Science Online

"Scientists now believe the widespread phenomenon, known as “universality,” stems from an underlying connection to mathematics, and it is helping them to model complex systems from the internet to Earth’s climate. (…) Each of these systems has a spectrum — a sequence like a bar code representing data such as energy levels, zeta zeros, bus departure times or signal speeds. In all the spectra, the same distinctive pattern appears: The data seem haphazardly distributed, and yet neighboring lines repel one another, lending a degree of regularity to their spacing. This fine balance between chaos and order, which is defined by a precise formula, also appears in a purely mathematical setting: It defines the spacing between the eigenvalues, or solutions, of a vast matrix filled with random numbers. (…)" - Amira from Bookmarklet

"Universality is thought to arise when a system is very complex, consisting of many parts that strongly interact with each other to generate a spectrum. The pattern emerges in the spectrum of a random matrix, for example, because the matrix elements all enter into the calculation of that spectrum. But random matrices are merely “toy systems” that are of interest because they can be... more... - Amira

"What if the very thing that made you feel crazy happy also made you smarter? That’s the question underlying the work of the Institute for Centrifugal Research, where scientists believe that spinning people around at a sufficiently high G-force will solve “even the trickiest challenges confronting mankind.” (...) The culminating experiment features a ride that resembles a giant tropical plant. Riders enter a round car that rises slowly up, up, up and then takes off suddenly at incredibly high speed along one of the “branches.” “Unpredictability is a key part of our work,” says Laslowicz. After the ride, he says, people described experiencing a “readjustment of key goals and life aspirations.” Though he later adds that he wouldn’t put his own children on one of his rides. “These machines provide total freedom,” Laslowicz says, “cutting all connection to the world we live in: communication responsibility, weight. Everything is on hold when you’re being centrifuged.” - Amira from Bookmarklet

*Eivind* - Harold Cabezas from Android

"Cellist Katinka Kleijn performed both halves of a duet Sunday night. Her hands played the cello, and her brain, hooked up to a headset that detects cerebral electrical signals, played itself. (...) "Intelligence in the Human Machine,” the cello/brain duet, explored the relationship a performer has to the music she’s playing. During the performance, at Chicago’s Cultural Center, Kleijn wore an Emotiv EPOC, a neuroheadset with 14 sensors that attach to the scalp and detect brainwaves. In front of her, a laptop flashed a word and a few measures of music. She then played the music on her cello, interpreting the word onscreen. At the same time, her brainwaves, translated to audio, changed sounds as she reacted to the word. (...) “Not only is Katinka playing the cello, but she is also, in a sense, playing her brain waves, emphasizing what’s going on in her brain while she’s performing,” Dehaan says." - Amira

"Look into a mirror and you’ll simultaneously see the familiar and the alien: an image of you, but with left and right reversed. Left-right inequality has significance far beyond that of mirror images, touching on the heart of existence itself. From subatomic physics to life, nature prefers asymmetry to symmetry. (...) Life is fundamentally asymmetric. (...) Somehow, during its infancy, the cosmos selected matter over antimatter. This imperfection is the single most important factor dictating our existence. (…) It is not symmetry and perfection that should be our guiding principle, as it has been for millennia. (...) The science we create is just that, our creation. Wonderful as it is, it is always limited, it is always constrained by what we know of the world. […] The notion that there is a well-defined hypermathematical structure that determines all there is in the cosmos is a Platonic delusion with no relationship to physical reality. (…)" - Amira from Bookmarklet

like my wallpaper, boxing kangaroos and #tiddies. I get it, totss - sofarsoShawn

How did this business of proving that a bumblebee can't fly originate? Who started the story? One set of accounts suggests that the story first surfaced in Germany in the 1930s. Whatever its origins, the story has had remarkable staying power, and the myth persists that science says a bumblebee can't fly. Indeed, this myth has taken on a new life of its own as a piece of "urban folklore" on the Internet. - Halil from Bookmarklet

The persistence of the bumblebee myth also highlights a misunderstanding about science, models, and mathematics. The real issue isn't that scientists can be wrong. The real issue is that there's a crucial difference between a "thing" and a mathematical model of the "thing." - Halil

