When the Dallas Cowboys blew up Texas Stadium this week—punting accident—they had the good sense to put in a 3D camera rig inside. Click and drag to move the camera around. And turn up the sound. Boom! More »
Jon, Jon... a merger? A merger? Maybe you should read our analysis on HP buying your company. [WSJ] More »
The problem with messages is that you can't be sure who might pick them up at the other end. But a new scheme for a quantum communications ensures only a recipient in exactly the right location can read their message. More »
Detection of predefecatory rectosigmoid wave activity for prevention of fecal soiling in infants. "Identification of an electrophysiologic sign before defecation can prevent fecal soiling in infants. To identify such a sign, the contractile activity of sigmoid colon was recorded percutaneously in 48 healthy infants. The recorder was equipped with a digital clock synchronized to the recorder so as to set off an alarm upon significantly increased electromyographic activity of sigmoid colon. Examination of the recordings at high speed revealed three types of basal, signaling and predefecatory waves of activities. The 'basal' component was comprised of as negatively deflected slow waves. The signaling waves exhibited an increase in amplitudes, cycle rate and conduction velocity, were repeated 8.2+/-1.2 times and lasted for 14.6+/-2.1 minutes prior to defecation, The 'predefecatory' waves preceded defecation by 40.3+/-7.3 seconds, showed a significant increase in wave parameters and sounded the alarm. The findings show a method for early detection of defecation that can be used clinically to prevent fecal soiling in infants." Image: flickr/keeping_it_real Related content:
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Science: getting babies drunk since 1997
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Salmonella excretion in joy-riding pigs.
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: The collapse of toilets in Glasgow.
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: “Back and forth forever” (or, DIY poop therapy). WTF is ...
I've acquired 4,824,801 gross meters of Purity Grade 99.87 nickel wire with a diameter of .025mm. I'm looking to sell the wire but have found out is a specialty product. I don't know whom to contact. What industry or companies should I contact. I'm willing to pay a healthy commission to anyone t
It's Science vs. Magic week at L.A.'s Magic Castle, where comic magician Rudy Coby and his friends have taken over the Victorian mansion-styled club, and where waitresses are sporting lab coats and serving drinks in test tubes. Coby is reprising his mad scientist alter-ego Labman after a 15-year hiatus--during which time he crafted stage shows for one-time roommate goth rocker Marilyn Manson, who threatens a surprise cameo as "The Evil Magician" at one of Coby's performances. The event is an ode to magic's time-honored and gleeful distortion of scientific and technological principals. Coby's Hypnotron 2000 makes it look like your skin moves after staring at a spinning wheel. Andrew Mayne--who creates illusions for David Blaine and produced the G4 Network's quirky G4 Underground--unveils a don't-try-this-at-home effect that has him drinking –320o Fahrenheit liquid nitrogen. College favorite Brian Brushwood has audience members use cell phones to capture a ghostly image on TV static patterns that their eyes miss (pictured). For the kids this weekend, mad scientist Prof. Wes Weasely wields audio magic with his theremin. More surprise guests are planned Thursday through Sunday. -- by Sue Karlin Related Content:
Discoblog: Crazy Optical Illusion of the Day
Discoblog: To Levitate Water, Turn on the Strobe Lights
Discoblog: Prepare to Be Amazed… ...
This ad for Latinworks' Parental Control Bar urges parents to protect their kids from the seedier sides of the internet. But if you're going to organize your folders like that, what the hell do you expect? [ScaryIdeas via Copyranter] More »
![Click here to read The Investigation Into That Missing iPhone [Updated]](http://euvolution.com/futurist-transhuman-news-blog/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/ea700_160x120_7c98d9b61817e3ccf4.jpg)
As most of you know by now, police entered Jason Chen's home, seizing his computers and gadgets. While the investigation's in process, we can't comment much on this. We stand by our colleague and our coverage of the lost iPhone. Here's the background and some links to the more substantive external reports. More »
I want to ask about (the custody transfer approval) because our consultant was talking about it in the approval of the ultrasonic flow meter for new project
I want to know what the the important questions should I ask the flowmeter manufacturer for approval his product (ultrasonic clamp one). Tha
Ooh la la! Google's Image Search has gotten quite a nice makeover for iPhone and Android devices. There are now neater thumbnails, results optimized for speed, and pictures that can be flipped through with a swipe. [Google Mobile Blog] More »
Is listening to your iTunes playlist over vinyl the most practical of ideas? Nah. But throw in a futuristic glowing ring and call to arms for playlist purists, and Martin Skelly's Playlist Player has a friend in me. More »
Since March 30, when the LHC at CERN first collided protons at an unprecedented total energy of 7 TeV (7 trillion electron volts) the machine has been steadily moving from crawling to walking. Last Saturday, I’d say it took its first steps, and like any toddler, will soon be running.
The plot shows what we call “integrated luminosity” which is simply a measure of the number of collisions of protons in the interaction regions at the four experiments. In this case, it’s my own experiment, CMS, the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment. CMS and ATLAS are the two large general-purpose detectors, each with thousands of physicists eager for real physics data.
