and science journalists feel the time is near when we will be able to explain the mystery of human consciousness in terms of the activity of the brain." I go back to the poster who put the "No One Knows What the F**! They're Doing" article here. http://jangosteve.com/post... - topernic

"WHEN, in 2001, the human genome was sequenced for the first time, we were confronted by several surprises. One was the sheer lack of genes: where we had anticipated perhaps 100,000 there were actually as few as 20,000. A bigger surprise came from analysis of the genetic sequences, which revealed that these genes made up a mere 1.5 per cent of the genome. This is dwarfed by DNA deriving from viruses, which amounts to roughly 9 per cent. On top of that, huge chunks of the genome are made up of mysterious virus-like entities called retrotransposons, pieces of selfish DNA that appear to serve no function other than to make copies of themselves. These account for no less than 34 per cent of our genome. All in all, the virus-like components of the human genome amount to almost half of our DNA. This would once have been dismissed as mere "junk DNA", but we now know that some of it plays a critical role in our biology. As to the origins and function of the rest, we simply do not know." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

Good article, thanks. I had to "zotero" that one. - topernic

"Much of modern ADHD research has focused on heritability of the condition, and indeed evidence suggests that genes may account for as much as 70 percent of hyperactivity and inattention in children. But that leaves 30 percent unexplained, so recently the focus has shifted to the environment. What is it that triggers an underlying susceptibility and changes it into a full-blown disorder? New research suggests that the culprit may be an old villain—lead—and what’s more it explains the causal pathway from exposure to disability." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

"This was just a theory until quite recently, but two recent studies now provide strong evidence. The first study compared children formally diagnosed with ADHD to controls, and found that the children with the disorder had slightly higher levels of lead in their blood. This study showed a link only between blood lead and hyperactivity/impulsivity symptoms, not inattention. But a second... more... - Rick Kaiser

" Verlinde's work offers an alternative way of looking at the problem. "I am convinced now, gravity is a phenomenon emerging from the fundamental properties of space and time," he says. To understand what Verlinde is proposing, consider the concept of fluidity in water. Individual molecules have no fluidity, but collectively they do. Similarly, the force of gravity is not something ingrained in matter itself. It is an extra physical effect, emerging from the interplay of mass, time and space, says Verlinde. His idea of gravity as an "entropic force" is based on these first principles of thermodynamics - but works within an exotic description of space-time called holography. " - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

Funny, this remind me of a hunch I "proposed" to a physics student, many years back: That gravity is some kind of opposite of entropy. Under circumstances, I can imagine, even if the universe dies a "heat death" some order will remain. That would as least provide me with some consolation, albeit bittersweet. Maybe diamonds are forever, after all. - Meryn Stol

"The solar system is passing through an interstellar cloud that physics says should not exist. In the Dec. 24th issue of Nature, a team of scientists reveal how NASA's Voyager spacecraft have solved the mystery. "Using data from Voyager, we have discovered a strong magnetic field just outside the solar system," explains lead author Merav Opher, a NASA Heliophysics Guest Investigator from George Mason University. "This magnetic field holds the interstellar cloud together and solves the long-standing puzzle of how it can exist at all." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

"Astronomers call the cloud we're running into now the Local Interstellar Cloud or "Local Fluff" for short. It's about 30 light years wide and contains a wispy mixture of hydrogen and helium atoms at a temperature of 6000 C. The existential mystery of the Fluff has to do with its surroundings. About 10 million years ago, a cluster of supernovas exploded nearby, creating a giant bubble... more... - Rick Kaiser

"By far the most interesting of the Chinese political philosophers were the Taoists, founded by the immensely important but shadowy figure of Lao Tzu. Little is known about Lao Tzu's life, but he was apparently a contemporary and personal acquaintance of Confucius. Like the latter he came originally from the state of Sung and was a descendant of lower aristocracy of the Yin dynasty. Both men lived in a time of turmoil, wars and statism, but each reacted very differently. For Lao Tzu worked out the view that the individual and his happiness was the key unit of society. If social institutions hampered the individual's flowering and his happiness, then those institutions should be reduced or abolished altogether. To the individualist Lao Tzu, government, with its "laws and regulations more numerous than the hairs of an ox," was a vicious oppressor of the individual, and "more to be feared than fierce tigers." Government, in sum, must be limited to the smallest possible minimum;... more... - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