A new study of dog genetics reveals numerous genes involved in starch metabolism, compared with wolves. It backs an idea that some dogs emerged from wolves that were able to scavenge and digest the food waste of early farmers - Halil from Bookmarklet

We already thought that. Now we have starch on our side :) - Eivind

And this is why they like to eat their own poo - Eric - seven eleven

In the latest research, Nick Goldman and colleagues at the European Bioinformatics Institute near Cambridge have stored digital information by encoding it in the four different bases that make up DNA. While the storage technique does not offer the convenience of random access or being rewriteable, it does have a couple of major advantages. One is its extremely high density – as a result of the information being stored at the atomic level – and the other is its durability. As Goldman points out, intact DNA has been extracted from Neanderthal bones tens of thousands of years old. "Nature has discovered that this molecule is very stable," he says. "And we are piggy-backing on nature." - Halil from Bookmarklet

It would be cool if this could eventually be developed to storing data on our own DNA, then you could just download Grey's Anatomy and voila instant anatomical info at your DNA-tips! :D - Halil

"A new private company called Deep Space Industries announced today that it intends to send a fleet of small spacecraft to near-Earth asteroids with the aim of mining resources and turning them into products using space-based 3-D printers. Last year was thick with audacious private spaceflight company unveilings, including the announcement from Planetary Resources, Inc. of their plans to mine relatively valuable platinum group metals from asteroids...There exists potentially extremely valuable material on asteroids, including nickel, silicon, platinum group metals such as platinum and palladium, and water, which can be broken down into hydrogen and oxygen to make rocket fuel. DSI intends to create a fleet of prospecting spacecraft called “FireFlies” (perhaps trying to rouse interest in their plans from Joss Whedon acolytes) that will travel to asteroids in Earth’s vicinity on journeys of two to six months." - Lit from Bookmarklet

Guess they would have to develop the technology to easily direct asteroid re-maneuvering and movement first ;) ...Glad you enjoyed the posted material. :) - Lit

Cambridge researchers have published a paper proving that four-stranded 'quadruple helix' DNA structures -- known as G-quadruplexes -- also exist within the human genome. They form in regions of DNA that are rich in the building block guanine, usually abbreviated to 'G'. - Halil from Bookmarklet

@Eric, it's never that simple: Inhibiting telomerase, an enzyme that rescues malignant cells from destruction by extending the protective caps on the ends of chromosomes, kills tumor cells but also triggers resistance pathways that allow cancer to survive and spread http://www.sciencedaily.com/release... - Halil

"It's not only April showers that bring flowers. It's also global warming. A recent study conducted by scientists from Boston University, Harvard University, and the University of Wisconsin found that flowers are blooming earlier and earlier every year in two historical sites. Using data collected by famous naturalists and authors Henry David Thoreau and Aldo Leopold, the researchers graphed the change in flower bloom times. The 161-year-old and nearly 80-year-old data allowed them to see exactly how much the temperatures had changed. Their findings were drastic and worrisome. After comparing past bloom times with present bloom times, the researchers found that plants, such as serviceberry and nodding trillium, are blooming up to one week earlier." - Lit from Bookmarklet

You read that correctly. You are gravitationally more strongly bonded to Andromeda than you are to earth. - Eric from Bookmarklet

Gorging on junk food thrice a week may lower immunity in kids, raising their risk of asthma and eczema, according to an international study. Scientists fear the high saturated fat levels may weaken children’s immune system. A research project involving more than 50 countries found that teenagers who ate food such as burgers three times a week or more were 39 per cent more likely to get severe asthma. Younger kids were 27 per cent more at risk, The Sun reported. Both were also more prone to the eye condition rhinoconjunctivitis. However, three weekly portions of fruit and vegetables may cut the risk by 14 per cent in the younger group and 11 per cent among the teens. Researchers from New Zealand’s Auckland University looked at the diets of 181,000 youngsters aged six to seven and 319,000 aged 13-14. The study also asked if they had allergy symptoms. Researchers said their results do not prove cause and effect. “Fast food may be contributing to increasing asthma, rhinoconjunctivitis and... more... - Eric from Bookmarklet

