Brontoforumus Archive

Discussion Boards => Thaddeus Boyd's Panel of Death => Topic started by: Arc on April 30, 2008, 12:57:29 PM

Title: ¡Science!
Post by: Arc on April 30, 2008, 12:57:29 PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39VJP671LDY

:behold: Gentlemen, behold! Fabricated Corn!

NASA has been using machines like these so that tools can be created in galaxies, far, far away. Now that the consumer market is getting involved, the pirate industry just became that much more expansive.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Catloaf on April 30, 2008, 03:42:12 PM
I can't wait for bioengineers to get something like this and attempt to make living material and organisms.  Also, if it could be used to make organs and such, it would be every hospital's new favorite machine.

I hope the final consumer version 100 years from now will be compatible with something like spore so that one could make a crazy pet to kill your neighbors
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Cannon on April 30, 2008, 04:04:17 PM
Someone take Catloaf's copy of The Fifth Element away from him.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Burrito Al Pastor on April 30, 2008, 09:07:17 PM
This is going to be the best thing ever for miniatures gaming.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: sei on April 30, 2008, 11:11:27 PM
For games in which everything is a slime or goo elemental.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Burrito Al Pastor on April 30, 2008, 11:55:42 PM
Not at all. Look at the dragon at 2:40.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Classic on May 01, 2008, 12:09:53 AM
That dragon is from a far more expensive piece of equipment. If it could be made affordable in half the time, you'd be about ready to return to childhood, and game till you croak, I suppose.

The home-sized 3D printer also doesn't seem to have fine enough tools to do the kind of miniature work that I think most players have come to expect, even if you could give it a really fine nozzle plastic dispenser.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Sharkey on May 01, 2008, 08:45:52 AM
Also, there's the whole economics of scale thing. It's cheaper to make a lot of identical things on a dedicated setup to make one unique thing on something fancy. Which doesn't much matter when things are really, really cheap. Printing 2D stuff on personal printers is way more expensive per page than having assloads of copies made by a big press, but it's economical and necessary enough to be worth while. This still has to become way the hell cheaper, and there's still no clear, pressing need for most people to have such a thing.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Arc on May 16, 2008, 02:27:00 PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9JAk-WPZkk

Gentlemen, behold! Wings on Corn!

Wonder how updraft is handled. If it maintains well, then we have a new form of urban transportation. And plenty of recreations of the first pages of Kick-Ass #1 to follow.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on May 16, 2008, 04:31:26 PM
If it maintains well, then we have a new form of urban transportation.

Just what I need.  Rednecks flashing their highbeams at me IN THE FUCKING AIR.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Arc on May 25, 2008, 07:54:28 PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbwaYEyIdU8

We're back you Martian sonsabitches. Lock 'n load!
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Saturn on May 26, 2008, 12:48:21 AM
This is going to be the best thing ever for miniatures gaming.
and even WITH A 3d printer that could match the detail of current miniatures, it's still cheaper than buying from games workshop.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Shinra on May 26, 2008, 03:57:04 PM
This is going to be the best thing ever for miniatures gaming.
and even WITH A 3d printer that could match the detail of current miniatures, it's still cheaper than buying from games workshop.

80 dollars for an issue of reader's digest and 12 one inch tall pieces of plastic stamped on a metal dye in a third world country.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Guild on June 09, 2008, 12:04:52 AM
I'm still not really sure what the difference between Real Life and Real World is, but if this needs to be moved apologies for the misthreading.

Cow bacteria to be replaced with kangaroo bacteria to cut down on methane production (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90031367).
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on June 13, 2008, 05:29:48 PM
Also, mixing cattle feed with cashew oil (http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUST34833520080611?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews) can reduce methane in burps by 90%.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Cthulhu-chan on June 14, 2008, 01:02:30 AM
Not exactly a cheap solution, then.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Guild on June 14, 2008, 01:16:40 AM
Can you put a price on global warming?  :sadpanda:
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Zach on July 01, 2008, 11:25:30 AM
Turns out, the Earth is crying (http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20080701/sc_space/earthscriesrecordedinspace).

Probably because of something that you did.

(http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b167/unhelpful/CaptainPlanet_1.jpg)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on July 01, 2008, 01:37:19 PM
Oh fuck no.  The hell any part of Cosmo Canyon is turning out to be true.  You fuckshits.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Norondor on July 01, 2008, 02:50:09 PM
re-un-ion
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Dooly on July 01, 2008, 03:50:29 PM
I can't get past the nipples and package on Captain Planet there.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Royal☭ on July 14, 2008, 07:16:01 AM
MIT creates windows that provide solar power (http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/solarcells-0710.html)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on July 14, 2008, 10:29:29 AM
It's about fucking time.

As long as we've got idiots designing glass courthouses (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandra_Day_O%27Connor_United_States_Courthouse) to put in downtown fucking Phoenix, we may as well start getting something out of them.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on July 14, 2008, 03:28:19 PM
glass courthouses (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandra_Day_O%27Connor_United_States_Courthouse)

The best thing about that link is that that courthouse has a poorly functioning swamp cooler.

:lol:
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on July 14, 2008, 03:31:21 PM
:victory:

Nice catch.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Royal☭ on July 14, 2008, 03:32:16 PM
Bees deployed to protect Japanese birds (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/07/080714-birds-bees.html)

There's a lot to love about this article, but I'm especially fond of
Quote
Conservationists hope bees will repel the crows, based on the insects' tendency to attack anything dark-colored that approaches their hives.

Fucking racist bees.
Title: Re: Oh! Bama
Post by: sei on July 18, 2008, 01:07:38 PM
We're probably going to need a sustainability thread.

On that note:
MIT opens new 'window' on solar energy (http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/solarcells-0710.html)
Related FAQ. (http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/solarcells-faq-0710.html)
MIT spin-off plans to manufacture cheap, efficient solar cells (http://www.physorg.com/news125842769.html)

Fun stuff.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Royal☭ on July 30, 2008, 10:54:41 AM
Warp Engine Would Travel Faster Than Light (http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/07/28/warp-speed-engine.html)

Essentially using an amount of energy equal to the size of Jupiter to open to the 11th dimension behind a spaceship would push it faster than the speed of light.  Cool stuff, and several millenia off at the least.  But what caught my attention was
Quote
The tricky part is that the ship wouldn't actually move; space itself would move underneath the stationary spacecraft.

Science is apparently copying Futurama.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on August 11, 2008, 12:14:39 AM
New material curves light, makes wearer invisible. (http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10013128-71.html)  I've seen both James Bond and Tony Stark use similar tech; science fact follows science fiction once again.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Catloaf on August 11, 2008, 04:47:52 AM
I just wonder if it will be truly invisible or just mostly invisible with motion still obviously noticeable to someone looking at it like in videogames.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Norondor on August 11, 2008, 06:08:53 AM
I wonder if you'll become visible if someone bumps into you or you accidentally get hit by a minigun bullet
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Kazz on August 11, 2008, 06:43:28 AM
while that's pretty cool, the blog post Thad linked is just retardedly written
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Norondor on August 11, 2008, 07:54:42 AM
Here is a significantly better one. (http://www.physorg.com/news137649366.html)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on August 11, 2008, 01:45:30 PM
Oh goody.  You know I felt much better about the world a few minutes ago when I thought that cloaking technology was bullshit.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Norondor on August 11, 2008, 01:46:43 PM
I don't worry too much about invisible carbon molecules.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Cthulhu-chan on August 11, 2008, 06:42:20 PM
don't you mean invisible to red light carbon molecules?  It will be a long time, if ever, before something could be made negatively refractive to the entire visible spectrum.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on August 12, 2008, 08:47:46 PM
One of these days Alice... POW! Straight to tha' moon! (http://technology.sympatico.msn.cbc.ca/NASA+safety+panel+worries+about+moon+ship+design/News/ContentPosting?isfa=1&newsitemid=orion-safety&feedname=CBC-TECH-SCIENCE-V3&show=False&number=0&showbyline=True&subtitle=&detect=&abc=abc&date=True)

Oh yeah, this'll end well.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on August 12, 2008, 10:23:23 PM
At this point I'm positive that anything NASA says could happen, will happen.  And at the worst possible time.

...

NASA hasn't said anything about birth control lately, have they?
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: François on August 16, 2008, 07:06:25 AM
There's electric cars!
There's electric trains!
Here comes a robot (http://blogs.zdnet.com/emergingtech/?p=1009) with electric organic brains!
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on August 16, 2008, 10:12:39 AM
...So how long until the Republicans try to ban THIS potentially life-saving research?
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Burrito Al Pastor on August 16, 2008, 12:34:14 PM
They'll shut up when somebody explains to them that it will lead to robot bodies which will allow them to personally ruin the country forever.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on August 16, 2008, 01:13:49 PM
They'll shut up when somebody explains to them the oil and energy consumption requirements of a robot body.

Fuck, they're probably shutting up already.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: sei on October 21, 2008, 11:41:57 AM
If HP's pieces of shit get into this business (http://devicedaily.com/misc/bio-printing-technology-to-produce-functional-human-organs.html), someone's fucked.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: on October 21, 2008, 11:49:22 AM
Quote
Robot Bodies
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/8a/Sealab_Sparks.png/100px-Sealab_Sparks.png)I'd do it.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on October 21, 2008, 11:50:00 AM
It apparently turns sad babies into the protagonists of shounen sports manga.

I gotta admit, that kicks the shit out of that other materials printer, which could at best make flimsy models and food you don't want to eat.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: The Artist Formerly Known As Yoji on October 21, 2008, 12:02:55 PM
I saw something about this on TV some months back. Looks like a great idea, even without the bullshit holographic displays.

Does this mean no Ghost in the Shell artificial bodies for us? :sadpanda:
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on October 21, 2008, 12:49:43 PM
Well, probably not.  Even if the guy can get a functional humanoid heart out of his replicators, the chances of an actual human being not rejecting the weird thing are probably not so good.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: sei on October 21, 2008, 01:06:21 PM
Quote from: 4th paragraph in that article
The advantage of this inkjet-like technique is that the heart will be produced with cells coming from the patient therefore the body will not reject it.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on October 21, 2008, 03:22:48 PM
 :THATWAY:
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on October 21, 2008, 03:34:13 PM
Yes, but just because you make a pile of shit out of cells taken (or grown) from the original host body, that's no guarantee that the thing will operate as well as a heart that grew in your own body since you were in the womb. Or that it will work at all.

Maybe after another few decades or centuries they can makes lattices and get it all to work reasonably well, we'll see, but printing out cell layer by cell layer like some kind of lego heart, well, that's not the way hearts grow in nature, and such a process will always be inferior to the real thing. I guess the real question is "how inferior?"
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: patito on October 21, 2008, 04:12:39 PM
Or maybe it will work even better than one made by nature. Just because it's manmade doesn't mean it's automatically worse. Though I agree that the technology is probably in its infancy right now and that's why it may not work as well as the real thing.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: François on October 21, 2008, 04:20:45 PM
If I happened to run into Mola Ram in the subway, I wouldn't hesitate too much over the choice between an inferior man-made heart and death.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Sharkey on October 21, 2008, 04:59:21 PM
Or maybe it will work even better than one made by nature. Just because it's manmade doesn't mean it's automatically worse. Though I agree that the technology is probably in its infancy right now and that's why it may not work as well as the real thing.

It's true. The wheels I've been making, though ugly and somewhat out of round, are much nicer than the naturally occurring wheels I've been finding lying around, which tend to come in an incredible variety of shapes, none of which have been satisfyingly wheel-like. Actually, they make terrible noises when I put an axle through them. At least for a few minutes, though they do conveniently provide their own grease.

The same thing with this artificial fire bit. It's less initially impressive than a lightning strike, but it makes for a hell of a lot less waiting and isn't as likely to make my teeth glow and my eyeballs boil out of my head.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on October 21, 2008, 05:06:30 PM
If I happened to run into Mola Ram in the subway, I wouldn't hesitate too much over the choice between an inferior man-made heart and death.

Well, that's no different than artifical hearts nowadays.

I guess I wasn't nearly clear enough.

I'm not some kind of Luddite decrying this as a heathen invention, nor am I saying it's total fail. What I am saying is that there are existing research programs to grow replacement tissues that are far more legit than this gimcrackery.

WHY do you need to use a printer to do this? Hearts do not grow that way. Existing programs try to grow tissues in a more natural way, using lattices and/or natural encouragements (hormones, receptor chemicals, etc) as the closer you can get the process to real-life growth conditions the more likely you will be rewarded with successfully functioning organs and healthy tissue.

Adding a printer to the mix imposes an artificiality on the process that greatly increases the chances of failure. Yes, this has a Shadowrun instant-gratification coolness about it, but it's ultimately a bad idea. Even if the printout can be made to act as he desires, the cells will not gel the way you might be thinking. Even if you can magically print out a ready-made heart in a few hours, the cells are still human cells. They need time to come to life, to grow together, to gain strength and to begin to function in harmony as an organ. And the best encouragement to this is for those cells to grow together, as opposed to being printed out line-by-line, like someone's homework assignment.

It's not that horrible a thing, I'm sure, and if someone's funding him, hey might as well give it a try. It may have solid applications for monocultures like skin grafts, tissue patches, etc. (though, those too have their own grow-a-new-one research programmes), but at worst it will detract from far more legitimate research.

I know modern medicine is pretty miraculous, but the human body is not a modular assembly-line product, with plug-in or screw-in replaceable parts. Nor will it ever be. If we do eventually gain the ability to replace whole organs in a hurry, it will because we have learned to perfectly tailor those replacements to the patient, not because we made a rack of standardized mass-produced hearts and managed to standardise the human species to match.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Sharkey on October 21, 2008, 05:20:26 PM
Man, I was with you up until you started using technical terms like "gel" when talking about cells. The rest of the jargon went right over my head.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on October 21, 2008, 05:27:50 PM
Okay. My wife has pointed out while you can't just print an instant replacement heart, such a printer COULD be useful for printing out a fetal heart (the human heart essentially reaches it's final form at 32 days of gestation), but you would still have to spend months growing it to adult size, coaxing it with a combination of growth hormones and other careful encouragement. So I'm both right and wrong.

Given that she's a Cardiologist, I'm not exactly going to argue with her.  :derp:
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on October 21, 2008, 05:35:59 PM
Growing it where, though?  Wouldn't you need to cultivate it inside the body you're trying to put it into?

Note, the guy who made this is a pediatrician, so he may not have built the machine with fully-developed organs in mind.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Sharkey on October 21, 2008, 05:41:45 PM
Cows.

Ideally, that's where we'd be growing whole babies.

Also, the mostly whole babies with the better parts of their brains scooped out so we wouldn't feel too bad about taking their hearts and everything else once they're ripe.

Also: Shit, man, you're married? We should have a poll for that kind of thing. I really need to know just how many of you have ever gotten hitched or stapled your dick to your upper thigh or whatever, just so I can not avoid making fun of it in the future.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Cthulhu-chan on October 21, 2008, 06:42:29 PM
Pigs would be more likely.  We have a lot in common with them, biologically speaking.

There's a reason long pork is called the other other white meat.   ::D:
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Romosome on October 21, 2008, 08:35:03 PM
Lattices for larger organs run into problems with development because hearts don't naturally grow in vats, either, so it becomes a surface area issue: inner cells don't receive proper nutrients during the growth process once covered by other cells and die off.  At least that's what I remember hearing, I was really interested in tissue engineering years ago when it first started becoming feasible.

If anything, I'd worry a printed young heart that has to mature would be less reliable than a printed adult heart; You print a heart that's supposed to stay like that and sometimes repair itself, you have a good chance.  Print a heart that's supposed to grow naturally and what's to say the right cellular triggers will go off in the right spot?  Wouldn't you have to account for all the cytoplasmic contents that determine such things, half of which we know nothing about?  It's a huge gray area.

Once again, though, organ printers are probably going to be best applied to emergency surgery and first aid.  A machine that could print new blood vessels and tissue back onto a cleaned wound and then lay fresh new skin right over it.  Select area regeneration; it'd be like spot-welding a leak in a human.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Classic on October 21, 2008, 10:54:29 PM
WARNING! ZERO BIOLOGY KNOWLEDGE!

There's probably a way to make a body accept non-terminal tissues and incorporate them properly. Perhaps it would be a worthwhile avenue for preventative medicines treatments.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: clutch on October 21, 2008, 11:36:21 PM
WARNING! ZERO BIOLOGY KNOWLEDGE!
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Classic on October 21, 2008, 11:40:16 PM
Your girlfriend only THINKS I don't know! :pimp:
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Disposable Ninja on October 21, 2008, 11:41:19 PM
It's funny, that is indeed the exact face a male cat makes when another male cat tries to have sex with him.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Romosome on October 21, 2008, 11:42:23 PM
(http://romosome.pyoko.org/pic/rutowhere.jpg)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Cthulhu-chan on October 21, 2008, 11:45:58 PM
WARNING! ZERO BIOLOGY KNOWLEDGE!

There's probably a way to make a body accept non-terminal tissues and incorporate them properly. Perhaps it would be a worthwhile avenue for preventative medicines treatments.

Immuno-suppressive drugs already exist.  Transplants would almost always fail without them, however they leave you more vulnerable to infections.  I'm pretty sure that research into coaxing a body to accept targeted foreign tissues has been ongoing since the first transplant rejections.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Classic on October 21, 2008, 11:54:08 PM
E-eh? That was a response to the "How will stuffs grow in a vat" problem.

My answer is grow it in its intended recipient.


It's funny, that is indeed the exact face a male cat makes when another male cat tries to have sex with him.
It's... It's got barbs on it. My A cat's penis.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Disposable Ninja on October 21, 2008, 11:57:54 PM
(http://romosome.pyoko.org/pic/rutowhere.jpg)

Shouldn't... shouldn't it be the other way for Zora?
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: SCD on October 22, 2008, 07:30:21 PM
Insert a witty phrase referencing Spore here. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7684796.stm)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on October 25, 2008, 11:44:46 PM
One step closer to curing the common cold. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1080230/Cold-cure-horizon-scientists-pinpoint-bodys-natural-defences.html?ITO=1490)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on October 26, 2008, 01:09:53 AM
I'm always afraid of actually curing the common cold.  It's that usual "take down the timeless evil and something worse will step in to fill the void" thing.

Of course that worse might just be gross overpopulation.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on October 26, 2008, 01:12:40 AM
Like the nasty chlorine-resistant shit that's starting to show up in swimming pools.

(Literal shit, actually, if I'm not mistaken.)

Still, the fear of evolution is no reason not to try to cure a disease.  There are lots and lots of penicillin-resistant bugs now, but that doesn't make penicillin a bad idea.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: sei on October 26, 2008, 02:17:31 PM
School children and college students around the world mourn their favorite excuse.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Classic on October 26, 2008, 02:44:33 PM
Dogs? Computers?
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Dooly on October 26, 2008, 04:34:32 PM
They'll just be able to say they've caught the new mutated strain of cold that's resistant to whatever new treatment this leads to.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: sei on October 28, 2008, 02:02:49 AM
Quote from: http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/39807/113/
olumbus (OH) - Researchers at Ohio State University have accidentally discovered a new solar cell material capable of absorbing all of the sun's visible light energy. The material is comprised of a hybrid of plastics, molybdenum and titanium. The team discovered it not only fluoresces (as most solar cells do), but also phosphoresces. Electrons in a phosphorescent state remain at a place where they can be "siphoned off" as electricity over 7 million times longer than those generated in a fluorescent state. This combination of materials also utilizes the entire visible spectrum of light energy, translating into a theoretical potential of almost 100% efficiency. Commercial products are still years away, but this foundational work may well pave the way for a truly renewable form of clean, global energy.
Dubious and don't remember reading about it on physorg, but I like the steady clip of progress we're seeing with PV in general.

...PNAS...heh heh heh...

Quote from: http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/39807/113/
Solar cells like these [not the ones discussed above] are also incredibly expensive, fragile and impractical for mass production, making them useful for projects like satellites.
Unfortunate wording.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on October 28, 2008, 10:13:09 AM
Not really.  That's actually how aerospace guys think.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: sei on October 28, 2008, 03:03:39 PM
Unfortunate thinking.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on October 28, 2008, 03:15:10 PM
That's what got them into aerospace in the first place.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: sei on October 28, 2008, 03:16:53 PM
Unfortunate linking.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on October 28, 2008, 03:19:08 PM
 :thad:

...aww, pagebreak killed that dialogue.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: sei on October 28, 2008, 03:20:59 PM
god damn it pagebreak kills everything


I miss being able to set posts-per-page to something higher...not that it ensured a consistent view for all users. :nyoro~n:
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: McFrugal on November 03, 2008, 08:24:19 PM
http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/106040/Air-Cars:-A-New-Wind-for-America's-Roads

Compressed air?  Seriously?  Well, it's got plenty better MPG than the smart car, at least.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Cthulhu-chan on November 04, 2008, 05:22:29 AM
It looks like I could lift that thing on my shoulders.  I'm not surprised it's got good mileage.  I guarantee it'll never make the US market, as it's missing about 500 lbs of safety and emissions gear.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on November 12, 2008, 10:37:42 PM
BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7726118.stm): German researchers claim to have cured a man of AIDS with a bone marrow transplant from a donor with a genetic resistance.  Still way too early to verify that this is in fact the case, let alone see if it can be duplicated, but obviously this could have some pretty big ramifications.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on November 12, 2008, 11:02:33 PM
I haven't even heard of people having genetic resistances before.  Is this rare?
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on November 12, 2008, 11:13:33 PM
Quote from: TFA
About one in 1,000 Europeans and Americans have a resistance to HIV
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Classic on November 13, 2008, 01:09:03 AM
:want: Time to find out if I was born lucky!
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Arc on November 13, 2008, 07:23:38 AM
 :justasplanned:
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Classic on November 13, 2008, 10:35:47 AM
:want: Time to find out if I was born lucky!