The worst of government interventions, according to Lao Tzu, was heavy taxation and war. "The people hunger because theft superiors consume an excess in taxation" and, "where armies have been stationed, thorns and brambles grow. After a great war, harsh years of famine are sure to follow." - Rick Kaiser

"Disputes among the ordinary people are merely trivial matters, for what scope of consequences can a contest of strength between ordinary fellows generate? They have no spreading lands to arouse avarice — they wield no authority through which they can advance their struggle. Their power is not such that they can assemble mass followings, and they command no awe that might quell [such... more... - Rick Kaiser

"In 1953, astronomer Allan Sandage found a puzzling new population of stars that seemed to go against the rules of stellar evolution in globular clusters. Sandage detected hot young blue stars in the globular cluster Messier 3, and subsequently in other globular clusters. He dubbed them stragglers because they looked like they were trailing or left behind by other blue stars in the cluster that had long ago evolved to the red giant stage." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

"Although blue stragglers have been known since the early 1950s, their formation process is still an unsolved puzzle in astrophysics. "It's like seeing a few kids in the group picture of a rest-home for retired people. It is natural to wonder why they are there," says Francesco Ferraro from the University of Bologna in Italy, lead author of the study that will be published this week in... more... - Rick Kaiser

"The new study shows that some of the blue stragglers have instead been rejuvenated by a sort of "cosmic facelift", courtesy of cosmic collisions. These stellar encounters are nearly head-on collisions in which the stars might actually merge, mixing their nuclear fuel and re-stoking the fires of nuclear fusion. Merged stars and binary systems would both be about twice the typical mass of individual stars in the cluster." - Rick Kaiser

"Sandia National Laboratories scientists have developed tiny glitter-sized photovoltaic cells that could revolutionize the way solar energy is collected and used. The tiny cells could turn a person into a walking solar battery charger if they were fastened to flexible substrates molded around unusual shapes, such as clothing." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

"So they use 100 times less silicon to generate the same amount of electricity," said Okandan. "Since they are much smaller and have fewer mechanical deformations for a given environment than the conventional cells, they may also be more reliable over the long term." - Rick Kaiser

Combine these with the Digital Quantum Batteries and we'd have a revolutionary power source indeed! - Rick Kaiser

"Physicists theorize that quantum phenomena could provide a major boost to batteries, with the potential to increase energy density up to 10 times that of lithium ion batteries. According to a new proposal, billions of nanoscale capacitors could take advantage of quantum effects to overcome electric arcing, an electrical breakdown phenomenon which limits the amount of charge that conventional capacitors can store." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

"As for the possibility of data storage, the physicists explain that each nano vacuum tube can have two gates, an energy gate and an information gate. Each nano vacuum tube can also be charged and discharged individually, in any arbitrary order. By inserting a MOSFET (metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor) in the wall of a nano vacuum tube, the state of the tube can be determined without charging or discharging it." - Rick Kaiser

"Fractal figures are generated by an "iterative" procedure: you apply an equation to a number, apply the same equation to the result and repeat that process over and over again. When the results are translated into a geometric shape, they can produce striking "self-similar" images, forms that contain the same shapes at different scales; for instance, some look uncannily like a snowflake. The tricky part is finding an equation that produces an interesting image. The most famous fractal equation is the 2D Mandelbrot set, named after the mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot of Yale University, who coined the name "fractals" for the resulting shapes in 1975. But there are many other types of fractal, both in two and three dimensions. The "Menger sponge" is one of the simplest 3D examples" - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

"White's search isn't over, though. He admits the Mandelbulb is not quite the "real" 3D Mandelbrot. "There are still 'whipped cream' sections, where there isn't detail," he explains. "If the real thing does exist – and I'm not saying 100 per cent that it does – one would expect even more variety than we are currently seeing." Part of the problem is that extending the Mandelbrot set to... more... - Rick Kaiser