Pretty interesting. I'd be interested to know a bit more about the groups that were, and weren't, more likely to consume fast food multiple times a week if just because living conditions, access to types of foods, and other factors might be just as important. - Jennifer Dittrich

Agreed. - Eric

Talk about a whopper—astronomers have discovered a structure in the universe so large that modern cosmological theory says it should not exist, a new study says. - Eric from Bookmarklet

Meh. I've seen bigger. - Eivind

There are people who look at the quadrupole and octopole moments of the Cosmic Microwave Background — or the first two points on the graph above — and question the entirety of modern cosmology. Why? Because they state that the “odds” of having a Universe that conspired to give those two data points just randomly is relatively low. (But, for what it’s worth, better than my dice-roll odds, atop.) When you hear the terminology “Axis of Evil” applied to cosmology, this is what they’re talking about. But there’s nothing special at all about it: if we simulated our Universe millions of times, alignments like this in those two data points would occur hundreds of times. We just happen to live in a Universe where it did. - Eric from Bookmarklet

That's a great article; I shared it earlier on a Facebook group. Good to see the fallacy explained quite well and it's nice to see how probability can be misunderstood. - Mark H

I liked it too. Which Facebook group ? Is it an open group ? - Eric

"The numbers are in: 2012, the year of a surreal March heat wave, a severe drought in the corn belt and a massive storm that caused broad devastation in the mid-Atlantic states, turns out to have been the hottest year ever recorded in the contiguous United States. How hot was it? The temperature differences between years are usually measured in fractions of a degree, but last year blew away the previous record, set in 1998, by a full degree Fahrenheit." - Lit from Bookmarklet

"If that does not sound sufficiently impressive, consider that 34,008 new daily high records were set at weather stations across the country, compared with only 6,664 new record lows, according to a count maintained by the Weather Channel meteorologist Guy Walton, using federal temperature records. That ratio, which was roughly in balance as recently as the 1970s, has been out of whack... more... - Lit

"Last year’s weather in the United States began with an unusually warm winter, with relatively little snow across much of the country, followed by a March that was so hot that trees burst into bloom and swimming pools opened early. The soil dried out in the March heat, helping to set the stage for a drought that peaked during the warmest July on record. The drought engulfed 61 percent... more... - Lit

Lithium also targets the enzymes that break down IMP and IP3, thus indirectly affecting PKC activity, since PKC's are controlled by Ca2+ as well as DAG, so long term Li2+ treatment in light of the now refuted proposed LTM model must of shown some kind of LTM impairment in patients, obviously not, further supporting the possibility that PKC's may not be involved with memory formation? Thinking aloud here...you do not have the right to steal my ideas, lol, not that it will stop scientists doing that, though not all are thieves, but some are... inspired by http://ff.im/1aHUOf - Halil from Bookmarklet

We need to ID the target of Li and then try to create a pharmacological alternative, sounds simple doesn't it, but alas it's never that easy. ~ MOLECULAR TARGETS OF LITHIUM ACTION http://www.annualreviews.org/doi... - Halil

Henri Poincaré, mostly. Poincaré was the foremost expert on relativity in the late 19th century and was most likely the first person to formally present the theory of relativity. If you were Einstein and you wanted to write about relativity, you might consider meeting with the foremost expert on relativity, yes? If you answered "yes" to that question, then you're not Einstein at all. According to Einstein's famous On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, which contains his theories on relativity, Poincaré, despite publishing 30 books and over 500 papers, is not worth mentioning. It's true, pick up Einstein's paper if you don't believe us, (you won't): Poincaré doesn't receive a single reference, unless you consider plagiarism to be some kind of indirect reference. As a matter of fact, Einstein does not reference, footnote or cite a single goddamn source in his entire paper. - Halil from Bookmarklet

@any and all physicists, is this true? never really knew... - Halil

For the current study, Volk and fellow team member Julia Bachman made mice that lacked working PKMζ, so-called genetic "knockouts." The goal was to compare the synapses of the modified mice with those of normal mice, and find clues about how the enzyme works. But, says Volk, "what we got was not at all what we expected. We thought the strengthening capacity of the synapses would be impaired, but it wasn't." The brains of the mice without PKMζ were indistinguishable from those of other mice, she says. Additionally, the synapses of the PKMζ-less mice responded to the memory-erasing ZIP molecule just as the synapses of normal mice do. - Halil from Bookmarklet