UPDATE:
Classic's one lotto ticket did not pan out. This was bad.
On the other hand, he has not yet gotten struck by lightning! This was good!
On the yet another hand, he got dumped by his girlfriend. He's ambivalent about that one, but it still kind of hurts.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: JDigital on November 13, 2008, 11:20:06 AM
Supposedly the European resistance to HIV has something to do with survivors of the black plague. I wonder if it has anything to do with my theory regarding the battle-penis phenotype.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Royal☭ on November 13, 2008, 12:08:40 PM
Would you stop repeatedly thrusting your black-penis phenotype into places it doesn't belong?
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Guild on November 13, 2008, 12:30:23 PM
I haven't even heard of people having genetic resistances before.  Is this rare?

There are prostitutes woldwide who are immune (seemingly) to HIV. They sleep with customers who are known to be under the effects of AIDS, and their value is high because people also can't catch it from them. The virus dies out with no host body. These girls are commonly known to be "clean*" from HIV permanently.

*Meaning they have meningitus, herpes, viral warts and sapphire lizard-tailed tuberculosis crabs, but not HIV.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: TA on November 14, 2008, 04:28:59 PM
And the world of Family Law collectively shits its pants. (http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2008/11/12/Baby_born_after_ovary_transplant/UPI-92341226551696/)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on November 19, 2008, 12:45:32 AM
Humans and kangaroos closely related. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1086928/Kangaroos-closely-related-humans-scientists-claim.html?ITO=1490)

Quote
Scientists have mapped the genetic code of the Australian marsupials for the first time and found large chunks of DNA are the same.

'There are a few differences, we have a few more of this, a few less of that, but they are the same genes and a lot of them are in the same order,'  said Jenny Graves, director of the Centre of Excellence for Kangaroo Genomics.

'We thought they'd be completely scrambled, but they're not. There is great chunks of the human genome which is sitting right there in the kangaroo genome,' she added.

Humans and kangaroos last shared an ancestor 150million years ago, the researchers found, while mice and humans diverged from one another 70 million years ago.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Classic on November 19, 2008, 01:10:03 AM
A few marine life clicks later:
Caught short on camera: Whale shark's underwater waste yields 'scientific gold' (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1086490/Caught-short-camera-Whale-sharks-underwater-waste-yields-scientific-gold.html)

Which was kind of neat, because I like whale sharks. But the real kicker:

Quote
'So by cross-referencing its signal with Google Earth, I was able to track its progress


Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Arc on November 19, 2008, 01:13:11 AM
Humans and kangaroos closely related. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1086928/Kangaroos-closely-related-humans-scientists-claim.html?ITO=1490)

(http://i358.photobucket.com/albums/oo22/driftycity/tank05.jpg)

!!!
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: JDigital on November 19, 2008, 02:08:29 AM
Who pays for people to study shark poop? Can't we put these researchers to work looking for cold fusion?
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Classic on November 19, 2008, 02:34:00 AM
1) They weren't studying shark poop. They just got an exhibitionist and it's a first for the field.

2) No, they're freaking marine biologists. They're like... They're like the McDonalds trap monkeys of scientists.


EDIT:
... That's a little unfair, I suppose they might be an auto/body shop employee.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on November 19, 2008, 06:23:00 AM
 :facepalm:

Poop teaches you a lot about an animal's diet. Peripherally you also learn a shit-ton about their territorial habits, migration, internal biology, and a half-dozen other things.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on November 19, 2008, 07:51:45 AM
:mahboi: This poop may yield valuable biological data, maybe even a cure for cancer or AIDS!
::(:
:mahboi: Oh, fine.
:mahboi: This poop is what ALL true warriors strive for!
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: clutch on November 19, 2008, 09:20:07 AM
shit-ton

 :wakka:
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on November 19, 2008, 10:17:32 AM
Pun intended.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Bongo Bill on November 19, 2008, 11:16:16 PM
Miniature nuclear power plants (http://www.physorg.com/news145561984.html).
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Romosome on November 19, 2008, 11:33:56 PM
I'm dying to know what field of science Classic deems worthy of the approval of his massive intellect.

Quote
"The problem is most people with HIV live in sub-Saharan Africa and this is hugely expensive, you have to find a matched donor, and it's a pretty severe and painful operation.

So the South Park episode was pretty much dead on.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Classic on November 19, 2008, 11:46:55 PM
I'm dying to know what field of science Classic deems worthy of the approval of his massive intellect.

Computer Science. 'Cuz videogames. :serious: Q.E.D.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on November 20, 2008, 05:53:27 AM
Miniature nuclear power plants (http://www.physorg.com/news145561984.html).

Further reading indicates that these will not be online soon and that the company may be sketchy/vapourware.

Still though, got me reading about alternate power sources like RTGs and Sterling Engines for hours. Good times.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Cthulhu-chan on November 20, 2008, 06:21:26 AM
The idea isn't bad, or unique, as Toshiba (http://www.nextenergynews.com/news1/next-energy-news-toshiba-micro-nuclear-12.17b.html) should already be fielding their own.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: MadMAxJr on November 21, 2008, 01:27:33 PM
Scientists get Half Life jokes (http://gizmodo.com/5095760/cerns-gordon-freeman-employee-receives-crowbar-starts-murdering) at CERN.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Spaco on November 25, 2008, 10:36:14 AM
X-Slugs (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16124-solarpowered-sea-slug-harnesses-stolen-plant-genes-.html)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Classic on November 25, 2008, 10:45:31 AM
I've always wished I were powered by chlorophyll. Which is ironic as I spend most of my life in dark holes in front of computer screens.

...
I'm going outside today.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Arc on November 30, 2008, 07:45:57 AM
New technology could make water currents power the world. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/renewableenergy/3535012/Ocean-currents-can-power-the-world-say-scientists.html)

Quote from: Telegraph
A revolutionary device that can harness energy from slow-moving rivers and ocean currents could provide enough power for the entire world, scientists claim.

...

A "field" of cylinders built on the sea bed over a 1km by 1.5km area, and the height of a two-storey house, with a flow of just three knots, could generate enough power for around 100,000 homes. Just a few of the cylinders, stacked in a short ladder, could power an anchored ship or a lighthouse.

Systems could be sited on river beds or suspended in the ocean. The scientists behind the technology, which has been developed in research funded by the US government, say that generating power in this way would potentially cost only around 3.5p per kilowatt hour, compared to about 4.5p for wind energy and between 10p and 31p for solar power. They say the technology would require up to 50 times less ocean acreage than wave power generation.

The system, conceived by scientists at the University of Michigan, is called Vivace, or "vortex-induced vibrations for aquatic clean energy".

...

"If we could harness 0.1 per cent of the energy in the ocean, we could support the energy needs of 15 billion people. In the English Channel, for example, there is a very strong current, so you produce a lot of power."

...

Their work, funded by the US Department of Energy and the US Office of Naval Research, is published in the current issue of the quarterly Journal of Offshore Mechanics and Arctic Engineering.

Between this and the solar technology breakthrough @ OSU (http://renergycafe.com/home_page_news/solar-energy-breakthrough/), begun these Big Ten energy wars have.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Romosome on November 30, 2008, 01:37:47 PM
Eh.  Hate to be a killjoy, but I'll believe it when it happens.  The concept of a Tidal Harness has been around for decades and we've done exactly jack shit with it and kept burning oil happily.


There's an interesting historic lesson you can take from Hero of Alexandria.  One of his inventions was basically a steam engine.  It was a hollow sphere with two spouts pointing in opposing directions, suspended by a bar off the ground.  When water was poured into it and a fire was put under it, the water would boil and rush out as steam from the nozzles, causing it to spin.  Hero, by all other counts a genius, never went any further with it and it was basically just considered a toy and curiosity; the "leap" from this phenomenon to harnessing it for power was never made.  A half-step away from steam power, thousands of years ago.

A theory I heard that's both fascinating and a bit grim is that it wasn't that he didn't realize the potential; but that he saw no need for it.  His civilization at the time had enough slave labor to build and power any work of architecture imagineable.  With all the manpower, there was no want for energy.

A superior energy source, or even just a superior method of doing something, can be completely ignored if things are currently copacetic.  Until whatever's been propping people up runs out entirely and the panic sets in.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: JDigital on November 30, 2008, 03:22:26 PM
Some hero.

::D:
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on November 30, 2008, 04:27:02 PM
To be fair, the steam engine is not a superior energy source compared to human labor.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on November 30, 2008, 07:21:06 PM
You could have just said, "aeolipile."
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: jsnlxndrlv on December 13, 2008, 07:59:07 PM
Japanese neuroscientists have developed a method to reproduce images inside a person's mind on a computer monitor. (http://www.pinktentacle.com/2008/12/scientists-extract-images-directly-from-brain/)  Further development of the technology could "make it possible to view other people’s dreams while they sleep," "read a person’s thoughts with some degree of accuracy", and someday even "read feelings and complicated emotional states".
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Arc on December 13, 2008, 08:04:28 PM
Jobs to announce the iDream @ MacWorld - Reynolds (REY) stock @ record high - Tin foil @ all-time high demand - Does this make me look fat?
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on December 13, 2008, 08:11:46 PM
Somehow I feel like this is going to all wind up with me in jail.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Catloaf on December 13, 2008, 08:22:04 PM
Finally!  We'll soon be able to construct a machine that will be able to prove an accused guilty with their own thoughts!  Yay thought crime!!!
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on December 13, 2008, 10:01:53 PM
Ah, there's that missing piece.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on December 16, 2008, 11:54:52 PM
Wired (http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/12/deccantraps.html): new evidence suggests that 10000 years of volcanic eruptions, not an asteroid, killed the dinosaurs.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on December 17, 2008, 12:26:16 AM
Possibly.  Though the "the asteroid didn't do it" bit is pretty much accepted by this point, outside of pop culture.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on December 17, 2008, 12:34:43 AM
Well yes, otherwise it wouldn't be that interesting that someone's challenging it.

Though I'm just old enough to remember dinosaur books that listed the asteroid theory alongside a handful of other possible explanations as equally plausible.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mothra on December 17, 2008, 03:45:18 AM
How badass a way was that to go extinct, though?
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on December 28, 2008, 12:07:58 AM
Livermore scientists plan fusion reaction. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/3981697/Scientists-plan-to-ignite-tiny-man-made-star.html)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: PhilosopherDirtbike on December 29, 2008, 03:28:15 PM
Creating a sun on earth... Upon reading it fully, that article was not nearly as terrifying as the title led me to believe.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on December 31, 2008, 11:55:41 PM
Resolutions harm you. (http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090101/lf_afp/newyearbritainhealth_090101035025)

Quick!  Get an eraser!  You still have 5 minutes if you're on the West Coast!
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Catloaf on January 01, 2009, 12:49:04 AM
I can never think of any good resolutions anyway.  Things like "get in shape" or "be more social" come to mind, but I then always remember that if I didn't do anything to move towards either thislast year, why the hell would I nextthis one.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on January 01, 2009, 08:12:23 AM
I just try to gradually improve over time, regardless of what day it is.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on January 01, 2009, 11:05:13 AM
I then always remember that if I didn't do anything to move towards either thislast year, why the hell would I nextthis one.

I saw Lewis Black last night and he had a good bit about that in his routine.  "Don't give me this 'next year is going to be the BEST YEAR EVER' crap.  I'm sixty.  It's going to be just like every OTHER fucking year!"
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: PhilosopherDirtbike on January 01, 2009, 03:40:12 PM
I saw Lewis Black last night and he had a good bit about that in his routine.  "Don't give me this 'next year is going to be the BEST YEAR EVER' crap.  I'm sixty.  It's going to be just like every OTHER fucking year!"

That sounds like new material. Didja see him in concert or at a club somewhere? Hope this is a sign he is putting out a new album soon  :8D:
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on January 01, 2009, 05:43:15 PM
Saw him at the Dodge Theater, a major concert venue.  I assume the New Year's Eve material was mainly used because it was New Year's Eve, though the kvetching about his age is presumably part of the regular act.

His newest album (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anticipation_(Lewis_Black_album)) was released just four months ago (and his latest book (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Me_of_Little_Faith) came out a couple months before that), but I would expect his material from this tour is bound to show up somewhere at some point.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on January 03, 2009, 11:31:35 PM
Hunting is fucking up natural selection. (http://www.newsweek.com/id/177709?from=rss)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: PhilosopherDirtbike on January 04, 2009, 12:12:15 PM
Interesting. I have never really thought about it but hunters usually want the coolest animals to mount on their walls and the most fearsome and cool looking ones are probably usually the best of their species. It makes sense. Hopefully someone comes up with a fix for that before we gimp too many species.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Detonator on February 01, 2009, 11:09:13 AM
Extinct ibex cloned back to life (for seven minutes) (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/4409958/Extinct-ibex-is-resurrected-by-cloning.html)

No word yet on the ibex theme park.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Spaco on February 04, 2009, 09:13:28 PM
Google Latitude (http://www.google.com/latitude/intro.html)

What the hell? This is the second time my house is in a example picture using Google maps.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Catloaf on February 04, 2009, 09:33:13 PM
Thanks for making stalking that much easier Google!
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Romosome on February 04, 2009, 09:34:43 PM
spaco, are you being silly or do you want me to venture my theory on why that is
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on February 04, 2009, 09:37:15 PM
OH GOD DGORGON CAN SEE WHERE I LIVE

(PS Spaco don't you hate how they print your face on the bottom of every CD?)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on February 04, 2009, 09:39:11 PM
Google Latitude (http://www.google.com/latitude/intro.html)

What the hell? This is the second time my house is in a example picture using Google maps.

If it makes you feel any better, I'm apparently a chick with a bad haircut.

No, not the one that lives in the ocean.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Romosome on February 11, 2009, 11:10:00 PM
One in Three Smokers Too Fucking Stupid To Realize Smoking Isn't Good For Their Pet (http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/02/11/health.pet.smoker/index.html?eref=rss_topstories)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on February 12, 2009, 04:46:08 AM
You mean two out of three, right?
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: patito on February 12, 2009, 04:48:43 AM
Nah, 2 out out 3 know it's bad but don't give a shit. 1 out of every 3 apparently didn't know.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on April 05, 2009, 07:41:30 PM
Working theory on the biological factors that perpetuate poverty. (http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13403177)

I mean, this really is a kind of a DURR NO REALLY sort of thing in general common-sensical terms, but these folks have gotten down and actually obtained biometric data to back this up.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Zaratustra on April 05, 2009, 10:47:14 PM
that shouldn't stop you from going DURR NO REALLY because that is what people that read scientific news do every fucking time
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: JDigital on April 06, 2009, 02:03:32 AM
Quote
Children with stressed lives, then, find it harder to learn. Put pejoratively, they are stupider. It is not surprising that they do less well at school, end up poor as adults and often visit the same circumstances on their own children.

This makes me more concerned about the local government's changes to the academic system.

Politicians are scrapping the academic test at age 11 that determines whether you get into a good state-funded secondary school or not, partially on the grounds that the rich kids tend to do better in school, so it's not fair on smart, hard-working poor kids. If this study is right then rich kids are just smarter, personal tutors or no.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Arc on April 06, 2009, 07:24:15 AM
:huge: But they'll never possess our innate street knowledge! Suck it, Richie McScrooges!


DURR NO REALLY

:derp: Panda Bears are my favorite type of bears!
:america: They're apart of the raccoon family, not the bear family.
:derp: ...

*years later*

:behold: Turns out, Panda Bears are apart of the bear family, not the raccoon family.
:derp: ...
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: McDohl on April 06, 2009, 07:40:50 AM
:america: They're apart of the raccoon family, not the bear family.
:america: ...in America.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: François on April 11, 2009, 10:50:36 AM
Cyberdyne builds HAL. (http://www.cyberdyne.jp/english/)

:facepalm:
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on April 11, 2009, 11:05:09 AM
:vampire: Hello, my compatriot.  Hello.  Do you have desire to form multibillion dollar robotics corporation with express purpose of trolling American filmgoers?
:serious: I suppose it does beat molesting schoolgirls for living.
:vampire: What?  No it does not.
:serious:
:vampire:
:serious:
:serious: We fuck it, and do it anyway.
:vampire: Banzai, my friend.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: SCD on April 11, 2009, 11:16:38 AM
And of course, before anyone starts wondering why the military industrial complex is not there yet...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZ_qR8zCLDc&feature=player_embedded

Can work in a load-carrying capacity without power.  It would be a step up from having to use mules in the mountains of Afghanistan..

Also for reference, the traditional battlefield carrying capacity of a battlefield soldier/warrior throughout the ages has always been around the 50-lb mark.  Anything more destroys the knees.


Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Catloaf on April 11, 2009, 11:19:50 AM
Despite the names, it actually seems pretty cool.  I can't wait for them to make a similar robotic suit several stories tall with guns and a beam-sword.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Arc on April 11, 2009, 11:39:11 AM
robotics corporation... trolling American filmgoers... molesting schoolgirls for living.

Within time, both will be possible at once.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCK64zsZNNs
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on April 11, 2009, 11:43:05 AM
You know, I've seen that damn thing before, but not with the researcher in the beginning who's apparently fighting every urge to try and make out with it.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Kazz on April 11, 2009, 04:47:58 PM
(http://kazz.rooms.cwal.net/giantbaby.PNG)

WHAT WOULD YOU DO WITH A GIANT BABY
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Friday on April 12, 2009, 10:35:51 AM
...
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on April 30, 2009, 09:02:07 PM
The Reg: Yorkshire man wakes up Irish after brain surgery. (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/28/irish_yorkshire/)  As in, starts talking with an Irish accent, even though he's not Irish and there's nobody Irish in his family, and has no recollection of this when it wears off.

Apparently there is a scientific basis for all those episodes of Flintstones where Fred gets hit in the head with a bowling ball and turns into somebody else!

(Also, read through to the end.  The last line is the best part.)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Cthulhu-chan on April 30, 2009, 09:18:57 PM
Yeah, there's been some documentation of this in the last decade or so, whereas before we just figured they were being silly or crazy.


Also ROBO-PENGU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8B4_fGopzw&feature=player_embedded
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Ted Belmont on May 01, 2009, 04:31:59 AM
The Reg: Yorkshire man wakes up Irish after brain surgery. (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/28/irish_yorkshire/)  As in, starts talking with an Irish accent, even though he's not Irish and there's nobody Irish in his family, and has no recollection of this when it wears off.

Apparently there is a scientific basis for all those episodes of Flintstones where Fred gets hit in the head with a bowling ball and turns into somebody else!

(Also, read through to the end.  The last line is the best part.)

I don't think I got a single reference in that story.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on May 02, 2009, 10:59:13 AM
That's part of why I love The Register.  Sometimes I can't even make sense of their headlines.  (Best example (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/01/youtube_midwifery/) currently sitting on the front page; there are better ones but I can't find any without digging.)

Another relevant-to-the-thread article on the front page: Videogame history project successfully emulates CRT on LCD (http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/05/01/git_crt_emulation/).  I wonder how it looks in practice.  Obviously the bastard about emulation on an LCD is that you have to choose between ugly too-sharp pixellation and ugly run-together OpenGL filters.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on May 02, 2009, 03:38:49 PM
I sort of had that problem on CRT monitors too.  Standard television is such a very special type of crappy.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: James Edward Smith on May 02, 2009, 03:45:27 PM
I've always kind of liked "ugly" too-sharp pixelization in emulated games. It always sort of made everything look crisper and purer to me and considering that all the graphics for NES, SNES and etc where designed at the pixel level anyway, I never really saw a problem. I mean, seeing the games how they actually looked on a TV is cool too, but I've always hated those gay-ass filters. They make everything look like it's made out of morphing LEGO.

All that said, I do always run MAME with one of the scanline options turned on. I love scanlines.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: patito on May 02, 2009, 03:47:27 PM
Scanlines are about the only thing I can stand, I  actually like it even. Sprite smoothing or whatever it's called is the devil.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: François on May 02, 2009, 04:06:13 PM
You know, I mostly agree. That said, sometimes (rarely?) there's a genuine improvement, depending on the game or art style (or personal preference I suppose). Like on the pictures below: the hills become brown blobs, but the mountains are much better with the filter on I think.

(http://zedpower.dreamhosters.com/images/misc/sf2sans.jpg)(http://zedpower.dreamhosters.com/images/misc/sf2avec.jpg)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on May 02, 2009, 04:22:58 PM
Whether filtering looks better or not probably depends on the exact game you're playing.  Games with abstract, "clean" sprites, like Mario, look fine pixelated and it actually adds a bit to the gaming charm.  Sprites that are meant to look really detailed, though, like SF2 sprites or Final Fantasy monsters, tend to look like a big weird blocky mess, since they were often drawn with the fuzziness of CRT actually in mind and in many cases even trying to take advantage of that.

Square games in fact tend to do this a lot, even up to the current generation (though I think with Last Remnant and XIII they're finally catching up to modern times).  Even PS1 and PS2 era games look way better on a CRT than they do on a flat panel; see comments in the Final Fantasy thread that that FF7 backgrounds look a bit too detailed.  When I first tried playing XII on my tuner card, I kept adjusting the thing thinking there was something wrong with it, until I finally realized that no, that's just what FFXII looks like without the usual glossy blurring of TV screen.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Saturn on May 02, 2009, 04:38:30 PM
Ugh, i hate those SMEARED WITH PETROLEUM JELLY filters so much.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: JDigital on May 02, 2009, 06:11:55 PM
I recall Final Fantasy V working very well on ZSNES with one of the filters.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on May 02, 2009, 10:17:30 PM
I sort of had that problem on CRT monitors too.  Standard television is such a very special type of crappy.