Doesn't it seem right that this is what the universe looks like? Branes are kind of boring. - Todd Hoff

"Most people would like to be able to charge their cell phones and other personal electronics quickly and not too often. A recent discovery made by UC San Diego engineers could lead to carbon nanotube-based supercapacitors that could do just this. In recent research, published in Applied Physics Letters, Prabhakar Bandaru, a professor in the UCSD Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, along with graduate student Mark Hoefer, have found that artificially introduced defects in nanotubes can aid the development of supercapacitors." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

"Specifically, defects on nanotubes create additional charge sites enhancing the stored charge. The researchers have also discovered methods which could increase or decrease the charge associated with the defects by bombarding the CNTs with argon or hydrogen." - Rick Kaiser

"The researchers think that the energy density and power density obtained through their work could be practically higher than existing capacitor configurations which suffer from problems associated with poor reliability, cost, and poor electrical characteristics." - Rick Kaiser

"When it comes to carbon nanotubes, the majority of research so far has focused on small-scale applications. But now, a team of researchers from Rice University has created carbon nanotubes that are hundreds of meters long, yet just 50 micrometers thick. The researchers say there is no limit to how long the nanotubes can be made, which opens the doors to large-scale applications including using nanotubes as electrical transmission lines and as the basis of structural materials." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

"The Rice project began in 2001, led by the late Nobel laureate Richard Smalley. After years of research investigating solution-processing techniques, the scientists found that a superacid called chlorosulphonic acid could spontaneously dissolve carbon nanotubes at concentrations 1,000 times greater than any other solvent. The method can produce well-aligned carbon nanotubes on a large... more... - Rick Kaiser

"Arbor Networks recently studied Internet traffic patterns and found that U.S. Internet traffic usually reaches its highest point of the day at about 11 p.m. Eastern time and stays pretty high until about 3 a.m. What’s keeping Internet users up at night? Arbor found the answer." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

"One is gaming. Arbor found that World of Warcraft’s Battlenet traffic jumps 30% exactly at 8 p.m., which is apparently a popular time for WoW guilds to kick off quests. Traffic from Battlenet peaks around 11 p.m. and then drops off rapidly. Another type of traffic that shows up is from Steam, which powers many multiplayer first-person-shooter games. This curve is a little different, though – jumping up at 2 p.m., peaking around 8 p.m., and staying quite high through midnight" - Rick Kaiser

"The second main factor is video streaming. This is also primarily an afternoon and evening activity, but it peaks at midnight. YouTube serves up a lot of that video, as do adult content sites at the later hours. So, in a sense you could say that what’s keeping Internet users up at night is sex and violence." - Rick Kaiser

"The creation of human iPS cells was first announced in December 2007 by two labs, one in Japan and another in Wisconsin. In both cases, the teams used viruses to insert multiple copies of four genes (eg. c-Myc, Oct4, Sox2, Klf4) into the genome of skin cells. These four genes then produced transcription factors turning on and off other genes, and pushing the cell to "dedifferentiate" into stem cells. While the work was a major breakthrough, it left two major challenges for the field to solve before iPS cell therapy could be considered of any potential practical use. The first involved safety, since the technique relied on potentially harmful genetic manipulation, and worse yet, the insertion of two known cancer-causing genes (c-Myc and Oct4). The second problem was the length and inefficiency of the iPS cell process, which had a success rate of roughly one in 10,000 cells and took about four weeks from start to finish." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

"Ding and colleagues essentially solved the first problem, the reliance on genetic manipulation, earlier this year in a paper published in Cell Stem Cell (Volume 4, Issue 5, May 8, 2009). In the paper, the researchers demonstrated that they could use purified proteins to transform adult cells all the way back to the most primitive embryonic-like cells, avoiding the problems associated with inserting genes" - Rick Kaiser

"Ding and colleagues tested a number of drug-like molecules, looking for those that inhibited the TGFb (transforming growth factor beta) and the MEK (mitogen-activated protein kinase) pathways, which are known to be involved in the MET process. The researchers identified the most active compounds, then looked at their effects on stem cell creation when used singly and in combination.... more... - Rick Kaiser