Protein kinase C, zeta (PKCζ), also known as PRKCZ, is an enzyme that in humans is encoded by the PRKCZ gene. The PRKCZ gene encodes at least two alternative transcripts, the full-length PKCζ and an N-terminal truncated form PKMζ. PKMζ is thought to be responsible for maintaining long-term memories in the brain. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... Hmm, this may need updating now... - Halil

"The science of self-improvement never ceases. Every year brings dozens of new quirky findings about how to be more effective, whether in managing our time, being more creative or just getting things done. Here are some of the highlights for me from 2012." - Lit from Bookmarklet

"1. You don’t know yourself as well as you think. We think we know ourselves best, but more and more evidence is surfacing to the contrary. This raises an interesting challenge for employers who solely base their hiring decisions on self-reported questionnaires. Psychologist Timothy Wilson proposes that to really know someone, you have to ask others to evaluate you. It turns out that... more... - Lit

"3. We’re more creative when thinking about others. Creativity in the business world is increasingly important. Creativity often involves viewing things from different perspectives. New findings show that we are more creative when we think of others solving problems instead of ourselves. To test this, professors Evan Polman and Kyle Emich presented 137 undergraduates with this riddle:... more... - Lit

"Rita Levi-Montalcini, a Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist who began her seminal research on cell development while dodging bombs and fleeing Nazi persecution during World War II, died Dec. 30 at her home in Rome. She was 103. ...Dr. Levi-Montalcini was widely regarded as one of the most influential scientists of her generation, and her accomplishments were particularly notable because of the handicaps and obstacles faced in science by women throughout the world when she began her career.Her rise to the highest reaches of scientific achievement was made even more difficult because she embarked on her career under the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini, who expelled her and her fellow Jews from the Italian academic world. She shared the 1986 Nobel Prize in medicine for her discovery of a substance known as the nerve growth factor, a naturally occurring protein that helps spark the growth of nerve cells. She launched that groundbreaking research in a makeshift bedroom laboratory during... more... - Lit

"In essence, Dr. Levi-Montalcini’s discovery helped explain how embryonic nerve cells grow into a fully developed nervous system and, more broadly, how a damaged nervous system might be repaired. Cohen was credited with the identification of the epidermal growth factor, a similar substance that helps regulate the growth of skin and other cells. Together, those advances “opened new... more... - Lit

"A device the size of your thumb could store as much information as the whole Internet," said Harvard University molecular geneticist George Church, the project's senior researcher. In their work, the group translated the English text of a coming book on genomic engineering into actual DNA. DNA contains genetic instructions written in a simple but powerful code made up of four chemicals called bases: adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C) and thymine (T). The Harvard researchers started with the digital version of the book, which is composed of the ones and zeros that computers read. Next, on paper, they translated the zeros into either the A or C of the DNA base pairs, and changed the ones into either the G or T. Then, using now-standard laboratory techniques, they created short strands of actual DNA that held the coded sequence—almost 55,000 strands in all. Each strand contained a portion of the text and an address that indicated where it occurred in the flow of the book. (...)" - Amira from Bookmarklet

"Research groups in the U.S., Europe and Canada devised ways to use DNA to encode trademarks and secret messages in cells. And when genomics pioneer Craig Venter and colleagues created the first synthetic cell in 2010, they wrote their names into its DNA code, the way an artist might sign a painting, along with three literary quotations and a website address. Other researchers used DNA... more... - Amira

“What is needed is nothing less than a breakthrough in philosophy, a theory that explains how brains create explanations. (…) What distinguishes human brains from all other physical systems is qualitatively different from all other functionalities, and cannot be specified in the way that all other attributes of computer programs can be. It cannot be programmed by any of the techniques that suffice for writing any other type of program. Nor can it be achieved merely by improving their performance at tasks that they currently do perform, no matter by how much. Why? I call the core functionality in question creativity: the ability to produce new explanations. (…) What is needed is nothing less than a breakthrough in philosophy, a new epistemological theory that explains how brains create explanatory knowledge and hence defines, in principle, without ever running them as programs, which algorithms possess that functionality and which do not. (…)" - Amira from Bookmarklet

