NCBI ROFL: An ecological study of glee in small groups of preschool children. | Discoblog

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2877000137_0ca6aa1e7f“A phenomenon called group glee was studied in videotpes of 596 formal lessons in a preschool. This was characterized by joyful screaming, laughing, and intense physical acts which occurred in simultaneous bursts or which spread in a contagious fashion from one child to another. A variety of precipitating factors were identified, the most prevalent being teacher requests for volunteers, unstructured lags in lessons, gross physical-motor actions, and cognitive incongruities. Distinctions between group glee and laughter were pointed out. While most events of glee did not disrupt the ongoing lesson, those which did tended to produce a protective reaction on the part of teachers. Group glee tended to occur most often in large groups (7-9 children) and in groups containing both sexes. The latter finding was related to Darwin’s theory of differentiating vocal signals in animals and man.”

glee

Photo: flickr/edenpictures

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Saudi to Use Plentiful Resource (Sunlight) to Produce Scarce Resource (Fresh Water) | 80beats

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ibmsolarIn the hot desert kingdom of Saudi Arabia, finding fresh drinking water has always been a great challenge. For decades now, the state has been providing clean water by converting millions of gallons of seawater via desalination plants that remove salts and minerals from the water. Now the country plans to use one of its most abundant resources to counter its fresh-water shortage: sunshine [Technology Review].

Working on a joint project with IBM, Saudi Arabia’s national research group King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) has announced that it will open the world’s largest solar-powered desalination plant by 2012 in the city of Al-Khafji. The pilot plant will not just supply 30,000 cubic meters of clean water per day to 100,000 people, but will also reduce operating costs in the long run by harvesting energy from sunshine. Saudi Arabia, the top desalinated water producer in the world, uses 1.5 million barrels of oil per day at its plants, according to Arab News [Technology Review].

In the new desalination plant, the Saudis hope to slash energy costs by deploying a new kind of concentrated photovoltaic technology, which uses lenses or mirrors to focus the sun’s rays onto solar panels. The technology will concentrate the sun 1,500 times on a solar cell to boost efficiency. That’s about three times the solar concentration of most concentrating photovoltaic panels currently in operation [The New York Times]. The system’s upgrade is due to a device that IBM came up with back when the company was designing mainframe computers and trying to ensure that they didn’t overheat. The device, called a liquid metal thermal interface, uses a highly conductive liquid metal to transfer heat away. In the desalination plant, the devices will serve as heat sinks to prevent the photovoltaics from breaking down under such extreme, concentrated heat.

The energy generated by these solar arrays would then power the plant’s desalination process, which will be accomplished via reverse osmosis. In this technique, seawater is forced through a polymer membrane at high pressure, which filters out salt and contaminants. The Al-Khafji plant will use an advanced nano-membrane that IBM and KACST developed, which researchers say allows water to flow through 25 to 50 percent faster than conventional membranes used in desalination plants.

The Al-Khafji desalination plant is the first of three steps in a solar-energy program launched by KACST to reduce desalination costs. The second step will be a 300,000-cubic-meter facility, and the third phase will involve several more solar-power desalination plants at various locations [Technology Review].

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Image: IBM


Florida Reps Ramp Up To Oppose Obama Space Plans

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Kosmas added to 'Save Space' rally

"U.S. Rep. Suzanne Kosmas has been added to the roster of speakers for Sunday's "Save Space" community rally at the Cocoa Expo Sports Center. The rally is designed to emphasize that human space exploration should be the critical aspect of NASA policy."

Kosmas and Posey to Participate in Florida Today Space Forum

"Congresswoman Suzanne Kosmas (FL-24) will participate in the Florida Today Space Forum at the Simpkins Fine Arts Center on the Brevard Community College Cocoa campus. Kosmas, along with Congressman Bill Posey (FL-15), will answer questions on the future of the space industry in Florida and its impact on Space Coast communities."