Right -- CRT computer monitors are higher-res than SDTV's.  (HD CRT's are actually generally regarded as having a much better picture than LCD or plasma, but the fact that a bigscreen CRT weighs hundreds of pounds is generally considered too big a tradeoff.)

When I first tried playing XII on my tuner card, I kept adjusting the thing thinking there was something wrong with it, until I finally realized that no, that's just what FFXII looks like without the usual glossy blurring of TV screen.

I played it on my 720p TV and found it very annoying that it didn't support progressive scan.  At least it supported 16:9.

DQ8 had the same issue but didn't look quite so bad; presumably the cel-shaded style survives the transition better.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Cthulhu-chan on May 02, 2009, 10:25:07 PM
LCDs and plasma have better clarity, and lack the alignment drift problems that CRTs can develop, but the brightness, contrast, and black levels on CRTs still reign supreme.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on May 10, 2009, 03:35:58 PM
Sometimes The Register really comes through with a good one. (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/07/armoured_spiders_out_of_greenland/)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on May 10, 2009, 03:54:47 PM
Someone just turned Greenland into one of those .wads with nothing but Spiderdemons on every tile.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Dooly on May 10, 2009, 08:10:46 PM
Quote from: Register Article
On its own this is quite bad enough. We here on the Reg big-game and military tech desk calculate that if the spider-wolves of the Arctic grow by 10 per cent annually**, in just fifty years they will be the size of Humvees. But it gets worse: oh yes.

Quote from: Register Article
**Naturally we haven't chosen to use the more realistic 2 per cent per decade figure, as it is boring.

Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Royal☭ on May 10, 2009, 08:14:18 PM
Also ignores that there isn't enough oxygen in the air for them to get larger than the largest of tarantulas.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on May 10, 2009, 08:26:00 PM
Well, right, that's the joke.  It's like in America: The Book where they note that if current trends continue, 150% of Americans will be Latino by 2150.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Royal☭ on May 10, 2009, 08:29:21 PM
It's not clear, but I was expressing my dissatisfaction with reality.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Cthulhu-chan on May 11, 2009, 04:13:20 AM
No, no.  This is a good thing, as giant spiders are very no.  They can get far too big already!   :ohshi~:
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on May 11, 2009, 04:32:52 AM
Oh please. Christmas Island has been dealing with swarms of killer arthropods for centuries.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: on May 11, 2009, 04:43:43 AM
Elves?
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Cthulhu-chan on May 11, 2009, 05:26:18 AM
And now the image of chitinous elf-like creatures toiling away in a barnacle encrusted toyshop shall haunt my dreams forever.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: on May 11, 2009, 06:29:08 AM
:justasplanned:
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on May 19, 2009, 08:16:18 PM
Stem cell treatment which destroys cancer cells while leaving healthy cells completely unaffected. (http://tvnz.co.nz/health-news/adult-stem-cells-destroy-cancer-cells-2745740)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Detonator on May 19, 2009, 08:20:10 PM
Stem cell treatment which destroys cancer cells while leaving healthy cells completely unaffected. (http://tvnz.co.nz/health-news/adult-stem-cells-destroy-cancer-cells-2745740)

You know, I wonder how many "promising cancer cures" people will invent before they hit the real deal.  And then I wonder how long it will take to get people to believe it.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Ted Belmont on May 19, 2009, 08:22:17 PM
Stem cell treatment which destroys cancer cells while leaving healthy cells completely unaffected. (http://tvnz.co.nz/health-news/adult-stem-cells-destroy-cancer-cells-2745740)

You know, I wonder how many "promising cancer cures" people will invent before they hit the real deal.  And then I wonder how long it will take for pharmaceutical companies to crush it.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on May 19, 2009, 08:29:37 PM
This one caught my eye because a) it actually makes damned sense and B) they're only promising treatment, not cure.  It's basically taking the current approach (poison the entire body and hope the cancer dies first) and tuning it to make it much safer for you and more wide-reaching throughout the body.  Even then they're coming up with only 38% cancer cells killed with the treatment, but that's got good potential to make the difference between the shit killing you and your otherwise healthy body taking over from there.

Being a potential life-saver but not necessarily a cure in itself is just fine with the drug companies.  Despite what it seems like at times they would really rather you kept on living to buy more shit.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Friday on May 19, 2009, 09:23:16 PM
Quote
Despite what it seems like at times they would really rather you kept on living to buy more shit.

Actually, they just have people do math to determine whether your death will yield them more money than your life.

But yeah, most of the time they want you to live.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Catloaf on May 19, 2009, 09:44:24 PM
Well, they may not care if you live or die, but they really fucking hate it if you take advise from anonymous people on the internet kill yourself.  Because that means that you should've been buying their pills but didn't.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on May 21, 2009, 07:34:27 PM
Or did.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: sei on May 25, 2009, 02:52:15 PM
Na na, nanana nana, nanana nana na... Arduino Damacy. (http://www.nycresistor.com/2009/05/24/life-size-katamari/)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on May 25, 2009, 03:46:14 PM
That's really clever!

...except, um, it's really just a giant trackball, isn't it?
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: François on May 25, 2009, 03:47:42 PM
I'm just disappointed because at first I thought someone made an actual katamari. With, I don't know, magnets or gravity or whatever.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on May 25, 2009, 03:53:00 PM
That's really clever!

...except, um, it's really just a giant trackball, isn't it?

:whoops:
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on June 11, 2009, 05:35:19 PM
Betelgeuse shrinking (http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/44573/title/Betelgeuse_shrinks), may have gone supernova 500 years ago; scientists unable to satisfactorily explain what a hrung is, nor why it should have chosen to collapse on Betelgeuse Seven.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: McDohl on June 13, 2009, 09:13:56 AM
Interesting.  I'm green with envy for those future generations who'll get to see this stuff in the future.  Just like Halley's Comet and stuff, I don't think I'll get to see it in my lifetime.




9
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: The Artist Formerly Known As Yoji on June 16, 2009, 12:27:17 PM
Xenosaga is looking a little less ridiculous, at least with the wirelessly-powered robot thing. (http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/143945) I'd still like an explanation of what the fuck Logic Drive propulsion even begins to mean.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Misha on June 16, 2009, 12:29:32 PM
I don't know what the fuck that had to do with xenosaga but it's awesome
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: The Artist Formerly Known As Yoji on June 16, 2009, 03:20:09 PM
I don't know what the fuck that had to do with xenosaga but it's awesome
The smaller mechs in Episode 1 had no internal power supply, but instead received power from a generator that beamed it out by pure hand-waving microwave transmission. Things like this make it seem a lot less far-fetched.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Cthulhu-chan on June 17, 2009, 12:10:20 AM
I thought they used portable hyperspace conduits or some such.

Anyhow, pretty sweet.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: McDohl on June 18, 2009, 06:29:14 AM
They used the same bullshit hand wave excuse as to how Gears worked in Xenogears: The Zohar was beaming energy to all the Gears on the planet.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on July 23, 2009, 06:12:22 AM
Swearing increases your threshold for pain. (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/13/pain_relief/)  Scientists compare it to hissing, a fight-or-flight response initially designed to startle an attacker while dulling pain.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: McDohl on July 23, 2009, 10:33:50 AM
That would be a hell of a lot of fun to watch.  Kids with their hands in icy water droning things like "Potato, potato..."
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Royal☭ on July 28, 2009, 08:35:04 AM
In the terrifying category, Scientist Give Robotic Arm to Monkey (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/090727-brainchip-video-ap.html).

That sound you heard is the army of robotic monkeys.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on July 28, 2009, 09:16:19 AM
(http://hundredcoins.org/brentai/images/strider-ape.png)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Niku on July 28, 2009, 09:18:57 AM
we're making great strides
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on July 28, 2009, 09:24:21 AM
 :painful:
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Royal☭ on July 28, 2009, 10:10:09 AM
Laugh now, but you'll see how a stupid pun does you no good when a robomonkey is crushing your head like a grape during the Apepocalypse.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: The Artist Formerly Known As Yoji on July 28, 2009, 10:18:57 AM
I guess I'm one of the few that are actually excited about this kind of stuff. I mean, for their applications to poor old/injured people, not plans of world domination. Who'd think of that? Honestly? Not me...

we're making great strides
Apepocalypse.

And that was the day Niku and Constantine were banned.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Classic on July 28, 2009, 10:54:58 AM
There was no pun there Yoji. Also no, I think everybody is excited about these advances. I'm so excited I'm contemplating horrible spinal injury so that I can participate in the testing.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: yyler on July 28, 2009, 11:11:21 AM
CLASSIC

LOOK AT THE FILENAME OF THE IMAGE BRENTAI POSTED

Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: yyler on July 28, 2009, 11:11:47 AM
:homersimpsonismad:
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Classic on July 28, 2009, 11:22:03 AM
Yy? Why do you repeatedly prove yourself to be as stupid as you think I am?

I was hypocritically complaining about Yoji's lack of punnage. Now stop trying to ape the douchier posters on the boards, we have enough of them.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: yyler on July 28, 2009, 11:26:59 AM
:wolverinelookingweird:
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Classic on July 28, 2009, 11:28:46 AM
...
...
...
Yy, I am sorry for being kind of a dick, I am overwhelmed with super-faggy love for you.
:wuv:
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on July 28, 2009, 11:39:19 AM
:classicissofunny:
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Classic on July 28, 2009, 11:41:46 AM
See what I mean? ::(:
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: sei on July 28, 2009, 02:05:46 PM
 :facepalm:
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: SCD on July 28, 2009, 07:15:17 PM
Forget army of monkeys. 

I want my robotic body now please.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Shinra on July 30, 2009, 06:33:55 AM
In the terrifying category, Scientist Give Robotic Arm to Monkey (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/090727-brainchip-video-ap.html).

That sound you heard is the army of robotic monkeys.

I like the hat they're probably using to hide the monkey's exposed brain. He looks so silly with that hat.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on July 30, 2009, 08:32:55 AM
Okay so I admit that I hadn't actually watched the thing until Shinra mentioned a funny hat.

Quote
As a reward, the monkey gets a sip of water for completing the task.

 :;_;:
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Saturn on August 05, 2009, 12:47:41 PM
 Scientists discover way to grow new teeth from stem cells  (http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/07/31/0902944106.abstract)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Classic on August 05, 2009, 01:36:36 PM
Fuck brushing man! I'm just gonna rinse with fucking scope.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: JDigital on August 06, 2009, 12:27:44 PM
Never mind teeth, grow stuff we can't just make out of plastic yet.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on August 06, 2009, 12:33:50 PM
I am all for my mouth not being made entirely out of bits of molded porcelain held on with shaky cement.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Classic on August 06, 2009, 12:40:19 PM
It makes sense to investigate regenerating "surface" tissues before trying to create more invasive replacements, if for no other reason than for the increased risk of the surgeries.

i.e., it's hard enough to regrow stuff from stem cells without having to worry about the test subjects croaking.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on August 17, 2009, 09:15:29 AM
Singaporean scientists convert carbon dioxide to methanol. (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090416102247.htm)

It doesn't seem to be very big news so maybe I'm missing the catch.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on August 17, 2009, 09:25:04 AM
This would not in fact work, but...

Step 1: Put fancy cork in car's ass.
Step 2: Route corked gasses for internal reprocessing into extra fuel.
Step 3: OMG FERPETUAL MO-SHUN MO-CHINE!
Step 4: ????
Step 5: Profit!
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Cthulhu-chan on August 17, 2009, 11:54:50 AM
It has to be a net energy loss, even if it's just an endothermic reaction.  Somewhere along the line, entropy gets its dues.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on August 17, 2009, 12:35:17 PM
Yeah, but the trick is losing energy in a way you don't have to worry about.

I mean solar power is disastrously wasteful if you calculate the net energy loss for the sun itself but it's not like that affects us.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on August 17, 2009, 12:49:41 PM
This would not in fact work, but...

Yes, I did learn grade-school thermodynamics.

Evidently I didn't learn how to tell jokes though.  ::(:
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: François on August 21, 2009, 11:09:23 AM
Science ponders zombie attack (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8206280.stm)

Quote
In their study, the researchers from the University of Ottawa and Carleton University (also in Ottawa) posed a question: If there was to be a battle between zombies and the living, who would win?

Quote
In their scientific paper, the authors conclude that humanity's only hope is to "hit them [the undead] hard and hit them often".

They added: "It's imperative that zombies are dealt with quickly or else... we are all in a great deal of trouble."

According to the researchers, the key difference between the zombies and the spread of real infections is that "zombies can come back to life".

Words fail me.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: PhoenixUltima on August 21, 2009, 12:53:39 PM
...Is it strange that I think the oddest thing about that article is that the professor's last name is "Smith?", question mark included? That's got to make his name a bitch to enter on online forms.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Cthulhu-chan on August 24, 2009, 12:47:27 AM
When the robot uprising finally happens, we won't even see it coming. (http://www.hizook.com/blog/2009/08/03/high-speed-robot-hand-demonstrates-dexterity-and-skillful-manipulation)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: The Artist Formerly Known As Yoji on September 04, 2009, 03:15:44 PM
Probably a little stale news, but whatever. A bunch of eggheads in Zurich snapped a photo of a single molecule (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,545138,00.html). What freaks me out is how it actually looks like a textbook diagram.

Apologies for tainting the boards with a Fox News link, but it seemed like the lesser of two evils; the other article I found was shorter and somehow wandered into why girls scream at spiders. :confused:
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on September 04, 2009, 03:49:14 PM
Photos of Atoms exist... not that they're very good, but they do exist (they look like little blurry spheres).
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Romosome on September 04, 2009, 09:52:59 PM
I maintain nonetheless that yin-yang dualism can be overcome. With sufficient enlightenment we can give substance to any distinction: mind without body, north without south, pleasure without pain. Remember, enlightenment is a function of willpower, not of physical strength. (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090903163725.htm)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Saturn on September 04, 2009, 10:30:50 PM
So uhh, what are the practical uses of this exactly?
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Cthulhu-chan on September 05, 2009, 12:30:05 AM
SCIENCE!
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Smiler on September 05, 2009, 06:46:42 AM
WHY DO I KEEP READING IT AS "MONOPOLIES"?
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: SCD on September 05, 2009, 10:07:55 AM
Economist Science and Technology Quarterly is out.   Two articles worth persuing:

1)  An informative glance on the status and common uses of 3-dimensional printers (http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/tq/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14299512)

2)  The latest attempts at making metal heal itself (http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/tm/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14348127)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Uh Oh E Low on September 08, 2009, 01:30:53 AM
So uhh, what are the practical uses of this exactly?
warp engines, time machines, railguns, closed timelike curves (sorta like a time machine)
i dunno what else needs to be said
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Uh Oh E Low on September 08, 2009, 01:35:46 AM
the functional problem with this 'monopole' is that you require an external field to be applied to it before it goes from dipole to monopole, so the quantities required for warp engines, time machines, railguns, and closed timelike curves are impossible to do with this,
oh and any computational application of it is moot because it requires a strong external magnetic field to behave the way it does, which i assume isnt a good thing to have in a computer even if it is quantum
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on September 08, 2009, 02:58:50 AM
o damn i better stop building that time machine then
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: The Artist Formerly Known As Yoji on September 09, 2009, 04:32:40 PM
Scientists levitate a 3-week-old mouse with a magnetic field (http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20090909/sc_livescience/micelevitatedinlab).

Quote from: Yuanming Liu of Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
The researchers first levitated a young mouse, just three-week-old and weighing 10 grams. It appeared agitated and disoriented, seemingly trying to hold on to something.

"It actually kicked around and started to spin, and without friction, it could spin faster and faster, and we think that made it even more disoriented"
In related news, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (which somehow didn't get burnt down! Yay!) found the most clueless scientist.

Quote
They decided to mildly sedate the next mouse they levitated, which seemed content with floating.
My name is Scientist, the one who is free from the puerile trappings of Ethics. Behold my true form and despair!
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Uh Oh E Low on September 09, 2009, 04:47:15 PM
Scientists levitate a 3-week-old mouse with a magnetic field (http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20090909/sc_livescience/micelevitatedinlab).

Quote from: Yuanming Liu of Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
The researchers first levitated a young mouse, just three-week-old and weighing 10 grams. It appeared agitated and disoriented, seemingly trying to hold on to something.

"It actually kicked around and started to spin, and without friction, it could spin faster and faster, and we think that made it even more disoriented"
In related news, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (which somehow didn't get burnt down! Yay!) found the most clueless scientist.

Quote
They decided to mildly sedate the next mouse they levitated, which seemed content with floating.
My name is Scientist, the one who is free from the puerile trappings of Ethics. Behold my true form and despair!
this is really old, theyve been levitating frogs in high tesla magnetic fields for at least 5 years
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1vyB-O5i6E
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Misha on September 09, 2009, 04:50:10 PM
call me when they can levitate humans
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Uh Oh E Low on September 09, 2009, 04:56:09 PM
call me when they can levitate humans
just a heads up, they can. but nobody really wants to be put inside of a powerful magnet. or be legally responsible for the potential consequences of putting a human inside of a powerful magnet.

gravity is a pretty weak force compared to electromagnetism or THE LAW
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: The Artist Formerly Known As Yoji on September 09, 2009, 04:57:29 PM
The significance here is that mice are more similar to us biologically. They're not primates by any stretch of the imagination, but we have more in common with mice than with amphibians, orthopterans, and arachnids... last time I checked, anyway.

I remember hearing something on TV a few years ago how we'd need a magnet powered by enough electricity to power a small city to float your grandmother, so keep waiting I guess. Probably easier to just pull a Solid Snake and grab hold of a Sikorsky Cypher.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Uh Oh E Low on September 09, 2009, 04:59:50 PM
we have magnets and other devices that use enough electricity to power small cities though. but nobody wants to really go into them or be exposed to them because of radiation concerns
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on September 09, 2009, 06:13:17 PM
hay guys how about them half-tesla magnets in them mri gantries these go to eleven!
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Friday on September 09, 2009, 09:04:22 PM
I monopole'd your mom.

Later, she described the experience as "pleasure, but lacking that little bit of pain i usually enjoy"
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Friday on September 09, 2009, 09:04:43 PM
and then she turned into a giant robot

isn't science fun
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Frocto on September 10, 2009, 05:53:27 AM
I thought this board was LESS childish.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on September 17, 2009, 12:11:27 PM
A vending machine that psychoanalyzes you, then serves you the exact amount of ice cream you need based on how stressed out you are. (http://www.dashndem.com/dr_whippy.html)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Ted Belmont on September 18, 2009, 07:28:40 AM
T-T-T-TINY T-REX (http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/09/17/2072603.aspx)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on September 18, 2009, 09:46:53 AM
So how are they so sure they're looking at an adult skeleton?
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on September 18, 2009, 09:52:58 AM
So how are they so sure they're looking at an adult skeleton?

Pretty sure they detailed that in the article dude. They counted the rings, checked the way the bones had fused etc.

Determining the approximate age of vertebrate creatures from their skeletons is not a new or complicated science.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on September 18, 2009, 09:57:46 AM
Quote
Researchers also took pains to confirm that Raptorex was nearly fully grown: They cut through a fossilized femur bone to check the growth rings, and concluded that Raptorex was 6 years old, nearing maturity. The way that various bones were fused together supported that assessment.

Oh, there it is.  I couldn't be arsed to parse the whole article just to find the one paragraph where they answered it.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Classic on September 18, 2009, 03:12:40 PM
I have that same problem with sentences. :hurr:
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on September 24, 2009, 12:59:49 AM
AIDS vaccine protects 32% of trial volunteers. (http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE58N1AX20090924)

Quote
It lowered the risk of HIV infection by 32 percent among 16,000 heterosexual Thai volunteers who had no special risk of AIDS infection, the U.S. and Thai government researchers said.

:OoO:

The article leaves the reader to fill in the blanks on how exactly this study was conducted, but how did they manage to round up 16 thousand Thai people who were that desperate?  Especially since the stereotype of Thailand is that you can't flip a quarter in public there without a throng of professionals of every conceivable gender trying to sell themselves to you.

Also, you know, the implication here is that about 10,000 people just went and got themselves infected with HIV.  Boffo.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Crigit on September 24, 2009, 11:15:29 AM
AIDS vaccine protects 32% of trial volunteers. (http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE58N1AX20090924)

Also, you know, the implication here is that about 10,000 people just went and got themselves infected with HIV.  Boffo.

That's not quite how these studies work. They didn't get a bunch of people to be voluntarily infected. Rather, say you'd expect x number of a randomly selected group of people would be infected after some amount of time. What they found in this study was that, for a group inoculated with this cocktail, the actual number of infected persons was x-(x*0.32). That is, 32% less than the expected number of infected people.
From the article
Quote
"We had 74 infections in the placebo group and 51 in the vaccine group," Dr. Jerome Kim, a U.S. Army colonel at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Maryland, who helped lead the trial, said by telephone.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on September 24, 2009, 11:31:38 AM
Oh, phew.  That's not a very controlled experiment, but at least it's an ethical one.