"The truth is that knowledge consists of conjectured explanations — guesses about what really is (or really should be, or might be) out there in all those worlds. Even in the hard sciences, these guesses have no foundations and don’t need justification. Why? Because genuine knowledge, though by definition it does contain truth, almost always contains error as well. So it is not ‘true’... more... - Amira

Rudolph’s nose is red because it is richly supplied with red blood cells which help to protect it from freezing and to regulate brain temperature. This superior “nasal microcirculation” is essential for pulling Santa Claus’s sleigh under extreme temperatures, reveals a study in the Christmas issue published on bmj.com today. Tiny blood cells (known as micro-vessels) in the nose are vital for delivering oxygen, controlling inflammation, and regulating temperature, but few studies have assessed their function in detail. - Halil from Bookmarklet

Using a hand-held video microscope, they first assessed the noses of five healthy human volunteers and found a circulating blood vessel density of 15 mm/mm2. When the technique was applied to two reindeer noses, the researchers found a 25% higher density of blood vessels, carrying a super-rich concentration of red blood cells. - Halil

Infrared thermal images showed that reindeer do indeed have red noses. - Halil

Hey smart gals, you know that there are two types of nerds: The creepy type you want nothing to do with, and the one you would like to have a go at, because they are damn smart too. But you need to tell them apart real fast, like before the wrong type becomes your stalker, which happens with hyperspace velocity! And yes, the type you want is rare. - Eric from Bookmarklet

Really Funny !!! - Eric

"Our eyes may be our window to the world, but how do we make sense of the thousands of images that flood our retinas each day? Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have found that the brain is wired to put in order all the categories of objects and actions that we see. They have created the first interactive map of how the brain organizes these groupings. The result — achieved through computational models of brain imaging data collected while the subjects watched hours of movie clips — is what researchers call “a continuous semantic space.” Some relationships between categories make sense (humans and animals share the same “semantic neighborhood”) while others (hallways and buckets) are less obvious. The researchers found that different people share a similar semantic layout. “Our methods open a door that will quickly lead to a more complete and detailed understanding of how the brain is organized. Already, our online brain viewer appears to provide the most detailed... more... - Lit from Bookmarklet

"A clearer understanding of how the brain organizes visual input can help with the medical diagnosis and treatment of brain disorders. These findings may also be used to create brain-machine interfaces, particularly for facial and other image recognition systems. Among other things, they could improve a grocery store self-checkout system’s ability to recognize different kinds of... more... - Lit

"Free books from NASA, the Hubble Space Telescope's science team and the European Space Agency bring Earth and the heavens to life — as long as you have an iPad, and the patience to wait for a longish download. Even if you have a regular old computer, you can still download the books about Hubble and its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, as PDF files. But you'll miss out on all the interactive features. Those two books were unveiled today by the Baltimore-based Space Telescope Science Institute, which takes care of the science programming for the two NASA-funded telescopes. They're joining the ESA's first iBook, "Earth From Space: The Living Beauty," on my iPad bookshelf. The Hubble book guides you through scores of pictures from the world's most famous space telescope, organized into categories ranging from cosmology to planetary science. There's also a chapter on the telescope itself, with a 3-D model and a diagram you can tap on to learn about all the components. (Our... more... - Lit from Bookmarklet

"The 74-page e-book about the Webb telescope uses a similar approach to explain the science behind the $8.8 billion observatory, which is currently scheduled for launch in 2018. There aren't any pictures from the Webb, of course, but the book's interactives, videos and photo galleries explain how the telescope will observe the cosmic frontiers in infrared wavelengths. "These new e-books... more... - Lit

""By turning the virtual pages of this iBook you will discover how some of the latest technology has changed the way we see Earth," Volker Liebig, director of ESA's Earth observation programs, said in the space agency's publication announcement. "So, it was time to bring these ‘scientific voyages’ to you in a dynamic way. I believe that electronic media hold a huge potential, just like... more... - Lit