zelkas

Don’t blink!

Time-lapse video filmed in Antarctica, in and around McMurdo Station and Scott Base. Go to antarcticimages.com for a better quality version of this clip; Blog is here .

Without visual cues, humans will always ambulate in a circle — and there seems to be no explanation why. Read the whole article at NPR.

Via Slashdot: Being too clean can make people sick

[direct link]

How do we know? “Dutch researchers … scanned a reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece and subjected it to cutting-edge “emotion recognition” software, developed in collaboration with the University of Illinois.

The result showed the painting’s famous subject was 83 percent happy, 9 percent disgusted, 6 percent fearful and 2 percent angry. She was less than 1 percent neutral, and not at all surprised”

Climbing robot:

“RiSE is a small six-legged robot that climbs vertical terrain such as walls, trees and fences.”
(more…)

Scientists awed by `human calendar‘: The woman is identified only as AJ. Her unique ability to perfectly and instantly recall details of her past has led researchers to propose a name for her condition: “hyperthymestic syndrome,” based on the Greek word thymesis for “remembering,” and hyper, meaning “more than normal.”

Best explanation of the Loch Ness mystery yet.

Indian scientists have claimed that they may be able to give warning several hours before certain quakes larger than five on the Richter scale using an acoustic meteorological technique called Sonic Detection and Ranging (sodar).

Astronomers report an unprecedented elongated double helix nebula near the center of our Milky Way galaxy. (see large image).

Environments for exploring sound concepts from the site HyperPhysics, by Carl Nave from the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Georgia State University. (Some sound demo clips here)

The hunt for the worst sound in the world. See also, What makes a sound annoying, and the Horrible Sounds Mixer.

From MIT Media Lab, “I/O Brush is a new drawing tool to explore colors, textures, and movements found in everyday materials by “picking up” and drawing with them”. Article here. Direct link to video here.

Article explaining how and why sand sometimes seems to croak, burp, sing, and boom.

MP3s: croaking sand; booming sand

Seven minute video on the phenomenon: in quicktime; in windows media

Water Balloon Bounce. Also see a woman age, and nine more pages of time-lapse/time-speed animations.

From the Big Bang to the year 2079 – in outline form, with amusing observations: “5,000,000 years ago, primitive forms of humanoid break off from the evolutionary ape line, lose their hair and immediately begin to feel self-conscious about it“.

Can’t quite recall Wittgenstein’s thoughts on the the totality of true propositions, but you only have five minutes to spare? Never fear, Squashed Philosophers is here. Hey! It has Leibniz, and Turing!

Video: The History of the Universe in 60 Seconds or Less.

Sam’s Archive – Making an F-16 from a cereal box, some Scotch tape, and a penny.

Link: Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists is a club for scientists who have, or believe they have, luxuriant flowing hair.

Link: Levitation-movies.

Link: Sam Barros’ PowerLabs!: one guy’s experimental science site.

Link: Colorization Using Optimization.

Absolutely amazing! Try it yourself with a Java applet.