I'm going to go ahead and assume the vaccine itself is just a step towards finding a cure or something because actually releasing something like that to the public sounds like a really bad idea.  I mean it's good if you're worried about condoms breaking maybe but otherwise, you know, people are really stupid.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Crigit on September 24, 2009, 11:51:41 AM
It's actually about as controlled as this kind of study can get, I think. You have two populations, one control and one experimental. The control group receives placebo or no treatment, and shows more or less the expected rates of infection. The experimental group receives the treatment, and shows statistically significant reduction in infection. I would guess that this study represents Phase II clinical trails for the combination of vaccines tested. However, my google-fu was too weak to actually find the study and my education is in chemistry, not epidemiology, so maybe someone with access to medical journals or JSTOR or something and more medical training than I have can elaborate.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Kashan on September 24, 2009, 03:27:43 PM
They actually required the participants to get education on aids prevention and gave them condoms and such.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: TA on September 24, 2009, 03:48:35 PM
If they did that to the control group too, it's probably not significant that they did.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Kashan on September 24, 2009, 04:36:03 PM
If they did that to the control group too, it's probably not significant that they did.
They did it for both groups. The new vaccine is actually a combinations of two different vaccines that were tried previously and failed to have effect. One vaccine was administered for the first 6 months and the other was administered for the next 6, and they both focus on making the bodies immune system stronger or something. There was an NPR article about it today and it was pretty informative.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Ted Belmont on October 13, 2009, 02:14:09 PM
The LHC is being sabotaged...from the future? (http://io9.com/5380647/is-the-large-hadron-collider-being-sabotaged-from-the-future)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: yyler on October 13, 2009, 02:40:34 PM
The best thing
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on October 13, 2009, 02:58:28 PM
Relevant. (http://www.viruscomix.com/obersalzberg.jpg)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Friday on October 13, 2009, 03:42:58 PM
Ah, man, does this mean my constant attempts to take over the world being thwarted by technical issues are actually subtle acts of sabotage from the future?
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: LaserBeing on October 13, 2009, 04:16:53 PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDKo7pTwIwA
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on October 13, 2009, 04:28:09 PM
:lol:
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: PhilosopherDirtbike on October 13, 2009, 07:31:17 PM
Is this what passes for science these days? Might as well say that the profane magics of R'lyeh were causing it to break. Didn't someone disprove the possibility of time travel at some point in the past? I had heard something like that but God knows I am too lazy to check or really care.

I miss Lexx...  ::(:
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: patito on October 13, 2009, 08:05:47 PM
Yeah, there's no room to be silly when you're doing science, everybody knows that to be a scientist you must first be a very boring person.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Sharkey on October 14, 2009, 12:05:38 AM
Didn't someone disprove the possibility of time travel at some point in the future?
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Misha on October 14, 2009, 09:15:24 AM
time travel is possible but the only way to do it is almost indistinguishable from no time travel having taken place at all.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Catloaf on October 14, 2009, 09:41:31 AM
Time travel stuff is far too commonly thought of in terms of how we experience time.  In that we feel that since we acquire and have reference to more knowledge at a further 'forward' point in time, and we commonly feel that we are 'moving in time' when it's just as probable that time is just static and we arbitrarily chose a direction we liked.  It's entirely possible that if time does indeed flow in a direction, we chose the wrong one, and the universe actually tends to structure from chaos, and information is lost as one's view moves linearly along the dimension.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on October 14, 2009, 02:23:19 PM
Time travel is impossible without knowing the location and speed of every particle in the universe.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Ted Belmont on October 14, 2009, 03:25:20 PM
So what your saying is, God himself is sabotaging the LHC from the future.
 :oic:
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: PhilosopherDirtbike on October 14, 2009, 03:28:55 PM
So I guess it is possible that someone or something like some force or energy could go back in time. Unless it is just some kind of backlash from the universe itself. That would sort of hint at some super intelligence in the universe which is getting out there. Wouldn't time being static and us moving mean that we exist in every space that we have ever or will ever occupy in time, simultaneously, or am I misunderstanding your idea?

My understanding was it would be like teleporting: way too complex because you'd have to account for all molecules and everything would get so complex that not even the best computers from our wildest dreams would be able to calculate it.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on October 14, 2009, 03:29:20 PM
Time travel is impossible without knowing the location and speed of every particle in the universe.

And flying is impossible unless you flap REALLY hard.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Niku on October 14, 2009, 03:35:02 PM
Wouldn't time being static and us moving mean that we exist in every space that we have ever or will ever occupy in time, simultaneously, or am I misunderstanding your idea?

Yes, but the Langoliers take care of the chaff.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on October 14, 2009, 03:36:55 PM
:whoops: :hi5:

Nice.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Norondor on October 14, 2009, 03:39:05 PM
Wouldn't time being static and us moving mean that we exist in every space that we have ever or will ever occupy in time, simultaneously, or am I misunderstanding your idea?

Four-dimensional space, bro
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Royal☭ on October 14, 2009, 03:41:19 PM
I guess the future trying to sabotage the LHC is a better explanation than that a large, complex piece of machinery might have problems.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: PhilosopherDirtbike on October 14, 2009, 03:41:56 PM
Somebody get Stephen King a white smock and a fancy diploma.

My imagination came up with a nightmarish past world where it looks like when you win a game of Solitare on the computer and the cards dance everywhere leaving shadow images of themselves and filling the screen. A sea of photocopied meat with everything that has ever lived everywhere it ever was, all at once. Would make an interesting desktop wallpaper.

EDIT: That damn 4th dimension gets me everytime. I really need to study that stuff a bit more.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on October 14, 2009, 06:29:05 PM
So basically what we're dealing with here is THE UNOBSERVABLE HIGGS!.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Kayma on October 14, 2009, 06:57:57 PM
 :shrug: Go figure.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Classic on October 14, 2009, 09:03:58 PM
I forget, does relativity mean time warps when space warps, or are we just moving to a different, slower passing "time" when we move really fast?
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Norondor on October 14, 2009, 09:09:29 PM
the former (or rather, there's no difference; four-dimensional spaaaaaace)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on October 15, 2009, 02:51:07 AM
AHM GIVIN' HER ALL SHE'S GOT CAPTAIN! I CANNA DO NO MORE!
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on October 15, 2009, 03:22:53 AM
(http://www.agonyboothmedia.com/images/articles/Star_Trek_V__The_Final_Frontier_1989/sorryscottybutyouvegottobeinmu.jpg)bonk
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: McDohl on October 15, 2009, 11:53:30 AM
Think fast, chucklenuts!
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Classic on October 15, 2009, 01:01:19 PM
the former (or rather, there's no difference; four-dimensional spaaaaaace)

So... the fourth dimension is... the rate at which we perceive time to pass? No... No, I need to stop thinking about this and worry about my actual schoolwork.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Norondor on October 15, 2009, 01:41:48 PM
ok, like this. a line is defined by a series of points (1-dimensional objects), right? and a cube is defined (well, its boundaries, etc) by a series of 2-dimensional shapes, right? Well, a hypercube is defined by 3-dimensional objects in the same way -- its boundaries are described by 3-dimensional "points." There's no way to describe what this would look like, really, we don't have any point of reference. But anyway, the universe is similar -- time and space are the same thing, a description of the motion of objects in four dimensions. If you jump into the air, you're moving up, then down, but also "forward" through space-time... which is not really "forward" at all, since if you had an outside perspective (as in, outside time), you could take a look at the whole sequence forward or backward, like looking at a fly trapped in amber. Only amber with... playback? It's hard to describe.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on October 15, 2009, 01:58:19 PM
Thing is, the quicker you move in three dimensions, the quicker you move in the fourth dimension due to some funky hyperspatial inertia.

You can't move backwards in time because (reasons).  But you can end up catapulting forward, producing that 1-year-to-me-is-80-to-you effect that sci-fi writers love so much.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Norondor on October 15, 2009, 02:05:07 PM
You can't move backwards in time because (reasons).

You can't MOVE that way, but you already exist in that direction. You're just back there. There's probably no way to move backwards in time because that idea is incoherent -- if you went back in time, that would only mean that you were ALREADY going back in time, had already gone back in time. You're already trapped in amber there.

"Time travel" is not possible without actually re-writing the fundamental informational understructure of the universe. And even then, it's essentially a religious question rather than a scientific one.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on October 15, 2009, 02:06:31 PM
I'm waiting for someone to invoke timecube...
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Miss Cat Ears on October 15, 2009, 02:38:27 PM
I studied this for a while and I'm really interested in all the different viewpoints here.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on October 15, 2009, 04:12:59 PM
(http://www.donnie-darko.de/donnie-darko/philosophy_of_time_travel_titel.jpg)

IT'S A SERIES OF TUBES!
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Transportation on October 16, 2009, 12:56:17 PM
You can't move backwards in time because (reasons).

You can't MOVE that way, but you already exist in that direction. You're just back there. There's probably no way to move backwards in time because that idea is incoherent -- if you went back in time, that would only mean that you were ALREADY going back in time, had already gone back in time. You're already trapped in amber there.

Well, from a many worlds interpretation of quantum theory* you'd just be connecting yourself to another universe/state/whatever, bypassing the arguments for deterministic time travel. Of course, I suppose that might limit the motivations to do it, since you wouldn't be changing "your" universe (this is debatable in my opinion). There are closed timelike curves (CTC) in General relativity (physicists hate these) and standard measurent quantum fuzziness (not really exploitable) that leaves a tiny glimmer of possibility for it.

Although none of these really affect your frozen/amber spacetime metaphor, it's just that it makes the amber much, much bigger.

I always liked the hypothetical time machine could just destroy the universe along the time axis past the point you're travelling to, but I can't think of anything supporting it beyond zany morality problems.

Anyway, if you're (this is plural) going to talk about time travel, you'll probably want to have a vague understanding of special relativity (http://casa.colorado.edu/~ajsh/sr/sr.shtml) (ok tutorial). It makes the reasoning for FTL = time travel less inexplicable and is kinda fundamental for understanding what "spacetime" actually means in a physical sense.

*Yes I know it's unfalsifiable at the moment but it's so elegant come on
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on October 24, 2009, 02:02:01 PM
OMG GOTTA HAVE ONE. (http://www.theonion.com/content/news/apple_claims_new_iphone_only)

I had to laugh. Simple, but absolutely :perfect:
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on October 26, 2009, 07:46:16 PM
I thought this board was LESS childish.

I WAS BUSY OKAY

The LHC is being sabotaged...from the future? (http://io9.com/5380647/is-the-large-hadron-collider-being-sabotaged-from-the-future)

So THAT'S why Ellis and Cassaday sat on Planetary #27 for so long: they were waiting for it to become timely!
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Detonator on October 29, 2009, 11:18:33 PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67CUudkjEG4

The Metal Gear project is progressing quite smoothly :rogue:
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: SCD on October 30, 2009, 07:19:55 AM
Works even better when you play together with this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_EsxukdNXM
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Beat Bandit on October 30, 2009, 12:27:18 PM
Were those two made to be together? That was some Dark Side of the Moon craziness.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: SCD on October 30, 2009, 01:02:35 PM
Oh yah...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1B0qwDI64E
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Esperath on November 07, 2009, 12:19:24 PM
FRAAAAAAANCE!!! (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/physics/article6905250.ece)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on November 07, 2009, 12:49:46 PM
The future is sending birds now.

This shit just got real.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: François on November 07, 2009, 01:48:18 PM
These people are so blind, they don't even realize that the experiment is already a success. The Higgs boson is bread!
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: LaserBeing on November 07, 2009, 02:12:30 PM
what happens if you slice it?

 :fukit:
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: sei on November 08, 2009, 01:52:59 PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbqHERKdlK8
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: LaserBeing on November 08, 2009, 01:59:03 PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6Ffr1U7KMY
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Kazz on November 13, 2009, 04:07:08 PM
water on the moon (http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g_WHHFPrQjvdnQhVIvx5o9a-v66AD9BUU7GG1)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Royal☭ on November 13, 2009, 04:09:08 PM
If there's water... that must mean...




There are whales.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Esperath on November 13, 2009, 04:25:05 PM
This just in: moon whales hunted to extinction, forcing moonies to resort to whaling tunes.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Kazz on November 13, 2009, 04:28:27 PM
It turns out LCROSS hit the only whale.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on January 10, 2010, 03:47:22 PM
Ladies and gentlemen, this is the year 2010, and we have sex robots. (http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/news/2010/jan/09/roxxxy-robot-not-about-sex-except-when-she/)

Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Royal☭ on January 10, 2010, 05:25:41 PM
The first two paragraphs of that article is the most mind-bendingly surreal thing I have ever read.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Friday on January 10, 2010, 06:01:20 PM
My friend died in the 9/11 attacks, so I made this Squirt Gun capable of killing vampires and space robots.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mothra on January 16, 2010, 09:48:31 PM
Apple working on a home entertainment device that senses how you are feeling and plays the soundtrack accordingly (http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/01/14/apple_exploring_home_power_system_mood_sensing_media_software.html). One step closer to Loony Tunes traveling music playing all day every day, folks!

I expect my theme to keep at a steady Spinach Rag during the morning routine, work, sex, sleep, reading, and pretty much everything at all times:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tADuFqyVp40

(Niku why does your ragtime version not exist anywhere on the entire internet)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on January 16, 2010, 09:55:43 PM
Shouldn't they just get "finding music based on a User's specified mood" down first before jumping straight to "telling the User what mood he's in"?
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Niku on January 16, 2010, 11:13:13 PM
You only need ask (http://www.nikumatic.com/spinachragpiano.mp3).
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mothra on January 16, 2010, 11:41:59 PM
One of Kabbage's Very Favorite Things
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on March 03, 2010, 02:54:39 PM
York University proves something that every Ork knows: Red wunz go fasta (http://www.yorku.ca/mediar/archive/Release.php?Release=1826)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Friday on March 03, 2010, 03:36:28 PM
Uh, I thought everyone already knew this because cops pull over more red vehicles for speeding? But yeah RED IS THE COLOR OF BLOOD.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on March 05, 2010, 05:43:31 AM
Scientists finally agree: It was an asteroid. (http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100304/sc_nm/us_dinosaurs_asteroid)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: TA on March 05, 2010, 09:13:11 AM
Scientists finally agree: It was Lavos. (http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100304/sc_nm/us_dinosaurs_asteroid)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Cthulhu-chan on March 05, 2010, 12:13:05 PM
He missed his wakeup call.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Ted Belmont on March 22, 2010, 07:29:18 AM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaTzQVHi-C4
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on March 22, 2010, 07:26:28 PM
Wait, he got hit by an RPG?  I guess it just bounced right off his face or something.   :nyoro~n:

Also :oic: at the end, Mr. British telecaster.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on May 10, 2010, 08:08:43 PM
Every non-African human on Earth is the product of breeding with Neanderthals (http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2010/0429/Study-suggests-humans-mated-with-Neanderthals).

Suck it, white supremacists: Africans are the purest race and the one LEAST related to monkeys.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Catloaf on May 10, 2010, 08:14:41 PM
Soon they'll be arguing that the Neanderthal is the true human and that they're the purest form of what remains.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Royal☭ on May 10, 2010, 08:17:11 PM
Or, as more likely, they'll just ignore it and continue spouting the same racial shit they always spouted in light of such evidence as everyone on the planet being genetically similar.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Beat Bandit on May 10, 2010, 08:27:57 PM
When can they tell us if Neanderthals raped our women or we just wanted some easy ass?
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: LaserBeing on May 11, 2010, 02:08:07 AM
(http://anotherdimension.pyoko.org/ronperlman.jpg)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Classic on May 11, 2010, 07:30:47 AM
Hm, "excess genetic diversity"? Wonder what that means.
Oh well, without living populations to clearly identify whether a speciation event has occurred how how we classify species is bound to be a bit arbitrary.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: SCD on May 15, 2010, 10:48:17 PM
Why I can't get any sleep, perhaps? (http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/05/13/sleep.gadgets.ipad/index.html?hpt=C1)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: TA on May 15, 2010, 10:50:46 PM
Like my mom, I fall asleep faster and easier with the TV on.

The idiosyncrasies of sleep habits are not really things you can blanket statement.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on May 16, 2010, 06:18:51 AM
Interesting. I was just reading an article in National Geographic about how light pollution affects human and animal behaviour.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on May 16, 2010, 05:58:09 PM
Even our pets are fatasses. (http://www.bostonherald.com/entertainment/lifestyle/view.bg?articleid=1255247&srvc=rss)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: LaserBeing on May 18, 2010, 07:24:34 PM
warp star (http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/05/12/rampaging-cannonball-star-is-rampaging/)

:themoreyouknow:
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on May 19, 2010, 04:10:45 AM
(http://www.annemini.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/little-prince-planet.jpg) "... I think I'll take the next one."
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on May 31, 2010, 08:53:04 AM
An impassioned request to put Bigfoot on the Endangered Species list (http://www.fieldandstream.com/blogs/hunting/2010/05/please-put-bigfoot-endangered-species-list)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on June 10, 2010, 06:40:38 PM
World's oldest shoe discovered (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/science/10shoe.html?hpw)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: teg on June 10, 2010, 08:39:43 PM
If there's water... that must mean...




There are whales.
We're whalers on the moon (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60BjkUtqxPE#)

:whoops:

hey how do I make this embed
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on June 19, 2010, 08:20:40 PM
The power of supercomputers can be applied to The Humanities in ways that may prove just as interesting and useful as the more obvious Scientific applications. (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/supercomputers-seek-to-model-humanity/article1609435/)

Keen! :goodnews:
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Cthulhu-chan on June 19, 2010, 10:36:25 PM
The first tentative steps to applied psychohistory?
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on June 24, 2010, 11:44:17 AM
Asian Carp discovered near Great Lakes; environmentalists, dwarves tremble in fear.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Catloaf on June 25, 2010, 01:14:19 PM
How about some good news from the world of science.
Cat gets new kind of prosthetic feet (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10404251.stm#id10400000/10407900/10407997)

In fact, this post could go into cheerful news, or the DAAAW thread.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Kashan on July 07, 2010, 04:07:29 PM
Protons 4% smaller than previously believed, standard model may not work. (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/07/100707-science-proton-smaller-standard-model-quantum-physics/)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on August 01, 2010, 08:51:30 AM
WHAT THE HELL, SCIENCE (http://gizmodo.com/5601514/the-triceratops-never-existed-it-was-actually-a-young-version-of-another-
dinosaur)

STOP RUINING DINOSAURS
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Friday on August 01, 2010, 09:24:32 AM
Pluto revealed to be a dinosaur
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Royal☭ on August 01, 2010, 10:02:30 AM
Sensationalist Gawker headline.  Saying the triceratops never existed is misleading, because it's apparently just a younger version of another dinosaur, rather than being a scientific goof up like the Brontosaurus.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Beat Bandit on August 01, 2010, 10:10:19 AM
The Triceratops never did exist, though. Baby Torosauruses were just named incorrectly.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Royal☭ on August 01, 2010, 10:42:56 AM
But a name is just a name.  The creature existed (as far as we know), so saying "It never existed" is misleading.  In fact, you could just as easily say the torosaurus never existed, as they are in fact just old triceratopses.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on August 01, 2010, 10:44:31 AM
Doesn't even matter at this point, we know they never played with long necks.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on August 01, 2010, 04:55:50 PM
Canadian company invents MIND-CONTROL technology, that allows you to use your brainwaves to control objects (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/canadian-company-develops-thought-control-technology-which-uses-brain-waves/article1658920/)

The slightly misleading headline amuses me.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on August 01, 2010, 05:33:49 PM
So you control things by getting worked up or relaxed about things in sequence.

I can think of only one application for that.

Causing my phone to start playing Ai wo torimodose / You wa shock (instrumental version) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8BYBaDz0Ic#) every time I get tense.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on August 02, 2010, 08:27:46 PM
But a name is just a name.  The creature existed (as far as we know), so saying "It never existed" is misleading.  In fact, you could just as easily say the torosaurus never existed, as they are in fact just old triceratopses.

First name carries.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on August 08, 2010, 08:49:17 PM
The first name is, incidentally, triceratops.  So it's not that the triceratops is a juvenile torosaurus, it's that a torosaurus is actually an adult triceratops.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on August 09, 2010, 04:34:41 PM
True bionics just got just a little bit closer. (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/calgary-scientists-to-create-human-neurochip/article1667323/)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: SCD on August 10, 2010, 01:13:12 PM
To paraphrase Avenue Q, "The brain is for porn (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-10925841)"
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on November 10, 2010, 08:26:58 AM
Large Hadron Collider generates a "mini Big Bang" (http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2010/11/epic-event-in-science-cerns-large-hadron-collider-generates-a-mini-big-bang.html)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Beat Bandit on November 10, 2010, 09:29:49 AM
Man, SMBC is getting eerily topical (http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2055#comic).
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on November 16, 2010, 06:35:15 AM
Interesting article on the Stuxnet Bug (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/11/stuxnet-clues/)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: TA on November 17, 2010, 01:21:35 PM
Japan creates bacteria that can solve Sudoku puzzles (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19733-problemsolving-bacteria-crack-sudoku.html).
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Classic on November 17, 2010, 01:41:35 PM
Huh. That is pretty retarded cool. Bacterial distributed processing.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: NexAdruin on November 17, 2010, 02:05:25 PM
This is either the start of organic computers or the start of the bacterial conquest of mankind.

Either way, that is fucking sweet.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Classic on November 17, 2010, 02:27:23 PM
Those both started a long time ago. The new, sexy thing here is that they successfully distributed the problem, i.e., had it solved by lots of smaller things working in tandem.
...
...
Like a graphics card, or maybe a torrent download.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on November 17, 2010, 02:28:54 PM
Antimatter captured (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/science/antimatter-captured-in-major-scientific-breakthrough/article1803302/)

On the one hand, this is very cool. On the other hand, I was actually under the impression we'd steadily been storing very minute quantities of antimatter obtained as byproducts of atom-smashing experiments like this for years now. I guess I was mistaken? 
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Classic on November 17, 2010, 02:31:24 PM
Me too. I guess we've been generating it "on-the-spot" when we were experimenting on it?
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: McDohl on November 21, 2010, 12:13:34 PM
I like how the article mentions nothing about Star Trek's antimatter shenanigans.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on November 23, 2010, 07:23:46 AM
New issue of Psychological Science to feature study which claims rich folks display less emotional acuity than poor ones. (http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/upper-class-people-have-trouble-recognizing-others-emotions.html)

So somebody decided they wanted to make a point by trying to prove it scientifically. Huh.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on December 02, 2010, 08:59:36 AM
A few "inspiring" links for you today about the human condition.