As you can see, the vertical axis of the plot is labelled in units of “nb-1” or inverse nanobarns. The unit “barn” is a unit of area, a kind of joke from Enrico Fermi and friends who, despite the tiny size of a nucleus, said it was “as big as a barn” even though in cross sectional area it’s on the order of 10-28 m2 (which is in fact the definition of one barn). If we think about the cross sectional area of the protons colliding in the LHC, they have a cross sectional area (or simply a total collision cross section) of about 0.12 barns.
So what’s an inverse nanobarn? Well, if we try to collide lots of protons, we might ask “how many collisions per barn or cross sectional area did we make?” It’s like throwing little paint blobs at a wall, one at a time. Eventually the wall is covered, and then covered again, and then covered many times over. We can ask “how many paint blobs per unit area of the wall did we cover?” The nano in nanobarns means one billionth of a barn, and so, now, the LHC has managed to produce its first inverse nanobarn: one collision per every billionth of a barn of cross section.
It’s just a unit – all that matters is “how many collision events of my favorite kind should have been produced?” To get this, you multiply the number of inverse nanobarns by the production cross section for that kind of event, and also by the probability that you actually detect it. So for Z boson production, for example, the cross section is about 30 nanobarns, so we should have a few by now. (I am not at liberty to say whether we do or not…)
The plot has stair steps – the horizontal axis is real time, and the LHC machine is filled with protons, then brought to full energy, then collimators put in, then the experiment turns on and records data for some time until the accelerator folks decide to dump the beam out and refill. As you can see this cycle has been going like clockwork, with fill after fill of the machine. And the experiment has been recording a very large fraction of the delivered collisions, the losses being quite normal and due to end effects and the occasional glitch.
But then came the LHC baby’s first real step last weekend: squeezing the beam. By raising the quadrupole beam focusing magnets to high field, the transverse size of proton bunches in the machine shrinks down and the probability of collisions goes up. In this case, the luminosity went up by an order of magnitude – it was a stunning success. Any imperfection in the focusing fields can send the beam right out of the machine, and, clearly, that did not happen.
The goal in the next year is to get to one inverse femtobarn – a million times more data. In the next week or so the plan, if all goes well, is to achieve another couple orders of magnitude in luminosity. Shit’s about to get real, folks…
Sure, it was expertly shot and framed, brightly lit, and set in a striking location, but you really can't diminish what Nokia's N8 has done here—it's recorded crystal-clear, camcorder-level 720p footage. Except, it's a phone. More »
"In 2008, a large shipment of export beef from American cattle ranches was rejected by Mexican health authorities and returned to the US. The reason: copper found in the beef exceeded safe levels for human consumption. The rejected beef was then sold to consumers back home in the states. L
How could you transmit digital signal for long distances without converting to analog form?
2015. That's when the First Interplanetary War starts, when Japanese humanoid robots arrive to the Moon to fight the Nazis stationed there. If there are no Nazis, however, they'll just set up camp and explore, waiting for humans to arrive. More »
I used to write for the Huffington Post, before it became overrun with antiscience alt-med antivax garbage so thick I could smell it through my monitor.
Case in point would be a somewhat targetless essay by Dr. Larry Dossey, who seems to be trying to say that because science is portrayed as an individual effort, but is actually usually a team effort, students get confused and marginalized. Or something. His point is difficult to determine. But in any case, he’s quite wrong; the idea of science being done by groups of people collaboratively is everywhere, from astronomy to zoology.
I need not go into details, because, happily, Steve Newton from the NCSE has posted a rebuttal on HuffPo that tears Dossey to shreds. My favorite part was when Dossey says Nobel Prizes are only given to individuals, and my first thought was "Wow, I wonder if the IPCC knows about this?"… in his essay, Newton says almost exactly the same thing. Great minds, yadda yadda.
Anyway, I suggest you read Dossey’s screed, and then read Newton’s slamdunking of it. It’s a wonderful exercise in muddied and clear thinking, in that order. With people like Newton writing for HuffPo, it makes me feel a bit better that I don’t need to as much.
Tip o’ the white lab coat Robert Luhn of the NCSE.
NASA May Stretch out Mars Missions to Save Money
"NASA is considering a plan to get around limited budgets set in Washington by stretching out missions to bring back samples from Mars, a researcher said on Wednesday. It may be possible to break down the complicated and expensive mission into three parts, said Steve Squyres, a Cornell University astronomer who leads the Mars Exploration Rover Mission. "It makes the program more affordable because it strings out the cost over time," Squyres told reporters in a telephone briefing. "It brings down the cost per year of doing such a thing."
From Wired Top Stories:
Mice healed three times faster than normal after their broken bones were flooded by proteins naturally used to regrow new tissues. The discovery raises the possibility of a stem cell-free route to regeneration. The Wnt family of proteins used in the mice
Rejoice: HP is buying Palm! If the boring beigeness of HP doesn't kill it in the process, this could only be good for anyone looking for a neat, solid smartphone that beats Google and Apple in many areas. More »