"The research, published in Nature, proves the existence of atom-sized ‘magnetic charges’ that behave and interact just like more familiar electric charges. It also demonstrates a perfect symmetry between electricity and magnetism – a phenomenon dubbed ‘magnetricity’ by the authors from the LCN and the Science and Technology Facility Council’s ISIS Neutron and Muon Source." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

Dr Sean Giblin, instrument scientist at ISIS and co-author of the paper, added: “The results were astounding, using muons at ISIS we are finally able to confirm that magnetic charge really is conducted through certain materials at certain temperatures – just like the way ions conduct electricity in water.” - Rick Kaiser

"A mysterious basin off the coast of India could be the largest, multi-ringed impact crater the world has ever seen. And if a new study is right, it may have been responsible for killing the dinosaurs off 65 million years ago." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

“If we are right, this is the largest crater known on our planet,” Chatterjee said. “A bolide of this size, perhaps 40 kilometers (25 miles) in diameter creates its own tectonics.” By contrast, the object that struck the Yucatan Peninsula, and is commonly thought to have killed the dinosaurs was between 8 and 10 kilometers (5 and 6.2 miles) wide." - Rick Kaiser

"The researchers found that even a few minutes with the attractive woman was enough to make the students slower and less accurate on the test. The more attracted they were, the worse their results. They also studied the effects on women students of being in the company of handsome men, and found the test scores were unaffected." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

"The idea for the study came from one of the scientists, who was so impressed by a beautiful woman he met that when she asked where he lived, he had forgotten his own address! He had temporarily lost his mind." - Rick Kaiser

From the comments: "See, the problem is that God gives men a brain and a penis, and only enough blood to run one at a time." -- Robin Williams - Simon

"This magnificent 360-degree panoramic image, covering the entire southern and northern celestial sphere, reveals the cosmic landscape that surrounds our tiny blue planet. This gorgeous starscape serves as the first of three extremely high-resolution images featured in the GigaGalaxy Zoom project, launched by ESO within the framework of the International Year of Astronomy 2009 (IYA2009). The plane of our Milky Way Galaxy, which we see edge-on from our perspective on Earth, cuts a luminous swath across the image. The projection used in GigaGalaxy Zoom place the viewer in front of our Galaxy with the Galactic Plane running horizontally through the image — almost as if we were looking at the Milky Way from the outside. From this vantage point, the general components of our spiral galaxy come clearly into view, including its disc, marbled with both dark and glowing nebulae, which harbours bright, young stars, as well as the Galaxy’s central bulge and its satellite galaxies." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

http://www.gigagalaxyzoom.org - Rick Kaiser

http://www.sergebrunier.com/galleri... - Rick Kaiser

"While researchers have already demonstrated the building blocks for few-bit quantum computers, scaling these systems up to large quantum computers remains a challenge. One of the biggest problems is developing physical systems that can reliably store thousands of qubits, and enabling bits and pairs to be addressed individually for gate operations. With this issue in mind, scientists have recently proposed a quantum computing scheme that uses an ensemble of about 100 billion electron spins. They show that hundreds of physical qubits can be made from these collective electron spin excitations. The researchers, Janus Wesenberg from the University of Oxford, and coauthors from Oxford, Yale University and the University of Aarhus in Denmark, have published the proposed system in a recent issue of Physical Review Letters." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

“Firstly, there is the idea to couple an ensemble of electron spins to a stripline resonator,” he said. “While this is a novel idea, it is a straightforward extension of previous work (by Peter Zoller and many others), on coupling ensembles of polar molecules, Rydberg atoms etc. to such stripline cavities. The main advantage of using electron spins is that they can simply be smeared... more... - Rick Kaiser

"Topping the list of exciting new views are colourful multi-wavelength pictures of far-flung galaxies, a densely packed star cluster, an eerie "pillar of creation" and a butterfly-shaped nebula. Hubble's suite of new instruments now allows it to study the Universe's across a wide swath of the light spectrum, from ultraviolet light all the way to near-infrared light. In addition, scientists released spectroscopic observations that slice across billions of light-years to map the structure of the cosmic web that permeates the Universe and also the distribution of the chemical elements that are fundamental to life as we know it." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