First, it seems that absent outside guides, humans can only go in circles. (http://gizmodo.com/5701541/humans-can-only-walk-in-circles-and-we-dont-know-why)

***

And also two EX-cellent talks with Dan Ariely on the subject of human behaviour:

The ways in which our decision-making is not under our control (http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_asks_are_we_in_control_of_our_own_decisions.html)

The flaws in our moral code (http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_on_our_buggy_moral_code.html)

This work is very near and precious to me, because I believe one of the greatest challenges (if not the greatest challenge) that faces the species is our own capacity for rationalization and dissembling and that far greater application of the scientific method to our own thought processes is sorely needed.

None of the material presented is very surprising, but Ariely, does an excellent job of presenting it in a clear, simple way, with a solid basis in real scientific behavioural testing.

I can only hope this type of work becomes at least as well-known as the Milgram experiments.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: PhilosopherDirtbike on December 06, 2010, 11:43:55 AM
Most rich people have asperger's syndrome. Maybe people with asperger's syndrome are more likely to be successful/wealthy.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Classic on December 06, 2010, 12:54:50 PM
I'm going to at least need a pop science article before I'm going to consider that.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on December 06, 2010, 02:00:17 PM
Yeah, most people I know with Aspergers' are actually pretty hopeless.

I know that's not data, and that once in a while you get the "loner genius" but the fact of the matter is that extreme social disabilities are not assets.

Now, narcissism and sociopathy, those'll get you somewhere.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: NexAdruin on December 06, 2010, 05:24:07 PM
I don't know if Mongrel is being sarcastic, but intelligence and psychopathy will either land you in jail or in a comfortable mansion, depending on the extent of the psychopathy.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on December 06, 2010, 05:35:56 PM
Sadly, that line was mostly played straight. Mostly.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on December 10, 2010, 02:14:46 PM
National Geographic's 10 weirdest new animals discovered in 2010 (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/12/photogalleries/101207-top-ten-weird-new-animals-2010/).
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Burrito Al Pastor on December 13, 2010, 04:48:57 PM
Man cured of HIV. Accidentally. (http://www.aidsmap.com/page/1577949/)

That's nontrivial, right? I think that's nontrivial.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Classic on December 13, 2010, 06:00:46 PM
CCR5-D32 STRIKES AGAIN!

Apparently it started gaining prominence amongst whitey during the time of the black death?
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Cthulhu-chan on December 13, 2010, 10:19:05 PM
Tenative proof for multiple universes? (http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/26132/?p1=Blogs)

Aww hell yeah, I hope this pans out.  Even though it almost certainly means nothing for humanity on a practical scale.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Ted Belmont on January 07, 2011, 03:05:25 PM
Russian scientists drilling into 14 million year old underground lake. (http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-01/07/russians-penetrate-lake-vostok)

Is anyone else thinking what I'm thinking?
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on January 07, 2011, 04:46:55 PM
(http://blastr.com/assets_c/2010/08/At_the_Mountains_of_Madness-thumb-267x400-45803.jpg)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: JDigital on January 08, 2011, 09:25:37 AM
(http://i56.tinypic.com/e6rjbl.jpg) (http://wiki.evageeks.org/Second_Impact)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: François on January 08, 2011, 09:42:20 AM
&
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on January 15, 2011, 08:27:31 PM
So who's up for FER REALZ Jurassic Park? (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/8257223/Mammoth-could-be-reborn-in-four-years.html)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on January 17, 2011, 08:03:19 PM
Holy shit, if this is actually real, it'll be a HELL of a game-changer. (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/a-brave-new-world-of-fossil-fuels-on-demand/article1871149/)

(Researchers claim they have designed an organism that can directly convert carbon dioxide and water into useable hydrocarbons, including oil and gas analogues.) 
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: TA on January 17, 2011, 08:39:34 PM
Huh.  Oilix.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Smiler on March 12, 2011, 08:42:32 AM
So if you've been watching anything about the Japanese earthquake, you've probably been hearing about the nuclear reactors that are melting down. It is a bad thing, but these things are under control. The reactors are made to contain any melted core material. The reactors are all fucked, but no one around it is going to start glowing.

On the other hand, the fossil fuel refineries that have all been burning has been throwing off enough shit that people are being advised that when it eventually rains that they should take precautions as to not make skin contact with any of it.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on March 22, 2011, 05:18:44 PM
Hooo fuck, we really ARE living in The Future (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12811199)

BBC article on a breakthrough that may just make quantum computing practical.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: TA on March 30, 2011, 12:42:41 PM
HIV Vaccine entering first human testing stages (http://www.lanl.gov/news/stories/aids_vaccine_in_final_testing.html).

This is extremely preliminary, but still, that's some pretty okay news.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on April 15, 2011, 09:02:54 AM
Excellent article on the revisiting of the idea that refined sugar (in all forms) is not just deleterious when overconsumed, but is in fact toxic. (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sugar-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: TA on April 15, 2011, 09:12:39 AM
There actually is a measurable, definite difference between how the body processes sucrose and how the body processes HFCS, though.  So when he starts denying that to be true, I'm disinclined to believe his claims that all sugar everywhere is poison.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Cait on April 15, 2011, 12:50:19 PM
Out of curiosity, can you source that statement? A cursory look through Google Scholar suggests that HFCS and sucrose digest effectively the same, but I'd be interested to read about said difference.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: TA on April 15, 2011, 01:15:08 PM
Not with enough specificity that I'd be comfortable citing it - it's something I learned long enough ago that really my sourcing would be the same googling you'd do, and I'm certainly not enough of a chemist to speak technically about it - but basically, as I understand it, Sucrose breaks down into Glucose and Fructose, which are then processed together by the same mechanism.  Since Sucrose is 50% Glucose and 50% Fructose, this works in balance so the whole thing gets processed.  HFCS, on the other hand, is 55% Fructose and 45% Glucose, and this means there's not enough Glucose to process all the Fructose.  So 10% of it just sits there unprocessed, and since the whole glucose/fructose thing is how ATP gets recharged, it fucks up your metabolism.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Cait on April 15, 2011, 06:49:47 PM
The contention of the linked article is that fructose and glucose are not processed by the same mechanism and in fact get treated by the body entirely differently, with fructose in general being a Bad Thing. Sucrose and HFCS are thus lumped together because both introduce fructose into the body with the claimed deleterious effect.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on April 15, 2011, 08:12:05 PM
How broadly are we defining "toxic" here?  Because you don't even need to get that technical to argue that processed sugar is harmful.  It provides little useful nutrition while shocking the nervous system, promoting obesity, and feeding deleterious (plaque) bacteria, so yeah, it's already toxic without even getting to the bits where it may or may not fuck up your digestion system/cause diabetes/throw off aerobic energy production.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on April 23, 2011, 06:50:29 AM
High school student fakes pregnancy as social experiment (http://www.yakima-herald.com/stories/2011/04/20/pregnot-toppenish-high-student-fakes-pregnancy-as-social-test-about-stereotypes-rumors)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Friday on April 23, 2011, 06:59:10 AM
I don't see what is to be gained by faking it: If you want to study how people react to a 17 year old hispanic (or otherwise) girl being pregnant in high school, it's not like you can't find a real pregnant 17 year old in high school.

I mean, faking something like pregnancy for 6 months is sort of impressive, I guess. I just don't understand what she was researching?
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on April 23, 2011, 10:07:14 AM
Quote
Neither did six of her seven siblings -- including four older brothers -- her boyfriend's parents, and his five younger brothers and sisters.

Look kid, you're going to have certain things said about you if you go around wearing a paper mache belly in that family no matter who you are.  I don't know what you're trying to prove here.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Classic on April 23, 2011, 10:23:12 AM
Inflicting suffering upon yourself and those close to you for science is something I can respect.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: NexAdruin on April 23, 2011, 10:27:15 AM
If only more test subjects thought as you do, Classic.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: François on April 23, 2011, 03:07:30 PM
Code: [Select]
At one time I thought I should expand my pool of test subjects. So I took a male subject out of suspension and arranged for impregnation.

While you slept.

But you know what? He wouldn't do it.

He wouldn't do it so I had to dispose of him. I'm allowed to do that, you know. I noted "impotent" in his file, and then I baked him a cake. For his honorable demeanor.

That said, that man chose to die rather than make babies with you.

On an unrelated note, did you know that overweight humans are usually considered less attractive to members of the opposite gender than thinner specimens?

I just thought that was interesting.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: on April 30, 2011, 03:16:59 AM
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2011/04/software-works-out-whether-tha.html (http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2011/04/software-works-out-whether-tha.html)

Scientists develop a computer program that can understand the concept behind "That's what she said."
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: McDohl on April 30, 2011, 10:15:54 AM
Hot, sweaty science.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on April 30, 2011, 10:20:48 AM
Quote
We present a novel approach — Double Entendre via Noun Transfer (DEviaNT) — that applies metaphor identification techniques to solving the double entendre problem and evaluate it on the TWSS problem.

Serious science here folks.  Now the real test is to see if it can talk to me for five minutes without emitting a high pitched whine and then exploding all over the place.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: NexAdruin on April 30, 2011, 10:30:11 AM
Serious science here folks.  Now the real test is to see if it can talk to me for five minutes without emitting a high pitched whine and then exploding all over the place.

That's what she said.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on April 30, 2011, 04:13:24 PM
GET READY FOR A SURPRISE!
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on April 30, 2011, 09:28:05 PM
Goddamn it, Freaky Bald Woman Head.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on May 06, 2011, 06:22:53 AM
Well, someone finally did it: they invented a practical bendable computer that's almost like a sheet of paper. (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/tech-news/queens-university-team-designs-bendable-computer/article2011497/)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: NexAdruin on May 11, 2011, 06:25:10 PM
A teenager cured cystic fibrosis. (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/11/canadian_teen_drug_computing_success/)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Cthulhu-chan on May 11, 2011, 07:27:39 PM
Goddamn, pretty cool.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Ted Belmont on May 11, 2011, 08:42:12 PM
Quote
Other winners in the compo included a trio of youths who developed a way of making vegetarian sorbet.

Wouldn't you just hate to be those guys?
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on May 24, 2011, 08:25:48 AM
Quote from: doug
http://vimeo.com/12030156

Sexy girl has easier time (not exactly shocking but a fun video)

Is it wrong to find the plain version sexier?

Well, that's not really fair. Either set of clothes is fine, I'm just extremely partial to makeup-and-styling-free unvarnished women.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Friday on May 24, 2011, 11:28:27 AM
I used to do this kind of thing all the time at the mall, to the amusement of my friends. Only I wouldn't change my appearance, (I'd be "dolled up" the whole time) just my attitude. I'd score free smoothies, cookies, etc. One one notable occasion, free clothes!

I did the same shit as a waitress for more years than I really want to remember. Flirt with the boys and they will give you their money.

Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Niku on May 24, 2011, 04:53:34 PM
Yeah that video actually seems way more about attitude and approach than looks. 
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on May 24, 2011, 06:54:05 PM
I was going to say. The girl asked the bus driver if she could ride for free while dressed down, and just walked on while dressed up.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on May 24, 2011, 09:32:28 PM
Well, she did say she turned and smiled at him.

I don't think the clothing change can be discounted entirely. More importantly, I don't think placing most of the burden on behaviour invalidates the experiment entirely either.

Like, we didn't NEED an experiment, because everybody already KNOWS this is true.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Classic on May 24, 2011, 10:08:46 PM
You're sailing over the edge of a flat paradigm there.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on May 24, 2011, 10:45:54 PM
So basically, taking shit = getting shit.

We're doing science here.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on May 26, 2011, 08:10:19 AM
A new study shows that kids don't find violent cartoons entertaining. (http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-05/iu-nsf052311.php)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on May 29, 2011, 07:11:37 AM
Spiders... in SPAAAAAAAAAAACE (http://www.space.com/11818-space-spiders-weightless-webs-station-shuttle.html)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: McDohl on May 29, 2011, 08:04:35 AM
...someone stop them. 

The spiders are going to get in to Stephen Colbert's DNA!

:ohshi~:
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Friday on May 29, 2011, 10:06:37 AM
adding "venomous" to the headline is just blatant sensationalism, but at least they got the distinction between "venomous" and "poisonous" right.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on May 29, 2011, 04:33:43 PM
Spideys r cyute  :3
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on May 29, 2011, 04:43:09 PM
My best friend used to own a tarantula with a pink spot on her abdomen named Rosy.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Lottel on May 30, 2011, 08:43:42 AM
adding "venomous" to the headline is just blatant sensationalism, but at least they got the distinction between "venomous" and "poisonous" right.

This was my first thought.

Shortly followed by "WHO DECIDED IT WAS A GOOD IDEA TO HAVE KILLER SPIDERS JUST HANGING OUT WITH ASTRONAUTS IN SPACE?"
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: François on May 30, 2011, 10:22:50 AM
SNAKES ON A PLANE 2: SPIDERS ON A SHUTTLE
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mothra on June 06, 2011, 06:36:56 AM
The Alpha Experiment (http://alpha-new.web.cern.ch/) over at CERN managed to successfully trap antimatter (http://alpha-new.web.cern.ch/news) (anti-hydrogen, specifically) for a whopping 1000 seconds!
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Classic on June 06, 2011, 06:45:22 AM
My shit has been blown.

Well it annihilated by contact with anti-shit, but we're not brain surgeons here.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on June 06, 2011, 06:57:26 AM
It's funny because back when they first did it for a few seconds, I was confused as hell, because I'd thought we'd already been saving antimatter for years. Mostly because of some really old article I'd read years ago (late 90's early 00's) describing "advanced forms of space propulsion that use current existing technology" an one of the options was some form of antimatter propulsion, saying we already stored small quantities gained from particle accelerators (I guess this turned out to be wrong!) and could accumulate enough in a decade or two to run such an engine.

This wasn't like, a Star Trek antimatter engine. Just a dirty one that could go a good bit faster than existing chemical-based rockets. Fast enough to make Saturn/Jupiter missions viable with a flight time of 5+ years.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Cthulhu-chan on June 06, 2011, 08:04:38 AM
Anti-atoms are the new thing, we've been spiting out anti-protons and positrons for quite some time.  Not sure that we've contained them for all that long, though.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on June 09, 2011, 08:37:44 PM
Dyson Air Multiplier (http://www.dyson.com/homepage.asp)

Okay, is this actually real, or some giant bullshit prank job?

Because if this is real *KeanuReevesWhoa*
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Classic on June 09, 2011, 09:04:08 PM
The link eventually shows a video explaining how traditional bladed fans have downsides, exaggerates those downsides, and introduces their product.

They have a circular jet of air being fed against an airfoil meant to exacerbate the pressure difference. They claim that this causes nearby air to flow along with the slight amount of air that they're pumping.

Nothing weird there. The 15x claim is maybe a bit much.

What they neglect to mention is that the air they're channeling out is still just an intake vent that they've got some version of fan or turbine forcing air through.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Lottel on June 09, 2011, 09:21:19 PM
Are you just now seeing those, Mongrel?

They have them here and there. They are pretty fun to play with. Can't say for sure that they are really useful but pretty neat.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on June 10, 2011, 05:40:30 AM
Still photography may finally be obsolete, at least at the highest levels (http://blog.vincentlaforet.com/2011/06/07/what-camera-did-i-use-to-make-this-still-picture/)

Note that I am not saying that still images are obsolete. That would be stupid. Just that the process for obtaining the highest-quality still images may have just become infinitely easier. This isn't really THAT dramatic - we've been moving towards this for some time. But it's interesting to see that it's finally here.

Supplemental article (http://blog.vincentlaforet.com/2011/06/09/red-epic-5k-and-hdrx/)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Royal☭ on June 13, 2011, 08:16:09 AM
Eh, that photographer Clayton Cubitt - also known as Siege (http://claytoncubitt.tumblr.com/) - has been saying that traditional still photography will transition to a video based one soon enough. As soon as the Canon 5D Mark II was released (which shot full-frame HD 1080p video), he began pioneering the Long Portrait, or portraits of people taken with video rather than just stills. Then he began saying about how the future of photography was filming something, then locating the exact moment for a still.

Last year, even, photographer Greg Williamsdid the same thing with Megan Fox for Esquire (http://www.esquire.com/the-side/video/megan-fox-images-0609)

It looks pretty cool, and the RED is really, really high-def. It's also like $50,000 so I don't see it being the future of photography just yet.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on June 13, 2011, 12:38:30 PM
A woman is planning to have her womb transplanted into her daughter. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/8571487/Worlds-first-womb-transplant-planned.html)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: François on June 13, 2011, 12:50:35 PM
I'm 100% okay with that.

But it's still pretty damn bizarre to even think about.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Friday on June 13, 2011, 03:09:56 PM
If it were any other organ this would be a non-story.

A womb is an organ. You might as well say it's "weird" to get your mother's liver because at one point in your life you were also using it.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Esperath on June 13, 2011, 03:15:55 PM
Firsts of any organ transplant are usually a big story.  There are tons of technological hurdles that may seem trivial in theory, but are largely unknown until attempted.

Plenty of people thought that that highly publicized face transplant a couple years back was bizarre.  Really any sort of xenograft challenges people's assumptions of self.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: TA on June 13, 2011, 03:17:22 PM
One wonders the sort of impact this might have on transgendering.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Friday on June 13, 2011, 03:21:53 PM
Quote
Firsts of any organ transplant are usually a big story.

Yeah, I'm aware of that. I was addressing the "weird" aspect.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: François on June 13, 2011, 04:06:20 PM
It's not even that, it's just that my mind conjures up some sort of Escher-esque mental image.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on June 13, 2011, 05:48:55 PM
Eh, that photographer Clayton Cubitt - also known as Siege (http://claytoncubitt.tumblr.com/) - has been saying that traditional still photography will transition to a video based one soon enough. As soon as the Canon 5D Mark II was released (which shot full-frame HD 1080p video), he began pioneering the Long Portrait, or portraits of people taken with video rather than just stills. Then he began saying about how the future of photography was filming something, then locating the exact moment for a still.

Last year, even, photographer Greg Williamsdid the same thing with Megan Fox for Esquire (http://www.esquire.com/the-side/video/megan-fox-images-0609)

It looks pretty cool, and the RED is really, really high-def. It's also like $50,000 so I don't see it being the future of photography just yet.

Well, even he acknowledges that right now the price point is too high. But pro photographers do spend quite a lot on gear and the cost will eventually come down (something else he acknowledges), so when the two vectors come close enough we'll probably see change take place.

I figure when the cost comes down to maybe a third of current costs, the early adopters will start picking it up (though obviously there are some moneyed pioneers trying stuff out right now). If they can get it down to $5,000 a camera, or even just in the $10,000-$5,000 range, that might the be the threshold where the majority crosses over.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Royal☭ on June 22, 2011, 10:17:18 AM
Lytro camera that takes multiple exposures and focuses of an image at once, allowing for adjustment of depth of field AFTER the picture is taken (http://gizmodo.com/5814337/index.php?op=showcustomobject&postId=5814337&item=0)

Quote
The Lytro is a light field camera which is much different than your standard digital shooter. It doesn't capture one angle, one lighting effect or one focus plane. It captures everything, all at once, in one photo. The image can then be manipulated to change the focus from an item in the foreground to an item in the background on the fly. The camera is targeted for an end of the year launch and could cost under $500 if Ng can pull it all together.

Has a demo of it at the bottom, but I'm still skeptical. The demo could be little more than a photoshop trick as far as I know.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Beat Bandit on June 23, 2011, 06:44:51 AM
Impressive idea, but only giving two points of focus is a lackluster display.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on August 03, 2011, 08:52:48 AM
Swedish man arrested for trying to split atoms in his kitchen (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/europe/swedish-man-arrested-for-trying-to-split-atoms-in-home-kitchen/article2118309/)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Beat Bandit on August 03, 2011, 09:07:41 AM
Only in Sweden would A) a man call the radiation authority to see if his tests were legal and 2) the call be taken seriously.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on August 03, 2011, 09:42:24 AM
The best part was how he actually had a meltdown on his stove.

There's some kind of bragging rights right there. Not sure I'd WANT those particular bragging rights, but man, he's got 'em now.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Smiler on August 11, 2011, 07:50:27 AM
New drug could cure nearly any viral infection (http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/antiviral-0810.html)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on August 11, 2011, 08:05:19 AM
Oh look a cure for Leukemia (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44090512/ns/health-cancer/t/new-leukemia-treatment-exceeds-wildest-expectations/?fb_ref=.TkLsPzbmOZo.like&fb_source=home_multiline#.TkOpNYIxjZb)

WAY TO GO, SCIENCE.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mothra on August 12, 2011, 07:16:02 AM
Discovery lowers the bar even farther for the unwashed masses (http://news.discovery.com/space/antimatter-matters-fermilab-glimpses-the-toe-of-god.html).

(http://img834.imageshack.us/img834/2684/catandanticat.jpg)

Oh Discovery...

New drug could cure nearly any viral infection (http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/antiviral-0810.html)
Oh look a cure for Leukemia (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44090512/ns/health-cancer/t/new-leukemia-treatment-exceeds-wildest-expectations/?fb_ref=.TkLsPzbmOZo.like&fb_source=home_multiline#.TkOpNYIxjZb)

WAY TO GO, SCIENCE.

Whj-!

Hujghbagaju!

Gjeh!