Conrad Foundation Spirit of Innovation Opening Ceremonies

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- Joshua Neubert, Executive Director, Conrad Foundation
- Nancy Conrad, Chairman of the Conrad Foundation,
- Dr. Simon "Pete" Worden, Director, NASA Ames
- Jon Wellinghoff, Chairman Federal Energy Regulator Commission.
- Richard Garriot, entrepreneur, and space explorer,

Live streaming video here 6:30 - 8:00 PM PDT

Apple iPhone OS 4 Announcement Makes Users Feel "Finally!" – HULIQ

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Reuters
Apple iPhone OS 4 Announcement Makes Users Feel "Finally!"
HULIQ
A common use case would be uploading a photo to Flickr; after switching away the app can alert you when the upload is complete. Fast app switching allows ...
Live notes from Apple's iPhone OS 4.0 eventIce Hype (blog)
Creation Myths: What the Argument That the iPad's Not for Creating Content ...Huffington Post (blog)
Live from Apple's iPhone OS 4 event!Engadget (blog)
Gizmodo Australia -iLounge
all 2,990 news articles »

Pluto Discussion in Reverse

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Hubble's look at a brown dwarf and mystery companion. Click for larger. Credit: Hubblesite

Everybody remembers the shock of the news when Pluto was demoted from being a planet into becoming a hapless minor planet. The IAU hardly saw the ensuing furor coming. You don’t just go messing with the planets for any old reason. What they really did was underestimate the value of public relations. In the eyes of the public they “demoted” a perfectly good planet to MINOR planet status…minor indeed! Hmmph!

I for one do understand why the IAU did what they did. All they really needed to do was to use better salesmanship, maybe something like mini-planet or maybe dainty-planet or something along those lines, but never minor. It seems pretty obvious the public will toss out a tried and true anything for a pig-in-a-poke if it is marketed correctly, we do it all the time. Heck sometimes all we have to do is be told we will like it, and that’s good enough until we unwrap the package to see what really awaits us and by then it’s too late one way or the other.

Now enter Hubble and the image above of a Brown Dwarf Star and a mystery companion.  Is it a planet?  Is it a star?  Where is the dividing line?  Somehow if when the discussion is reversed on the Pluto topic I don’t think we would have the same problem.

Background from Hubblesite:

As our telescopes grow more powerful, astronomers are uncovering objects that defy conventional wisdom. This latest example is the discovery of a planet-like object circling a brown dwarf. It’s the right size for a planet, estimated to be 5-10 times the mass of Jupiter. There has been a lot of discussion in the context of the Pluto debate over how small an object can be and still be called a planet. This new observation addresses the question at the other end of the size spectrum: How small can an object be and still be a brown dwarf rather than a planet? This new companion is within the range of masses observed for planets around stars — less than 15 Jupiter masses. But should it be called a planet? The answer is strongly connected to the mechanism by which the companion most likely formed. What’s even more puzzling is that the object formed in just 1 million years, a very short time to make a planet according to conventional theory.

Read the full story and see more images at Hubblesite.

Cassini eavesdrops on orbit-swapping moons | Bad Astronomy

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The Cassini spacecraft just had a few close encounters with some of the odder moons in the Saturn system… and given how weird Saturn is, that’s saying something. I was particularly enthralled with these two small worlds:

cassini_janus_epimetheus

On the left is the moon Janus and on the right is Epimetheus. The scales are not quite the same; Janus is roughly half again as big as Epimetheus’ size of 135 x 110 x 105 km (81 x 66 x 63 miles). Cassini was a little over 100,000 km from Epimetheus and 75,000 km from Janus when these images a were taken.

These are raw images, so they haven’t been processed yet to remove cosmic ray hits, brightness variations, and so on. But they are still fascinating. Epimetheus looks to me exactly how I picture a big asteroid; beaten, battered, looming. The low angle of sunlight on the side accentuates the craters there, making this almost a caricature of what an asteroid looks like. Technically it’s not an asteroid; it’s a moon. And even if it weren’t orbiting Saturn we might not call it an asteroid; it has a high reflectivity indicating a lot of ice on the surface (and a low density consistent with that too). If it orbited the Sun on an elliptical path, we might very well call it a comet!