"The new instruments are more sensitive to light and therefore will significantly improve Hubble's observing efficiency. The space telescope is now able to complete observations in a fraction of the time that was needed with earlier generations of Hubble instruments. Therefore the space observatory today is significantly more powerful than it has ever been. " - Rick Kaiser

"The scientists suggest that life on Earth originated at photosynthetically-active porous structures, similar to deep-sea hydrothermal vents, made of zinc sulfide (more commonly known as phosphor). They argue that under the high pressure of a carbon-dioxide-dominated atmosphere, zinc sulfide structures could form on the surface of the first continents, where they had access to sunlight. Unlike many existing theories that suggest UV radiation was a hindrance to the development of life, Mulkidjanian and Galperin think it actually helped." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

"Its ability to store light makes zinc sulfide an important factor in the discussion on life’s origin. Mulkidjanian explains that, once illuminated by UV light, zinc sulfide can efficiently reduce carbon dioxide, just as plants do. To test the hypothesis, Mulkidjanian and Galperin analyzed the metal content of modern cells and found “surprisingly high levels of zinc,” particularly in... more... - Rick Kaiser

I've read a number of plausible theories for the origins of life over the years, and I find myself wondering... maybe the answer is a combination of some, or even all, of these theories? - Rick Kaiser

"Strive as we might to make sense of the world, there are mysteries that still confound us. Michael Brooks presents thirteen of the most perplexing. Cracking any one of them could yield profound truths." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

The sun is in the pits of the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century. Weeks and sometimes whole months go by without even a single tiny sunspot. The quiet has dragged out for more than two years, prompting some observers to wonder, are sunspots disappearing? "Personally, I'm betting that sunspots are coming back," says researcher Matt Penn of the National Solar Observatory (NSO) in Tucson, Arizona. But, he allows, "there is some evidence that they won't." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

"This work has caused a sensation in the field of solar physics," comments NASA sunspot expert David Hathaway, who is not directly involved in the research. "It's controversial stuff." The controversy is not about the data. "We know Livingston and Penn are excellent observers," says Hathaway. "The trend that they have discovered appears to be real." The part colleagues have trouble... more... - Rick Kaiser

If sunspots do go away, it wouldn't be the first time. In the 17th century, the sun plunged into a 70-year period of spotlessness known as the Maunder Minimum that still baffles scientists. The sunspot drought began in 1645 and lasted until 1715; during that time, some of the best astronomers in history (e.g., Cassini) monitored the sun and failed to count more than a few dozen sunspots... more... - Rick Kaiser

"A primitive quantum computer that uses single particles of light (photons) whizzing through a silicon chip has performed its first mathematical calculation. This is the first time a calculation has been performed on a photonic chip and it is major step forward in the quest to realise a super-powerful quantum computer. The chip takes four photons that carry the input for the calculation, it then implements a quantum programme (Shor’s algorithm) to find the prime factors of 15, and outputs the answer - 3 and 5. The results are reported by a team of physicists and engineers from the University of Bristol in today’s issue of Science." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

"The chip takes four photons that carry the input for the calculation, it then implements a quantum programme (Shor’s algorithm) to find the prime factors of 15, and outputs the answer - 3 and 5. The results are reported by a team of physicists and engineers from the University of Bristol in today’s issue of Science. “This task could be done much faster by any school kid,” said PhD... more... - Rick Kaiser

"Magnetic monopoles are hypothetical particles proposed by physicists that carry a single magnetic pole, either a magnetic North pole or South pole. In the material world this is quite exceptional because magnetic particles are usually observed as dipoles, north and south combined. However there are several theories that predict the existence of monopoles. Among others, in 1931 the physicist Paul Dirac was led by his calculations to the conclusion that magnetic monopoles can exist at the end of tubes - called Dirac strings - that carry magnetic field. Until now they have remained undetected." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