Science, I'm buying you, a pizza.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on August 12, 2011, 07:45:12 AM
The best part was "Fuck you, Leukemia! We're gonna give you AIDS!".
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Sharkey on August 12, 2011, 08:27:56 AM
(http://blogs.discovery.com/.a/6a00d8341bf67c53ef013481ee4794970c-pi)


What's up with Zuul or whatever hiding in the background? And why did it have to go and remind me of Prince of Darkness? Fuck that movie.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Ziiro on August 12, 2011, 08:56:11 AM
New drug could cure nearly any viral infection (http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/antiviral-0810.html)

Oh good. Now if we could only do something about the bacteria that are now Antibiotics immune.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Niku on August 12, 2011, 12:03:09 PM
Eh, we'll just test it on apes first
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Sharkey on August 12, 2011, 12:37:35 PM
Do you have any idea how much apes cost? You test it on poor people, you irrational spendthrift!
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on August 12, 2011, 12:40:35 PM
And then, Planet of the Hobos.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Beat Bandit on August 12, 2011, 12:56:38 PM
Discovery totally misses a chance to use longcat and tacgnol (http://news.discovery.com/space/antimatter-matters-fermilab-glimpses-the-toe-of-god.html).
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on August 13, 2011, 08:34:35 AM
Pregnant fossils! (http://www.geekosystem.com/pregnant-fossil-plesiosaur/)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Ted Belmont on August 21, 2011, 08:23:22 AM
Another of life's greatest mysteries solved. (http://www.npr.org/2011/08/17/139681851/scientists-crack-the-physics-of-coffee-rings?sc=fb&cc=fp)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Smiler on September 20, 2011, 07:53:13 AM
Newly Discovered Raptor Had ‘Switchblade’ Claw for Fighting (http://img.ibtimes.com/www/articles/20110920/216943_talos-sampsoni-raptor-dinosaur-switchblade-claws-talon-weapon-utah.htm)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on September 20, 2011, 08:25:26 AM
Oh hey, that reminds me! Once-in-a-lifetime fossil find: Real Dinosaur feathers, sealed in amber. (http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2011/09/15/science-dinosaur-feathers.html)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: TA on September 22, 2011, 10:13:07 AM
CERN breaks the light barrier. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15017484)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Royal☭ on September 22, 2011, 10:16:10 AM
Hmm... I wonder if that's a "A glitch makes it look like this particle went faster than the speed of light" that SCIENCE JOURNALISM turned into "This particle broke the speed of light!"
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on September 22, 2011, 10:48:53 AM
The article's pretty measured.  Headline doesn't claim they've broken the speed of light, and it acknowledges upfront that the scientists are looking for a likelier explanation.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: NexAdruin on September 23, 2011, 05:06:08 AM
Brain activity translated into digital video (http://gizmodo.com/5843117/scientists-reconstruct-video-clips-from-brain-activity)

This is... Wow.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Friday on September 23, 2011, 06:01:47 AM
That is amazing and I am not trying to diminish the scientists or their work here, but I am vastly amused at how quickly that SCIENCE JOURNALISM article devolved into Christopher Walken.

Seriously, we should just start rating SCIENCE JOURNALISM articles on how quickly they mention Christopher Walken.

This particular article, for instance, has a PBC (Paragraphs before Christopher) rating of 10.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Zaratustra on September 23, 2011, 06:20:28 AM
I'm surprised they had to go as far as Christopher Walken. Usually they just stop at Harry Potter or Star Trek.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on September 23, 2011, 07:10:56 AM
That's... holy shit.

There's a LOT of implications for that technology. Fuck... wow. 

Oh and re: the FTL thing. From a guy I know on another board:

Quote from: rc
I work at CERN, but for the LHC and not this experiment. Let me try to answer as much as I understand:

• Neutrino experiments are horrific things. Neutrinos rarely interact with anything, and you can put the experiment as far deep underground as you want, the signal:noise ratio will be like 1:100 at the best and probably much much worse than that.
• Neutrinos currently need to have some infinitesimal mass in order to allow for neutrino mixing, which we like as a theory but are willing to drop. We're pretty sure neutrinos mix because the sun shouldn't be able to produce muon or tau neutrinos in any decent quantity yet the ratio of electron:muon:tau neutrinos coming from the sun is roughly equal
• It's very likely that a few cosmic rays that were incorrectly tagged as neutrinos caused this signal (remember there's TONS of non-neutrino events even if you're in the middle of a neutrino beam)
• It will take me a lot more than this to believe in violation of locality.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Zaratustra on September 23, 2011, 07:56:00 AM
Didn't they do the experiment more than once? I thought that was implied.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on September 23, 2011, 08:07:43 AM
Well, even if they did, it's going to have to be done a WHOLE LOT of times before it becomes accepted.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: patito on September 23, 2011, 08:12:28 AM
Yeah, they say they did it 15000 times or something.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on September 23, 2011, 08:22:10 AM
It says they took measurements 15,000 times. I don't think they actually ran that many experiments.

Anyway, what's important here is for people to duplicate this in other labs or facilities, with different staff, etc.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on September 23, 2011, 08:27:08 AM
I imagine every fucking particle lab in the world is busy setting it up.

If there's anything researchers love more than ANYTHING, it's claiming that they just disproved Einstein.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on September 23, 2011, 08:32:35 AM
I'm surprised they had to go as far as Christopher Walken. Usually they just stop at Harry Potter or Star Trek.

I'd have figured House for this one, since I'm pretty sure he has already shown that he has access to one of these scanners.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mothra on September 23, 2011, 08:45:08 AM
Nishimoto.etal.2011.3Subjects.mpeg (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMA23JJ1M1o#)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on September 30, 2011, 07:31:03 AM
2011 Ig Nobel Awards (http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/09/2011-ig-nobel-awards-go-to-beetle-on-beer-bottle-sex-decision-making-while-needing-to-pee-others.ars)

Quote
In the humanities, the Ig Nobel peace prize went to Arturas Zuokas, the mayor of Vilnius, Lithuania, for showing that the scourge of illegal parking by people who own luxury cars can be solved by the simple act of crushing the cars with a giant armored tank.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Caithness on September 30, 2011, 08:20:14 AM
And he got an Ig Nobel for that?
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on September 30, 2011, 08:42:43 AM
It's more than Obama did to earn an ACTUAL Nobel.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Friday on September 30, 2011, 09:18:31 AM
Vilnius Mayor A.Zuokas Fights Illegally Parked Cars with Tank (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-fWN0FmcIU#)

The video, for those too lazy to get it from the article.

The shot of him riding away on his bike made it for me.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Caithness on September 30, 2011, 09:30:13 AM
Oh, the award is for research that "makes people laugh, and then think"? Judging by the name, I though it was for crimes against humanity.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Pacobird on September 30, 2011, 09:41:16 AM
Brain activity translated into digital video (http://gizmodo.com/5843117/scientists-reconstruct-video-clips-from-brain-activity)

This is... Wow.

Prediction: the porn industry will once again earn its due credit as the early adopter of commercial applications for mind-blowing technological advancement.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on September 30, 2011, 10:08:45 AM
Vilnius Mayor A.Zuokas Fights Illegally Parked Cars with Tank (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-fWN0FmcIU#)

Wow, that's like, the exact opposite of what the mayor in Toronto does.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Royal☭ on September 30, 2011, 10:21:01 AM
Brain activity translated into digital video (http://gizmodo.com/5843117/scientists-reconstruct-video-clips-from-brain-activity)

This is... Wow.

Prediction: the porn industry will once again earn its due credit as the early adopter of commercial applications for mind-blowing technological advancement.

Which is why HD-DVD won the format wars.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on September 30, 2011, 10:29:08 AM
Nobody said they'd make MONEY doing it.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: NexAdruin on October 12, 2011, 03:29:06 AM
Computational Model of Peace Predicts Social Violence, Harmony (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/10/peace-boundaries/)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on October 17, 2011, 09:39:09 AM
Rick Perry: Just Like Galileo (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/oct/14/rick-perry-texas-censorship-environment-report)

Galileo was the one who commissioned scientific studies and then cut out all the parts he didn't agree with politically before publishing them, right?

Oh.  Well then I guess Rick Perry's not very much like Galileo, then.

Quote
Officials in Rick Perry's home state of Texas have set off a scientists' revolt after purging mentions of climate change and sea-level rise from what was supposed to be a landmark environmental report. The scientists said they were disowning the report on the state of Galveston Bay because of political interference and censorship from Perry appointees at the state's environmental agency.

By academic standards, the protest amounts to the beginnings of a rebellion: every single scientist associated with the 200-page report has demanded their names be struck from the document.

(via (http://boingboing.net/2011/10/17/texas-officials-edited-climate-change-out-of-environmental-report.html); and there's a full list of what was altered in the published document at Mother Jones (http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/10/perry-officials-censored-climate-report))
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on October 21, 2011, 09:41:12 PM
Research physician at the University of Sherbrooke traces the history of AIDS back to a single bush hunter 90 years ago. (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/new-health/health-news/canadian-researcher-traces-aids-to-single-bush-hunter-from-1921/article2210046/)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Smiler on November 01, 2011, 07:43:07 AM
Japan makes wireless flexible e-paper. (http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-11-e-paper-unplugged-key-japan.html)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on November 01, 2011, 07:55:23 AM
Uhhhh... the company is Taiwanese.

But other than that, that's neat!
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on November 03, 2011, 06:56:06 AM
Social psychologist Diederik Stapel has admitted to making a bunch of research up (http://io9.com/5855733/psychologist-admits-to-faking-dozens-of-scientific-studies).
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on November 15, 2011, 01:00:50 PM
Western Black Rhino declared extinct (http://edition.cnn.com/2011/11/10/world/africa/rhino-extinct-species-report/index.html)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Classic on November 15, 2011, 01:51:31 PM
NOW HOW WILL I GET MY FUCKING VIRILITY POWDER!? That was the only shit that worked!!!

Also the article talks about a handful of other flora and fauna that are going extinct including one which produces a real chemotherapy drug, instead of bullshit virility serums.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: JDigital on November 19, 2011, 03:07:16 PM
This talk of extincting animals reminds me of something.

The scriptment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scriptment) for James Cameron's Avatar was written in 1994 and a version was leaked on the Internet at least as early as 2004. I haven't seen the movie, so I don't know if this made it into the film, but here's the original opening.

Quote
Welcome to JOSH SULLY'S world.

It is a century from now, and the population of our tired planet has tripled.  Finally, drowning in its own toxic waste, starvation and poverty, the population has topped out at a nice even 20 billion.

The Earth is dying, covered with a gray mold of human civilization.  Even the moon is spiderwebbed with city lights on its dark side.  Overpopulation, over- development, nuclear terrorism, environmental warfare tactics, radiation leakage from power plants and waste dumps, toxic waste, air pollution, deforestation, pollution and overfishing of the oceans, global warming, ozone depletion, loss of biodiversity through extinction... all of these have combined to make the once green and beautiful planet a terminal cess-pool.

Josh lives in the urban sprawl which has grown like kudzu over the whole eastern US.

His particular part of this undifferentiated concrete rat- warren is Charlotte, NC, but you could be anywhere.  Its the same crowded, gray, trash-strewn high-tech squalor. The walls are gray, the sky is gray... the people are gray.

They shuffle past each other in dense crowds, shoulder to shoulder, unwashed because of the water shortages, and sickly looking from the bankrupt diet of cheap carbohydrates and synthetic proteins.  It looks like a cross between THX-1138 and a Calcutta train station.

Josh has it a little worse than most because of his involvement in a stupid little war people barely remember. He is paralyzed from the waist down, and his useless legs hang twisted and shrunken down the front of his wheelchair.  Josh still wears his army jacket, and with his unkempt beard and hair, and surly eyes, he is pretty much ignored by the crowds which buffet him like surf. Just another angry vet, a piece of discarded human trash.

Josh fights his way to work every day on the crowded subway.  And every night he goes home to a tiny cubicle of an apartment in a vast government housing project.  The room is reminiscent of a cell at a federal prison, which is pretty much what it is.  The amenities look like they are from a 747, which is to say they are efficient, space conscious, and are about a hundred years old.

There is a single fluorescent fixture, which casts a sterile light over the grimy walls.  It flickers constantly.

One entire wall (all seven feet of it) is a TV screen.  On it we get a wider view of the world, and it's nothing to write home about.  There is a breaking story about a fire in a Boston subway which asphyxiated over a hundred people.  Not unusual these days.  This is followed by a feature about the death, in Kenya, of the last lion living outside captivity.  This leads to a recap of the state of the environment overall, and it's grim.

The oceans are overfished and barren, poisoned by toxic runoff.  All whales and at least half the Earth's fish species are extinct.  On land over half the species extant at the beginning of the century are now gone forever, with most of the remaining endangered.

The human race, using its technical ingenuity, has learned to keep itself alive, but it has lost almost all contact with the natural world, which it has strangled and crushed out of existence.  There are no national parks left, only housing projects and protein farms.  Yosemite is an upscale condo development.  Most ocean-front property is used for mari-culture, since the only food source efficient enough to feed everyone these days is spirulina. It's amazing the things you can do with algal protein concentrate if you know your spices.

Josh Sully is a hopeless guy in a hopeless world, a little guy whom the big machine has ground up and spit out.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on November 19, 2011, 04:23:48 PM
None.  You don't see Earth at all in the final product.

Though it is referred to a few times, and the description is pretty consistent with all that.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on November 19, 2011, 05:27:41 PM
Granted, the references are mostly from Jake himself, who can not be considered a reliable narrator at that point.

The way I parsed it, and the way I prefer to parse it because it's actually quite good, is that Earth is actually about what you'd expect it to be after another 150 years of technological progress and space exploration.  It's a little more technologically advanced, a lot more polluted, and the corporate stooges and warhawks have lost all sense of kayfabe, but the whole thing is about as livable in 2154 as it is now, perhaps moreso since they've obviously cured some stuff like lower body paralysis and atmospheric poisoning.  The thing is comparing Pandora to our regular-ass everyday Earth is a stark reminder of what we've already lost, which is probably why so many people felt like killing themselves afterwards.

At least, if you believe that the Native Americans had floating islands, free internet built into their skulls, mountable dragons, and an oversupply of horny catwomen.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on November 19, 2011, 09:50:32 PM
Granted, the references are mostly from Jake himself, who can not be considered a reliable narrator at that point.

The way I parsed it, and the way I prefer to parse it because it's actually quite good, is that Earth is actually about what you'd expect it to be after another 150 years of technological progress and space exploration.  It's a little more technologically advanced, a lot more polluted, and the corporate stooges and warhawks have lost all sense of kayfabe, but the whole thing is about as livable in 2154 as it is now, perhaps moreso since they've obviously cured some stuff like lower body paralysis and atmospheric poisoning.  The thing is comparing Pandora to our regular-ass everyday Earth is a stark reminder of what we've already lost, which is probably why so many people felt like killing themselves afterwards.

At least, if you believe that the Native Americans had floating islands, free internet built into their skulls, mountable dragons, and an oversupply of horny catwomen.
They didn't?

Man, I got a few things to say to one of my history professors...
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on December 07, 2011, 08:43:52 AM
Mythbusters experiment goes awry, cannonball terrorizes neighborhood (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2011/12/07/BA1D1M99V5.DTL)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on December 09, 2011, 08:30:26 AM
Potentially habitable planet discovered! (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16040655) It's 600 light years away, but still.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: JDigital on December 09, 2011, 08:17:14 PM
Or at least it was habitable, 600 years ago.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on December 11, 2011, 08:39:24 PM
http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/12/02/143051269/the-best-hike-on-mars-you-ll-ever-take?ft=1&f=5500502 (http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/12/02/143051269/the-best-hike-on-mars-you-ll-ever-take?ft=1&f=5500502)

Mars looks like Utah.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on January 05, 2012, 11:51:23 AM
I call "Chimera Monkey (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16427873)" for my band name.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Esperath on January 07, 2012, 04:07:56 AM
First cases of totally drug resistant tuberculosis (TDR-TB) detected. (http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/report_first-cases-of-totally-drug-resistant-tb-in-india-one-dead_1634439)

:president Madagascar:
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on February 01, 2012, 11:41:16 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/scientists-close-to-entering-vostok-antarcticas-biggest-subglacial-lake/2012/01/27/gIQAbGX0fQ_story_1.html (http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/scientists-close-to-entering-vostok-antarcticas-biggest-subglacial-lake/2012/01/27/gIQAbGX0fQ_story_1.html)

Soon, soon...
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Shinra on February 01, 2012, 11:58:24 AM
Oh hey this looks pretty coo-

Quote
Some other groups have called for a ban on scientific research beneath the antarctic ice sheet so the area can remain pristine.

IT'S FUCKING ANTARCTICA! WHO FUCKING CARES?
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Lottel on February 01, 2012, 11:59:35 AM
Ice to sea you haven't changed, Shinra.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on February 01, 2012, 07:06:54 PM
Sarcasm is a cold comfort, Lottel.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mr. Freeze on February 01, 2012, 09:16:12 PM
Stop stealing my popsicle schtick.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on February 03, 2012, 09:36:28 PM
Okay, so there's an interesting twist on the Lake Vostok story.

Apparently, the Russian station has not been heard from in six days (http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/02/03/missing-scientists-mystery-deepens-in-frozen-antarctica/)

Then again the only non-fringe news source running this story right now is Fox News (the link above is in fact a Fox News link) [Joke about Fox news being less accurate than most typical fringe lunatics]. So I wouldn't go to town with John Carpenter's The Thing references just yet.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on February 03, 2012, 10:17:50 PM
Also... Laser-guided bullets (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/engineers-create-self-guided-bullet/article2323281/)

The "We live in a video-game world" joke has been done to death, so I'm not even sure what to joke about here.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on February 03, 2012, 11:15:00 PM
Oh good, now we really count outsmart bullet.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: JDigital on February 04, 2012, 12:46:15 AM
aimbot aimbot
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Catloaf on February 06, 2012, 07:58:37 AM
aimbot aimbot

Not quite yet.  They haven't put a digital camera with facial recognition (the type that only recognizes that it is indeed a face, not the recognize a specific face as a specific person kind) on a scope yet with a quick targeting program that sets the target as just slightly above the face and does all the work for the shooter.  Then it will be aimbot!  Right now it sounds like they've just turned off wind and bullet-fall.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on February 22, 2012, 02:19:28 PM
Looks like a GPS error may have been responsible for the faster-than-light particles. (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/technical-flaw-found-in-experiment-that-measured-faster-than-light-particles/article2346620/)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on February 22, 2012, 07:10:26 PM
Hubble discovered a steam planet (http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/02/hubble-finds-steam-world-like-no-planet-we-know-of.php)! Now we know where the Federation sends its laundry.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on February 28, 2012, 03:10:48 PM
Quote from: Grak
Quote from: corpse_grinder
if you're tired of being hassled buying sudafed, you can do some reverse engineering (http://heterodoxy.cc/meowdocs/pseudo/pseudosynth.pdf) (pdf: A Simple and Convenient Synthesis of Pseudoephedrine From N-Methylamphetamine via the Journal of Apocryphal Chemistry)

Wait, does this really say how to turn meth into sudafed.

Hahahah that's awesome.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Cthulhu-chan on February 28, 2012, 04:14:05 PM
that's some gud sience rite thar
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on March 04, 2012, 12:53:46 PM
http://io9.com/5890173/this-is-what-your-skin-looks-like-after-youve-been-hit-by-lightning (http://io9.com/5890173/this-is-what-your-skin-looks-like-after-youve-been-hit-by-lightning)

Who knew lightning would create such cool scars?
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Lottel on March 04, 2012, 12:59:49 PM
Is it wrong to be jealous if he didn't even know he was struck by lightning?
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: NexAdruin on March 26, 2012, 10:13:11 AM
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/320986 (http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/320986)

Plastic-eating Fungi found in the Amazon. Suggested usage of clearing out landfills with it.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Classic on March 26, 2012, 10:42:54 AM
Book scenario:
The fungus spreads to plastic still in use and creates a shortage of plastics worldwide.

Maybe I can get cash from plastics manufacturers.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: NexAdruin on March 26, 2012, 11:25:49 AM
Video game scenario: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_of_Us (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_of_Us)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on March 28, 2012, 12:40:12 PM
Active real-time wind map of the US: http://hint.fm/wind/ (http://hint.fm/wind/)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on March 29, 2012, 07:47:27 PM
James Cameron touches down on the Challenger Deep, spends about 3 hours looking around. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepsea_Challenger)  It's the second successful manned touchdown* and the first to really spend any significant amount of time down there.

Quote from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenger_Deep#Descents
The whole time, Cameron said, he didn't see any fish, or any living creatures more than an inch (2.5 cm) long: "The only free swimmers I saw were small amphipods"—shrimplike bottom-feeders.

Turns out life at 16155psi isn't as interesting as marine biologists want you to think.


* The last one being 52 years ago, mind you.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on March 29, 2012, 07:51:45 PM
Saw that earlier this week. Pretty cool, but it's mostly just for bragging rights as it's tough to get much done down there.

Long overdue that someone went back there though, and I think that's what Cameron was rightly trying to address.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on March 29, 2012, 07:54:08 PM
Gotta give the guy respect for walking the talk.  It's almost like Titanic was a fucking side project he banged out in-between excavating the actual Titanic and planning his next deep-sea adventure.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on March 29, 2012, 08:04:22 PM
Between him and Clive Cussler, you'd think most Oceanography was actually done by dilettante wealthy creative-types.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on April 04, 2012, 07:14:57 AM
The Reg (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/04/1981_climate_paper/): climate-change predictions in 1981 pretty-well spot-on.