But there’s more to these moons. Amazingly, Janus and Epimetheus are on almost — but not quite — the same orbit around Saturn! Currently, Janus is a bit closer to Saturn than Epimetheus.

I say "currently", because every four years these moons swap orbits! Since Janus has an orbit slightly closer to Saturn, it is moving faster around the planet than Epimetheus. It slowly but eventually catches up to the outer moon. As they approach, Janus pulls back slightly on Epimetheus, and Epimetheus pulls Janus forward. In other words, Janus steals orbital energy Epimetheus! This means Epimetheus drops into a slightly lower orbit, and Janus gets boosted into a slightly higher one, effectively swapping the orbits of the two moons. Although the two orbital paths are separated by only about 50 km (30 miles) — smaller than the radii of either moon — they never collide. The swap takes place when the moons are still more than 10,000 km apart, so they never get a chance to bump uglies.

How did this weird situation arise? Perhaps, in the distant past, there was one bigger moon orbiting Saturn, and it got whacked by an interloper. The moon disrupted, breaking into two big pieces and lots of littler ones. The debris got cleaned up by the gravity of the two big pieces and other gravitational effects, leaving these two square-dancing satellites on slightly different but still interacting paths.

However, the actual cause of this still isn’t known for sure. Cassini observations like this one may help astronomers figure out how it is these two little moons came to be, and why it is that although they can always approach each other, they can never actually touch.


We’re Beyond Product Placement: Here’s “Behavior Placement” | Discoblog

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TV-television-screensOver the years of our addiction to the great idiot box, television, we’ve gradually learned to block out the pesky commercials that interrupt and interfere with our viewing pleasure with their yammering attempts to sell us things. Unfortunately, this has only led marketers to wonder how they could influence our buying decisions in more subtle ways, ushering in a new era of creepy ideas that smack of brainwashing.

The first idea was product placement, where the stars of TV shows drank a certain brand of fizzy soda or typed on a certain brand of computer. But now that most viewers are hip to these product placements, the marketers and networks have stepped it up a notch to reclaim our attention again. NBC has introduced “behavior placement,” wherein certain behaviors are written into the show’s narrative in order to foist a more nebulous kind of marketing on us.

For a week in April, NBC will use its shows to convince viewers to “get green,” compost, or otherwise save the planet. The benefits for advertisers are two-fold. Some companies simply want to link their brand to a feel-good and socially aware show, while other companies–like those that sell energy-efficient lightbulbs or organic household cleaning products–think advertising on these shows will directly boost sales.

In an in-depth article, The Wall Street Journal writes of an earlier marketing push:

In just one week on NBC, the detectives on “Law and Order” investigated a cash-for-clunkers scam, a nurse on “Mercy” organized a group bike ride, Al Gore made a guest appearance on “30 Rock,” and “The Office” turned Dwight Schrute into a cape-wearing superhero obsessed with recycling.

The marketers say they don’t want to come across as being too pushy or preachy, so getting characters in a show to plug for certain behaviors is a safer bet. NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker told The Wall Street Journal:

“People don’t want to be hit over the head with it…. Putting it in programming is what makes it resonate with viewers.”

Since fall 2007, NBC executives have asked producers of almost every prime-time and daytime show to incorporate a green storyline at least once a year. Show producers, like Tim Kring of “Heroes,” told The Journal that behavior placement was easier than incorporating a specific brand. This past fall, he said, members of a carnival in the show loaded a pickup truck with recyclables as one of the characters talked about giving back to the Earth.

“Someone has to pay for our big, expensive television shows,” Mr. Kring says.

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Image: iStockphoto


Contamination with Cobalt 60

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There's a news from my country which says that Cobalt 60 was found in a paper collection area. Paper is collected here for recycling and more often than not such places also house other items for recycling- glass bottles, metals etc. Apart from wondering how did Co60 land up here I'm also curious ab