"During the neutron scattering measurements a magnetic field was applied to the crystal by the researchers. With this field they could influence the symmetry and orientation of the strings. Thereby it was possible to reduce the density of the string networks and promote the monopole dissociation. As a result, at temperatures from 0.6 to 2 Kelvin, the strings are visible and have magnetic monopoles at their ends. " - Rick Kaiser

"A laboratory study by University of Maryland researchers suggests that some of the worst fears about a virulent H1N1 pandemic flu season may not be realized this year, but does demonstrate the heightened communicability of the virus. Using ferrets exposed to three different viruses, the Maryland researchers found no evidence that the H1N1 pandemic variety, responsible for the so-called swine flu, combines in a lab setting with other flu strains to form a more virulent 'superbug.' Rather, the pandemic virus prevailed and out-competed the other strains, reproducing in the ferrets, on average, twice as much." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

"Some of the animals who were infected with both the new virus and one of the more familiar seasonal viruses (H3N2) developed not only respiratory symptoms, but intestinal illness as well. Perez and his team call for additional research to see whether this kind of co-infection and multiple symptoms may account for some of the deaths attributed to the new virus. Among other research... more... - Rick Kaiser

"A study published in the July 17 issue of the journal Science details how sandfish -- small lizards with smooth scales -- move rapidly underground through desert sand. In this first thorough examination of subsurface sandfish locomotion, researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology found that the animals place their limbs against their sides and create a wave motion with their bodies to propel themselves through granular media." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

"The sandfish used in this study inhabits the Sahara desert in Africa and is approximately four inches long. It uses its long, wedge-shaped snout and countersunk lower jaw to rapidly bury into and swim within sand. The sandfish's body has flattened sides and is covered with smooth shiny scales, its legs are short and sturdy with long and flattened fringed toes and its tail tapers to a fine point." - Rick Kaiser

"The laws of physics, which describe everything from electricity to moving objects to energy conservation, are time-invariant. That is, the laws still hold if time is reversed. However, this time reversal symmetry is in direct contrast with everyday phenomena, where it’s obvious that time moves forward and not backward. For example, when milk is spilt, it can’t flow back up into the glass, and when pots are broken, their pieces can’t shatter back together. This irreversibility is formalized through the second law of thermodynamics, which says that entropy always increases or stays the same, but never decreases." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

David Deutsch proposed a related thought experiment on a macroscopic sentient observer to 'verify' the Many Worlds interpretation, by constructing a reversible machine intelligence, who could make observations, and then be quantum erased (run in reverse). By making three measurements, and erasing the second one, it can be shown that MWI is correct and Copenhagen is wrong (that is, the... more... - Ray Cromwell

"Researchers Kirsten Bohn and Mike Smotherman in the Department of Biology at Texas A&M, George Pollak at the University of Texas at Austin and Barbara Schmidt-French from Bat Conservation International (now at Bat World in Mineral Wells, Texas) spent three years analyzing thousands of Brazilian free-tailed (also known as Mexican free-tailed) bat recordings to understand their meanings. They determined that male bats have very distinguishable syllables and phrases that they use as love songs to attract females and in some cases, to warn other males to stay away." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet

"With the possible exception of whales, you normally don't have this type of communication technique," she adds. "You see it frequently in birds, but that's about it. We've learned the vocal production of bats is very specific and patterned, and now we have a model not only to study communication similarities in other animals, but also human speech. We think this is a big first step." - Rick Kaiser

Cool! But are we talking Barry White? Hinder? Weird Al? - ‘-.-’ Tutivillus Grift

"The Encyclopedia of Life, an online project launched in 2007 with the aim of creating a webpage on every known animal and plant species, has reached 150,000 entries in its second year. In a statement marking the anniversary, the collaborative project said close to two million people from more than 200 countries had contributed to the website (www.eol.org). Users can create a page that describes a plant or animal with text, images or both. The information is then submitted to experts, verified and made available for free. The project's creators hope to accumulate a page for every 1.8 million animal and plant species known to scientists over 10 years." - Rick Kaiser from Bookmarklet