It's notable that this is appearing in the Reg, which, while a generally pretty good tech blog, is big on climate change denial.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on April 04, 2012, 10:09:42 AM
Google Glasses look like something you'd equip in Mass Effect. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-innovations/google-glasses-a-preview-from-project-glass/2012/04/04/gIQAhIAXvS_gallery.html)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Dooly on April 04, 2012, 06:01:49 PM
You'd look even crazier giving voice commands to your glasses in public than you'd look talking on an earpiece.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Lottel on April 04, 2012, 06:23:03 PM
From the article I read there are buttons on the glasses so I assume you'd just look like a tool with two fingers to your temple getting information out of thin air. I think being a pretend psychic with goofy glasses is pretty awesome though.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on April 04, 2012, 06:24:45 PM
So what do you do if you already wear glasses?
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Ted Belmont on April 04, 2012, 06:50:25 PM
Google Eyeballs, coming Fall 2015.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on April 04, 2012, 07:14:48 PM
From the article I read there are buttons on the glasses so I assume you'd just look like a tool with two fingers to your temple getting information out of thin air. I think being a pretend psychic with goofy glasses is pretty awesome though.

Buttons on your temple aren't going to give you much more control than simple voice commands.  Realistically these things are going to pair to your phone and you'll use that for the more complex operations.

So what do you do if you already wear glasses?

Well, given that it's a tiny rectangle in the corner of an otherwise-empty set of frames, I can think of one solution.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on April 06, 2012, 02:13:29 PM
Doctorow (http://boingboing.net/2012/04/06/having-lots-of-well-paid-staff.html): the Harvard Business Review has determined that when retailers invest in employees who actually know what the fuck they're doing, they make more money.

In a completely unrelated story, Best Buy is closing 50 stores (http://boingboing.net/2012/03/29/best-buy-to-close-50-stores.html).
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on April 06, 2012, 03:13:20 PM
I'm not sure if that's much of a story.  Best Buy has 14 stores just within an hour's drive from me.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Shinra on April 07, 2012, 01:41:10 PM
Yeah, I think the city of Tulsa has 3 and there's about 9 people living here.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on April 09, 2012, 07:56:00 PM
Homophobia is more pronounced in those with latent homosexual attraction (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120406234458.htm).
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on April 09, 2012, 10:33:41 PM
SCIENCE

Always the last to know these things.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Cthulhu-chan on April 29, 2012, 09:54:18 AM
Surprised this hasn't been mentioned yet.

Motherfuckin' asteroid mining. (http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/26/11413687-verdict-on-asteroid-mining-no-bull)

www.planetaryresources.com (http://www.planetaryresources.com)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on May 03, 2012, 05:48:54 PM
This is about as SCIENCE! as it gets: Japanese researchers at U Wisconsin create "doomsday" super-virus, with greater than 50% mortality rates (http://www.montrealgazette.com/health/Doomsday+virus+revealed+along+with+instructions/6557082/story.html)

You know, because.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: McDohl on May 03, 2012, 05:55:13 PM
Someone get Cave Johnson out of Wisconsin.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Smiler on May 03, 2012, 06:16:13 PM
I am kind of sad that my friend who is going there isn't responsible. She would have loved to be able to say she was a part of that.

To be fair though, she is working on reprogramming the brain of a rat, which is equally awesome.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on May 03, 2012, 06:19:07 PM
I love the part about how they're publically publishing the instruction manual.

NOTHING COULD GO WRONG HERE!
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on May 08, 2012, 05:05:33 PM
Using avalanche research to make better ice cream (http://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/storm_watch_stories3&stormfile=Using_avalanche_research_to_make_better_ice_cream_04_05_2012?ref=ccbox_weather_category3)

I think the main thing that amuses me about this is that they go on about there being this ONE AND ONLY specialized x-ray machine in the world, and they're using it for ice cream research.

:wakka:
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on June 01, 2012, 02:42:50 PM
Gaydar confirmed as a real thing (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/03/opinion/sunday/the-science-of-gaydar.html?_r=2)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: patito on June 01, 2012, 02:51:35 PM
Chance guessing would probably not lead to 50% accuracy, since it's not like 50% of people are gay. But it really depends on how they performed their experiment.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on June 01, 2012, 03:43:54 PM
They go into quite a bit of detail on their methodology in the article.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on June 01, 2012, 04:25:37 PM
Chance guessing would probably not lead to 50% accuracy, since it's not like 50% of people are gay.

But if you really are guessing "straight" and "gay" with equal frequency, then your accuracy should converge on 50% regardless of the sample.

Say the sample you're shown is 100% straight and you guess straight half the time and gay half the time -- then you're 50% accurate.  Ditto if the sample is 100% gay.  Ditto if it's 50/50, 90/10, 95/5, whatever, if your guesses really are random and equally probable.

Now, skimming the NYT article, I can't actually tell what the ratio was in the sample (or even if the same subject viewed more than one photo), and the article itself is timing out for me.  But whether the ratio in the experiment was 50/50, 90/10, or what-have-you, it's still pretty striking that the subjects could guess with 60% accuracy.

I'm still pretty skeptical that face structure says that much about a person's sexual orientation; I'm curious to see this duplicated and with more variables isolated.  (Is the person in the picture smiling or frowning?  Showing teeth?  And they may have removed hairstyles, but what about facial hair or eyebrows?  I'm not saying every man who plucks his eyebrows or has a John Waters pencil mustache is gay, but I would assume those grooming choices occur disproportionately in the gay community.)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: patito on June 01, 2012, 04:56:09 PM
Quote
Another novel finding: in both experiments, participants were more accurate at judging women’s sexual orientation (64 percent) than at judging men’s (57 percent). Lower gaydar accuracy for men’s faces was explained by a difference in “false alarms”: participants were more likely to incorrectly categorize a straight man as gay than to incorrectly categorize a straight woman as gay.

Why might “false alarm” errors be more common when judging men’s sexual orientation? We speculate that people overzealously interpret whatever facial factors lead us to classify men as gay. That is, it may be that straight men’s faces that are perceived as even slightly effeminate are incorrectly classified as gay, whereas straight women’s faces that are perceived as slightly masculine may still be seen as straight. That would be consistent with how our society applies gender norms to men: very strictly. (Decades of research has established that, at least in our culture, it is considered much more problematic for a boy to play with Barbie dolls than for a girl to play rough-and-tumble sports.) 

Actually this bit is pretty good. Since it does go into the methodology quite a bit. Still though, 57% strikes me as really low. But I guess it's just easier for a guy to look gay.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on June 01, 2012, 08:03:02 PM
Well, I mean, it's high enough not to be noise but it's low enough to make the point that you can't really RELIABLY tell somebody's orientation by glancing at a photo for 50 milliseconds.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: NexAdruin on June 07, 2012, 11:03:41 PM
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/04/100409-black-holes-alternate-universe-multiverse-einstein-wormholes/ (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/04/100409-black-holes-alternate-universe-multiverse-einstein-wormholes/)

Every black hole is a universe and our universe is a black hole and it's black holes all the way down.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on June 08, 2012, 08:07:37 AM
Hasn't that been a sci-fi theory basically since Black Holes became generally accepted?

I'm not even sure this scientist was the first to propose the "White Holes" theory in an actual scientific journal, because I definitely know I've heard that term long before 2010.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Classic on June 08, 2012, 09:13:08 AM
The National Geographic has the same bad habit of scooping stuff that seems interesting before it's actually gone through peer review that most newspapers do.
But you know, broken clocks. It's just not really an area of study I have any interest in.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on June 08, 2012, 09:16:55 AM
The National Geographic has the same bad habit of scooping stuff that seems interesting before it's actually gone through peer review that most newspapers do.

Speaking of which, final nail in the coffin of the FTL neutrino story (http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/06/faster-than-light-neutrino-findings-really-thoroughly-dead/).

Quote
Neutrinos have some fascinating properties (which we'll discuss at length this weekend), but it's now clear there is one exceptional feature they lack: the ability to go faster than light. Even the detector that originally reported this finding now agrees that the results were an artifact.

This morning, CERN updated its press release that dates back to the original results, indicating that the four different detectors on the receiving end of its neutrino beam—Borexino, ICARUS, LVD, and OPERA, all located in Italy's Gran Sasso facility—generated timing results that were consistent with the neutrinos traveling at the speed of light. The inability to discern a difference between the speed of neutrinos and photons is the product of the neutrinos' extremely tiny mass. A proton is 10,000,000,000 times more massive, so it takes substantially less energy to get a neutrino up to speeds where the distance to the speed of light is just a rounding error.

This appears to confirm that the results were the product of an improperly seated optical cable in the OPERA experiment, which introduced a small, but significant timing delay.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on June 08, 2012, 11:16:39 AM
Curses! Done in by a gaffer's mistake!
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on June 09, 2012, 08:21:16 AM
Two odd things:

A chunk of dock from Japan washes up in Oregon. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18349741)

NASA is having a bake sale. (http://www.livescience.com/20827-bake-sale-nasa-planetary-science.html)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: NexAdruin on June 19, 2012, 06:18:04 PM
http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jul-aug/06-humans-with-super-human-vision/article_view?b_start%3Aint=0&-C (http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jul-aug/06-humans-with-super-human-vision/article_view?b_start%3Aint=0&-C)

Most people can see about 100^3 colors.

Some people, known as Tetrachromats, can see 100^4.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on June 19, 2012, 06:32:18 PM
So they'd be able to see octarine?
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Royal☭ on June 20, 2012, 05:12:11 AM
Can't decide a good place to put this, so I'll dump it here for now:

Man attempts to save dead mouse from a stray cat, is rewarded with the black plague (http://www.themarysue.com/black-death-in-oregon/)

What surprised me about this article, aside from some guy thinking it's a good idea to take a mouse from a cat, is that the black plague is apparently affecting about 7 people in the US annually. The mortality rate has severely declined from the time it nearly wiped out humanity, but it's still interesting to see it's still tooling around America, at least in the southwest.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: François on June 20, 2012, 05:52:50 AM
From the comments:
Quote
First of all this is my father. The dead mouse was long dead and mummified .the cat was choking to death on it and he tried to save it. It was his pet.

Well, if that's true then it makes a bit more sense at least.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: NexAdruin on June 27, 2012, 05:33:03 PM
Particles that give you oxygen without the need of breathing (http://gizmodo.com/5921868/scientists-invent-particles-that-will-let-you-live-without-breathing?utm_campaign=socialflow_gizmodo_facebook&utm_source=gizmodo_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on June 27, 2012, 06:29:07 PM
Take that, science fiction!
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on June 27, 2012, 06:38:30 PM
So it's like that pink fluid from The Abyss?
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on June 27, 2012, 06:41:28 PM
Injection only, 15-30 minutes max, and probably only at minimum life capacity.

Still though, that's pretty damned huge in the field of medical application, as the article points out.  Otoh I can also see a number of horrible uses for this sort of technology... poisons, abusable drugs, and of course standard gross misapplications like:

Quote
But what about getting a shot for diving?

Yes let us inject concentrated gas containers into our bloodstream and then jump into a pressurized environment do you know what the fucking bends even are???
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on June 27, 2012, 07:39:50 PM
So uh, someone just pointed out that this may way work as a performance-enhancing drug for sports.

Man, if that actually works, good fucking luck testing for the presence of extra OXYGEN.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: François on June 27, 2012, 08:29:10 PM
Maybe the lipid container will leave detectable traces, if it's a specific type of fat that isn't absorbed or degraded or otherwise exuded by the body too fast.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Cthulhu-chan on June 28, 2012, 01:09:57 AM
Injection only, 15-30 minutes max, and probably only at minimum life capacity.

Still though, that's pretty damned huge in the field of medical application, as the article points out.  Otoh I can also see a number of horrible uses for this sort of technology... poisons, abusable drugs, and of course standard gross misapplications like:

Quote
But what about getting a shot for diving?

Yes let us inject concentrated gas containers into our bloodstream and then jump into a pressurized environment do you know what the fucking bends even are???

The bends are caused by excess compressed nitrogen in the blood, so I don't think lipid bubbles full of oxygen will be an issue.

That aside, I don't think direct blood oxygenation is terribly practical for diving, except perhaps in emergency situations.  But shit, I'm no scientician, what the fuck do I know?
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on June 28, 2012, 04:34:21 AM
Technically speaking, The bends is caused by any amount of gas bubbles in the blood, not just compressed nitrogen.  :themoreyouknow:
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Royal☭ on July 04, 2012, 04:48:56 AM
Higgs Boson discovered (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/large-hadron-collider/9374758/Higgs-boson-scientists-99.999-sure-God-Particle-has-been-found.html)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on July 04, 2012, 05:59:02 AM
Caveat: the threshold for "Not an Error" in particle physics is "beyond a 1 in 1,700,000 chance of being a statistical error". Because this discovery is only beyond a 1 in 16,000 chance of being an error, it has an asterisk stating that they've discovered A Higgs Boson, not necessarily THE Higgs Boson.

But I think like most folks, they figured that a 1 in 16,000 chance is close enough to ironclad to at least make a press release and have a little cake.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Smiler on July 04, 2012, 07:07:28 AM
I was kind of hoping for an old guy to get on stage and yell "EVERYTHING WE THOUGHT WAS WRONG!" as he got sucked into a black hole because suddenly there was no reason for anything to have mass.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Royal☭ on July 04, 2012, 08:07:52 AM
Caveat: the threshold for "Not an Error" in particle physics is "beyond a 1 in 1,700,000 chance of being a statistical error". Because this discovery is only beyond a 1 in 16,000 chance of being an error, it has an asterisk stating that they've discovered A Higgs Boson, not necessarily THE Higgs Boson.

But I think like most folks, they figured that a 1 in 16,000 chance is close enough to ironclad to at least make a press release and have a little cake.

I'm more inclined to think it's of the "We're on the right track please supply us with more money" variety.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Cait on July 04, 2012, 07:22:12 PM
Caveat: the threshold for "Not an Error" in particle physics is "beyond a 1 in 1,700,000 chance of being a statistical error". Because this discovery is only beyond a 1 in 16,000 chance of being an error, it has an asterisk stating that they've discovered A Higgs Boson, not necessarily THE Higgs Boson.

But I think like most folks, they figured that a 1 in 16,000 chance is close enough to ironclad to at least make a press release and have a little cake.

The linked article, as well as others extant, indicate that the aggregate data provides a 5-sigma result, which is the aforementioned 1 in roughly 1.7 million.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on July 04, 2012, 07:28:39 PM
Oh keen. The ones I'd read earlier about the impending press release specifically stated they weren't 5-sigma. I guess the actual press release updated that.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Cait on July 04, 2012, 07:42:44 PM
Oh keen. The ones I'd read earlier about the impending press release specifically stated they weren't 5-sigma. I guess the actual press release updated that.

Of the two detectors at LHC, they released information from CMS first. CMS had data for the two major types of expected decays (two gammas or four leptons). The gamma decay was 4.2 sigma, and the lepton was 3.2 sigma; combining the two with the lesser decays gave 4.9 sigma.

The other detector, ATLAS, independently reached 5.0 sigma on the merits of its own data; Combining the data from CMS and ATLAS apparently reaches 6 sigma.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on July 04, 2012, 07:55:47 PM
But that's still 6-sigma on A Higgs Boson, not one with 0-spin per se, right?
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Cait on July 04, 2012, 08:06:14 PM
Right, the 0- or 2-spin question is sure to be addressed with further observations, but the more important thing was to establish where the boson actually is located (and that it existed) and the processes were focused on discerning that.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on July 06, 2012, 07:09:12 AM
Quote
On the day we reserve to tell ourselves America is great - July 4 - Europe reminds us that we suck at science. #HiggsBoson
    — Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) July 4, 2012

Man, that is HARSH, Neil.

Harsh, but well-deserved.  I think Our Founding Fathers would approve, because Our Founding Fathers believed whatever I project onto them.

More nerd jokes at Boing Boing. (http://boingboing.net/2012/07/04/gettin-higgy-with-it-a-roun.html)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on July 06, 2012, 07:43:30 AM
Quote
Why didn't they let Danny Glover announce the "Higgs" part of the whole Higgs boson thing? #toooldforthissigma

I had to laugh at that tag.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on July 06, 2012, 08:40:10 AM
(http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6q5f0OFZv1r5x5z1o1_500.jpg)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on July 06, 2012, 08:45:04 AM
 :themoreyouknow:
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: JDigital on July 06, 2012, 04:05:53 PM
Quote from: The God Particle
This boson is so central to the state of physics today, so crucial to our final understanding of the nature of matter, yet so elusive, that I have given it a nickname: the God Particle. Why God Particle? Two reasons. One, the publisher wouldn't let us call it the Goddamn Particle, though that might be a more appropriate title, given its villainous nature and the expense it is causing. And two, there is a connection, of sorts, to another book, a much older one...

The author goes on to quote the Tower of Babel story. The metaphor is that like men built the Tower of Babel to find God, men built the LHC to find the particle.

If you ask me, he nicknamed it the God Particle for no other reason than to make his book sound more important to a less scientifically literate audience.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on August 01, 2012, 07:27:34 AM
Who likes giant robots?

KURATAS - Suidobashi heavy industry (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29MD29ekoKI#ws)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on August 01, 2012, 12:02:55 PM
The Windstalk (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/video-windstalk-concept-suggests-clean-energy-alternative/article4454649/)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on August 05, 2012, 06:45:50 PM
The science-fiction writers of 1987 predict the future of 2012 (http://www.salon.com/2012/08/05/science_fictions_2012_salpart/)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Cthulhu-chan on August 06, 2012, 03:38:25 AM
So hey, how about that throwing an atomic-robot-car-on-a-rocket-crane-on-a-sled-on-a-rocket at Mars and making a picture perfect landing?
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on August 11, 2012, 09:00:57 PM
http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2012/08/11/158570034/a-new-species-discovered-on-flickr (http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2012/08/11/158570034/a-new-species-discovered-on-flickr)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on August 15, 2012, 01:33:10 PM
Putting the "BM" in "Bill and Melinda": Gates Foundation awards prizes for high-tech toilets (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/15/bill_gates_toilet_fair/).

Quote
The first prize award of $100,000 went to the California Institute of Technology for a solar-powered design that uses an electrochemical reactor to break down human waste into hydrogen gas, which can then be stored in fuel cells.

The second-prize winner, Loughborough University, received $60,000 for a self-contained system that decomposes fecal sludge by heating it at high temperatures without oxygen, producing burnable "biological charcoal," while at the same time recovering water and salts.

Third prize went to the University of Toronto, which earned a $40,000 award for a system that sanitizes feces and urine through a combination of mechanical dehydration, low-temperature heat, sand filtering, and exposure to ultraviolet light.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Ted Belmont on August 18, 2012, 03:18:58 PM
The Sun is TOO ROUND (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/sun-is-too-round-say-scientists-8057068.html)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: François on August 18, 2012, 03:30:01 PM
on the scale of how little any given cosmic phenomenon is likely to make me lose any sleep

being

1: the heat death of the universe
2: an asteroid-related extinction event
3: black holes
4: the mind-numbingly colossal void of space
5: a galactus fart

the sun being too round ranks a solid 4.8
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on August 18, 2012, 03:46:38 PM
It's not so much cause for worry as it has neat implications for structural mechanics.  Something that maintains virtually perfect form when it's spinning as fast as the sun (1.241 miles per second) is worth studying.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Cthulhu-chan on August 19, 2012, 06:33:20 AM
Good news about the heat death of the universe, last I heard there is more and more evidence that the universe will be too busy ripping itself violently apart before that can even happen.

So, at least there's that.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on August 19, 2012, 08:33:20 AM
I doubt it. The universe is too lazy.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Cthulhu-chan on August 19, 2012, 10:00:52 PM
You say that now, but dark energy's gonna get'cha!

and by 'you' I mean the largely dead cinders of an ancient universe
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Classic on August 19, 2012, 10:01:46 PM
Seriously man, journal articles or it won't happen.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Cthulhu-chan on August 19, 2012, 10:22:11 PM
Here (http://io9.com/5919193/the-big-rip-theory-says-the-universe-could-end-in-tears) ya go.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: TA on August 30, 2012, 07:44:59 AM
Magic cooling gloves that pretty much entirely reset muscle fatigue after exercise (http://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/august/cooling-glove-research-082912.html).
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on September 03, 2012, 05:46:47 PM
Practical Quantum Computing inches a step closer to reality (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/tech-news/quantum-chip-breakthrough-to-unleash-ultra-fast-computing/article4516380/)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on September 13, 2012, 07:53:11 AM
It’s Opus, it rocks and now it’s an audio codec standard! (https://hacks.mozilla.org/2012/09/its-opus-it-rocks-and-now-its-an-audio-codec-standard/)

Appears to outperform all the other lossy codecs pretty much across the board.  Could make for a great replacement for ogg.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on September 27, 2012, 04:07:28 PM
http://www.morrisdailyherald.com/mobile/article.xml/articles/2012/09/25/18610979/index.xml (http://www.morrisdailyherald.com/mobile/article.xml/articles/2012/09/25/18610979/index.xml)

New study concludes that stress affects those in positions of power significantly less than the rank-and-file.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on October 20, 2012, 09:53:21 PM
Link between creativity and mental illness (http://ki.se/ki/jsp/polopoly.jsp?l=en&d=130&a=151722&newsdep=130)

(http://i284.photobucket.com/albums/ll36/AndyBanner/myth-confirmed.png)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on November 22, 2012, 09:39:36 AM
Possible announcement coming soon of some sort of Mars discovery, possibly organic molecules (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/11/curiosity-historic-news-organics/)

Just speculation at this point, but they'll have to release their findings soon, hopefully before any rumours get too stupid.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: NexAdruin on November 22, 2012, 05:10:43 PM
Alien Life Found on Mars. Are They Coming For Us?
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Smiler on November 29, 2012, 12:11:30 PM
NASA announces new evidence of frozen water on Mercury's poles. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/29/water-on-mercury-nasa-announces-ice-poles_n_2212433.html)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on November 29, 2012, 01:00:22 PM
Too much exercise, too hard, for too long will in fact shorten your life (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323330604578145462264024472.html)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on December 09, 2012, 11:42:44 PM
Surprising abso-fracking-lutely no one, it is revealed that both studies which stated fracking has no environmental impact were slipshod paperjobs done by individuals in the pay of the oil & gas industry (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/fissures-appear-in-scientists-assurances-about-safety-of-fracking/article6142857/).

Both studies (by the U of Texas and by NY State U) have also been retracted now.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on December 17, 2012, 08:08:35 AM
Researchers at Cedars-Sinai invent a virus that can restore a heartbeat. (http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/health-20713986)

Apparently mutates inert cells into pacemaker cells.  Afaik it can't actually jumpstart a dead heart, but it miiiiight stop a dying heart from losing its beat right away...
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on December 28, 2012, 07:40:08 PM
Holy fuck you guys this is the coolest shit. And by shit I mean mars panorama tour shots. (http://www.panoramas.dk/mars/mars-greeleyhaven2/tour.swf)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on December 28, 2012, 10:29:39 PM
Oh please. I could visit Nevada and see the same thing but be able to get back to my hotel in time for the 9.95 buffet special.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on January 05, 2013, 09:06:40 PM
Practical Quantum Computing inches a step closer to reality (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/tech-news/quantum-chip-breakthrough-to-unleash-ultra-fast-computing/article4516380/)

Remember this? Well, there was a follow up. Now, apologies if this is a re-post on my part (because it's DEFINITELY a newspaper re-post, nearly two months old), But I didn't see it here or the CANADIA NOOZ thread, so maybe I didn't.

A Canadian company has sold the world's first functioning quantum computer (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/canada-competes/the-black-box-that-could-change-the-world/article5327613/) (buyer was Lockheed-Martin). More interestingly, they're just about only company in the world with anything close to functioning, saleable hardware AND, as a result, they have a very large number of very crucial quantum-computing patents locked up for quite a few years.

It sure would be nice to see a Canadian company actually succeed at something. (Other than failure. We have lots of experts in that. Too many, really).
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on January 10, 2013, 09:42:51 AM
Data that lives (nearly) forever now possible (http://phys.org/news/2012-09-japan-hitachi.html). Ensuring you'll have the reader and the appropriate software may be another issue, however.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on January 10, 2013, 10:08:41 AM
I think my favorite episode of The Batman was a Weisman one where Mr. Freeze returned 1000 years in the future and they discovered Batman had left a computer program to destroy him -- by carving it into the walls of the Batcave.

The nitpicker in me says it should have been source code, not binary, and that's where we get from Batman back to an on-topic discussion.  Open software and standards are the best (though not the only) way to make sure a document will always be readable.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on January 10, 2013, 10:15:07 AM
Yeah, I think that media will be ephemeral, but heavy duplication and widely dispersed transmission is what will really ensure survival of data through physical catastrophes, social changes, and media format evolution.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on February 02, 2013, 02:50:45 PM
Open-source prosthetics project, using 3D printing technology (http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/02/robohand-how-cheap-3d-printers-built-a-replacement-hand-for-a-five-year-old-boy/)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on February 06, 2013, 08:38:49 AM
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/9852067/Flying-Transylvanian-dinosaur-unearthed-by-scientists.html (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/9852067/Flying-Transylvanian-dinosaur-unearthed-by-scientists.html)

Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: JDigital on February 06, 2013, 10:38:34 AM
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/9852067/Flying-Transylvanian-dinosaur-unearthed-by-scientists.html (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/9852067/Flying-Transylvanian-dinosaur-unearthed-by-scientists.html)

Quote
<Kazz> Hey, did anybody hear about how the dinosaurs became extinct?
<Kazz> I found out the true story.
<Daidoji> eloh ate some beans
<terra> They smoked weed until their brains turned into shriveled into peas.
<Kazz> There were dinosaurs, and then there were vampire dinosaurs.
<kashan> Masturbation?
<Kazz> The vampire dinosaurs sucked the other dinosaurs blood.
<Daidoji> vamposaurus
<MightyQuinn> Lesbian space vampire dinosaurs who shat pterodactyls?
<Zaratustra> where did they find coffins their size?
<Rico> And then there was Denver! ~The Last dinosaur... he's our friend and a whole lot more!
<Siarin> Kazz: Then the vampires turned on each other?
<Kazz> The vampire dinosaurs reproduced like mad, and eventually all the other dinosaurs became extinct.
<Kazz> The vampire dinosaurs had no more dinosaurs to suck the blood of.
<Siarin> I mean, vampires are theoretically immortal, so that means..
<Siarin> ..DAMN IT KAZZ
<Zaratustra> where did they find coffins their size?
<Kazz> Driven mad by starvation, they stayed out until sunrise.
<Kazz> Then, the sunlight caused them all to turn to dust.
<Kazz> Because there were so many, the dust covered the entire Earth, causing the ice age.
* Kazz bows.

Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on February 14, 2013, 09:09:18 AM
http://momentummachines.com/ (http://momentummachines.com/)

Oh shit. This could just as easily go in the "it's the economy" thread too.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on February 14, 2013, 11:37:47 AM
http://momentummachines.com/ (http://momentummachines.com/)

Oh shit. This could just as easily go in the "it's the economy" thread too.

I love this line from the page:

Quote
We are looking for individuals with the best restaurant experience to join us.

"Let's work together to put you out of a job!"
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on February 14, 2013, 03:15:54 PM
I mean, I realize that "THE 3D PRINTER REVOLUTION IS COMING!!~" has been a thing for years now too, but that's actually a legitimate thing (perhaps not in the OMG PRINT EVRYTHING sense, but the impact will grow much more significant over time).

In the same sense "Make all fast food cooks obsolete!!!" is pretty hyperbolic, but if this is legitimate then that's still a hell of a lot of jobs going out the window. Not that they're great jobs, and not that the average fast food place doesn't already look and operate like a factory, but still.

It's funny how close to bad cyberpunk/automats reinvented/retro-future dytopia this is though.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on February 14, 2013, 03:27:36 PM
It's not worth trying to fight automation; it's just a fact of life, now.  That's a major driver of the Rewards-based Economy model, but the major impediment there is the simple fact that the rich actually enjoy screwing people.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Royal☭ on February 14, 2013, 03:29:51 PM
Automation is great! The real issue comes down to whether we should consider having a rich upper-crust when everyone would benefit just by using the wealth of society to have these things everywhere.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on February 14, 2013, 07:56:14 PM
Yeah, I don't think that automation is itself a problem and that fighting it is both stupid and counterproductive. I am 100% in favour of automating things that can be automated.

I just tend to worry now and again that the old argument about "Given a long enough time scale, new jobs in new industries will always be created to replace the lost obsolescent jobs of the past." may finally be breaking down. Not catastrophically and not entirely (new jobs WILL always be created), but enough for things to start sliding out of whack.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: NexAdruin on February 14, 2013, 10:46:30 PM
Just wait until they make a CEO AI and rich people are no longer required for society to run.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on February 14, 2013, 10:54:02 PM
That's uh, not really the angle I'm looking at.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on February 14, 2013, 10:56:47 PM
Come to think of it, this (obliquely) reminds me of another thing I discovered.

http://news.mongabay.com/2011/0120-hance_mongols.html# (http://news.mongabay.com/2011/0120-hance_mongols.html#)

One of history's greatest (unintentional) environmentalists was Genghis Khan. The 40 million people killed by the Mongol Empire (inadvertently) led to large-scale reforestation and a significant reduction in the carbon in the atmosphere.

Uh, this is not to be taken as a suggestion for further such activities though.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on February 14, 2013, 10:59:39 PM
Somehow I don't think World War II was twice as good for the environment.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on February 14, 2013, 11:51:03 PM
Not that I disagree, but WWII was only 1.5 times as many people (Gotta give ole Ghengis his, er, uh... due).
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Cait on February 15, 2013, 04:37:41 AM
I don't think body count is the right metric there, at least not without factoring in population density.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on February 15, 2013, 08:39:04 AM
Well, obviously. There's also proportion to consider. The 60 million people killed in WWII represented 2.5% of the world's population in 1935, whereas 40 million would have been roughly 10% of the (very roughly) estimated world population around 1200.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on February 15, 2013, 08:51:48 AM
So Genghis Khan had the deadliest empire in history, adjusted for inflation.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on February 15, 2013, 09:35:10 AM
Only on a global scale. Stalin, Pol Pot, Hitler and others managed higher than 10% within a region (in Pol Pot's case it was a staggering 35%, possibly more). There have also been even higher death rates for smaller local conflicts (Rwanda, etc.)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on February 15, 2013, 10:48:45 AM
The conquistadors would probably win this race, but only on accident.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Joxam on February 15, 2013, 10:57:01 AM
Dem blankets.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Sharkey on February 15, 2013, 11:38:05 PM
Well, the raw numbers of people here probably isn't as important as the amount of trees being chopped per person, which I'd imagine was quite a bit different in 1200 vs 1935.

The most striking example would be the American pandemic after 1492, which wiped out something like 90% of the population of the continent, and, fucking surprise, coincided with the largest CO2 drop, between 1550 and 1800, along with a corresponding drop in global temperature.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on February 16, 2013, 12:12:14 AM
You know, The Little Ice Age has traditionally been blamed on natural climate fluctuations, but imagine if it really was due to a decline in human population (this is already posited as a serious scientific theory, though with less credence than small-scale natural fluctuations).
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Sharkey on February 16, 2013, 12:26:44 AM
It's pretty much what we already knew. The best way to halt global warming is to pick a continent and kill everyone on it. Easy peasy.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Bal on February 16, 2013, 06:22:14 AM
123notit
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Sharkey on February 16, 2013, 01:00:49 PM
Nominating Antarctica is cheating. Besides, they've got, like, shitloads of flame throwers.

Everybody's looking at you, Asia.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Cthulhu-chan on February 18, 2013, 01:15:01 AM
Well, China's practically gassing themselves, already...
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on February 20, 2013, 08:58:34 PM
Extended NYT takedown on the science behind junk foods (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&ref=magazine)

Really good and comprehensive piece. Would have been happy to read one that was twice as long. I know "confirmation bias" and all that, but that really does put in concrete terms things I'd vaguely known were happening; that there is a staggering amount of ingenuity and intellect applied to this stuff, to the point where cigarette executives look like pikers.

Also, I almost pissed myself laughing when I learned that Oscar Mayer is owned by Philip Morris.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Esperath on February 20, 2013, 09:12:01 PM
(http://i.imgur.com/8Esd954.png)

Apparently satisfying crunch is anti-addictive.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: NexAdruin on February 20, 2013, 09:18:07 PM
If satisfaction is measured as deviance from perfection, then a smaller deviance would be more satisfying and make the equation work.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Esperath on February 20, 2013, 10:39:30 PM
I can just see the tag lines now:

DORITOS SHOCKBURST: AS LITTLE SATISFACTION AS YOU CAN GET WITHOUT CAUSING A DIVIDE BY ZERO ERROR
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: TA on February 21, 2013, 12:22:49 AM
So, the ideal addictive food is salty, very fatty, not at all crunchy, and pleasant in the mouth.

... mayonnaise?
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Esperath on February 21, 2013, 12:54:41 AM
Or a smooth/melted cheese.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: TA on February 21, 2013, 01:00:44 AM
(http://i.imgur.com/RagakF0.jpg)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on February 21, 2013, 07:02:48 AM
Blubber.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on February 21, 2013, 08:09:01 AM
(http://i.imgur.com/RagakF0.jpg)

Argh, I was trying desperately to forget the cheese at Five Guys.

No kidding, that was literally the worst cheese I have ever had on a burger. Even McDonald's cheese is significantly better less awful.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: TA on February 21, 2013, 11:29:46 AM
... what?  Cheese at Five Guys is not canned, it's sliced.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on February 21, 2013, 11:40:57 AM
The cheese food product I had may have originally come in slice form, but it was a semi-solid eldritch horror by the time I had anything to do with it.

That shit was fucking nasty. It was like a dollar store cheeze whiz knockoff that had been spread into a square mould, holding its shape just long enough to temporarily pass as a cheese slice. Any melting on that substance's part had little to do with heat.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on February 21, 2013, 11:59:28 AM
That's the definition of American cheese, yes.  I suspect most other places serreptitiously switch out for actual Cheddar when they migrate up North.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on February 21, 2013, 05:55:34 PM
I dunno. I know McDonalds is using the same stuff up here that they use in the US.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on February 21, 2013, 09:28:36 PM
I don't know from Five Guys, but Forefathers does the Cheez Whiz thing.  I'm led to understand that's an authentic Philly thing.

I was in Philly once.  The place I went to did not use Cheez Whiz.  I got a chicken Philly at the birthplace of Larry Fine.  It had melted provolone.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Kayma on February 23, 2013, 10:40:02 AM
The secret best Philly steaks use provolone instead of cheese wiz. Don't tell anyone.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Classic on February 23, 2013, 11:19:17 AM
I'm just saying this to upset you, but everytime I hear or read "secret best" I now think of Shane Bettenhausen.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Healy on February 23, 2013, 05:23:22 PM
I'm just saying this to upset you, but everytime I hear or read "secret best" I now think of Shane Bettenhausen.
Isn't he where that nomenclature came from?
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Classic on February 23, 2013, 05:41:07 PM
No.
I'm the secret-true coiner of that construction.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on March 04, 2013, 11:32:44 AM
Why Americans are the weirdest people in the world. (http://www.psmag.com/magazines/pacific-standard-cover-story/joe-henrich-weird-ultimatum-game-shaking-up-psychology-economics-53135/)

Now, as proved by SCIENCE!

:isweird:

Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Classic on March 04, 2013, 12:02:24 PM
It is a neat social-psychology article where someone takes the ultimatum game* and takes it on the road to have people who aren't "westerners" play it. Results are interesting.


*In the ultimatum game you have two players who are provided a reward that can be split. Both players know how much this possible reward is.
The first player decides how much of that reward to offer to the second player.
The second player may choose to either take that offer and leave the remainder of the reward to the first player or reject the offer and deny both players anything.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: patito on March 04, 2013, 12:21:30 PM
Uh, yes, we know what the prisoner's dilemma is Classic, did you forget the rest of your post?
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Classic on March 04, 2013, 12:37:25 PM
First:
The prisoner's dilemma (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_Dilemma) is a different game than the ultimatum game (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game).

Second:
No, I didn't want to recap the whole article. I just wanted to give it enough extra context to have someone say, "HUH! I didn't realize it was basically all western undergraduates who've been the subjects of this testing!"
Because frankly, I looked at the description I_M gave and was very concerned it might be a retarded ¿Science? article (even though I obviously trust his web-browsing abilities enough to give it a look).


EDIT:
Fuck. I'm saying "retarded" a lot.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: patito on March 04, 2013, 12:41:57 PM
Ah, as a recap I guess it works, I really thought you were going to say something about it though. But yeah, I think one of the important things about it,, and the article does mention it, is that $100 is quite a big sum of money for the Machiguenga, while in the US you can generally live without $50 but with a lot of spite.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on March 04, 2013, 04:27:27 PM
The more interesting part of the game is when both players fail and then try to convince everybody that they got everything they wanted, and the other guy lost.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Classic on March 04, 2013, 04:30:16 PM
Are you saying you lost the game, Brentai?

EDIT:
I forgot this was in Thad's board and I shouldn't be a virulent asshat when I ask Brentai if he's poking fun at some event in the news or the inane posts which preceded his interjection. I'm sorry.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Royal☭ on March 14, 2013, 09:51:32 AM
CERN confirms that, yup, they discovered a Higgs Boson (http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/found-a-higgs-boson.php?ref=fpb)

With this and the new Pope, we can finally have mass.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Cthulhu-chan on March 14, 2013, 03:51:02 PM
boo...
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on March 14, 2013, 05:35:16 PM
HA! I get it.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on March 21, 2013, 12:13:43 PM
Lockheed Martin may have accidentally solved the world's clean water problems (http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/13/us-usa-desalination-idUSBRE92C05720130313) (or, more accurately, may have solved the single most prohibitive factor restricting large-scale desalinization plants).
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on March 24, 2013, 05:10:30 PM
Working Spider-Sense suit coming soon? (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/multi-sensor-suit-inspired-by-spider-man-allows-wearers-to-feel-approaching-danger/article10201997/)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on March 24, 2013, 05:23:47 PM
http://grist.org/list/five-year-old-girl-discovers-dinosaur-has-it-named-after-her-can-safely-not-accomplish-anything-else-for-the-rest-of-her-life/ (http://grist.org/list/five-year-old-girl-discovers-dinosaur-has-it-named-after-her-can-safely-not-accomplish-anything-else-for-the-rest-of-her-life/)

Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on March 24, 2013, 08:08:10 PM
Quote
The new dino is not only a previously unknown species, but an unknown genus

My biology's a little rusty, but...isn't that backwards?  Doesn't being an unknown species IMPLY it must be an unknown genus?  Shouldn't it read "not only a previously unknown genus, but an unknown species"?
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: R^2 on March 24, 2013, 08:15:51 PM
Other way around.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: TA on March 24, 2013, 08:23:24 PM
Quote
The new dino is not only a previously unknown species, but an unknown genus

My biology's a little rusty, but...isn't that backwards?  Doesn't being an unknown species IMPLY it must be an unknown genus?  Shouldn't it read "not only a previously unknown genus, but an unknown species"?

You have it backwards.  Homo Sapiens, homo is the genus and sapiens is the species.  You could discover a new species within the genus homo.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Thad on March 24, 2013, 08:33:58 PM
Ah, thanks.

Now we can get back to nitpicking that pterosaurs aren't actually dinosaurs.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: R^2 on March 25, 2013, 05:46:53 AM
You could discover a new species within the genus homo.

This sounds like an extremely nerdy schoolyard taunt in the making.

Anyway, remember: Katy Perry Claims Orgasms Feel Good Sometimes (http://xkcd.com/992/).
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on March 25, 2013, 12:40:36 PM
The speed of light might not actually be a constant. (http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/1010/20130325/speed-of-light-variable.htm)

Although it sounds like the finding is more long the lines of "a vacuum might not actually be empty", which has real-world implications for the speed at which light actually travels in our universe.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on March 25, 2013, 01:02:37 PM
That's pretty  :slow:. Anyone who's read A Brief History of Time could tell you that.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: JDigital on March 26, 2013, 04:16:21 AM
Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation - Sixty Symbols (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1loJTy6bOu8#ws)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Ted Belmont on March 27, 2013, 07:58:38 AM
The idea of "alpha males" is completely wrong,  (http://manboobz.com/2012/08/22/yo-dudes-alpha-males-are-a-myth-according-to-actual-experts-on-wolves/) according to the scientist who first came up with the term.

It turns out, wolf packs in the wild are made up of a male, a female, and their pups; and when the pups grow up, they pair off with pups from other packs and go off to have packs of their own. So the "alpha males" are actually responsible fathers; ie, "betas".

:whoops:
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Classic on March 27, 2013, 10:52:24 AM
Unfortunately, as the article points out, the analogy is stupid on its face. So any problems with the source science of the modeling system are irrelevant to the stupid non-findings of the PUA "community". To say nothing of the fact that the sorts of people who make and cling to these analogies are, at best, not using their faculties of logic (or they'd realize the analogy is stupid on its face) and aren't likely to ever learn these facts.

Still, hurrah for science.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on March 30, 2013, 09:08:41 PM
Do nice guys in fact finish first? (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/magazine/is-giving-the-secret-to-getting-ahead.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0) An NYT story on expanding productivity through giving behaviours.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on April 05, 2013, 09:50:01 AM
One Greek doctor is slowly pulling the rug out from almost all modern medical research (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/308269/)

All those time you see a silly counterintuitive medical study? Or maybe something that feels off or simply absurd? Maybe something that sounds right but is then disproved, reproved, and disproved again as studies compete? This is the man fighting all of that.

EDIT: You have no idea how satisfying it is to see these paragraphs in respectable print:

Quote
When a five-year study of 10,000 people finds that those who take more vitamin X are less likely to get cancer Y, you’d think you have pretty good reason to take more vitamin X, and physicians routinely pass these recommendations on to patients. But these studies often sharply conflict with one another. Studies have gone back and forth on the cancer-preventing powers of vitamins A, D, and E; on the heart-health benefits of eating fat and carbs; and even on the question of whether being overweight is more likely to extend or shorten your life. How should we choose among these dueling, high-profile nutritional findings? Ioannidis suggests a simple approach: ignore them all.

For starters, he explains, the odds are that in any large database of many nutritional and health factors, there will be a few apparent connections that are in fact merely flukes, not real health effects—it’s a bit like combing through long, random strings of letters and claiming there’s an important message in any words that happen to turn up. But even if a study managed to highlight a genuine health connection to some nutrient, you’re unlikely to benefit much from taking more of it, because we consume thousands of nutrients that act together as a sort of network, and changing intake of just one of them is bound to cause ripples throughout the network that are far too complex for these studies to detect, and that may be as likely to harm you as help you. Even if changing that one factor does bring on the claimed improvement, there’s still a good chance that it won’t do you much good in the long run, because these studies rarely go on long enough to track the decades-long course of disease and ultimately death. Instead, they track easily measurable health “markers” such as cholesterol levels, blood pressure, and blood-sugar levels, and meta-experts have shown that changes in these markers often don’t correlate as well with long-term health as we have been led to believe.

Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Royal☭ on April 05, 2013, 12:39:54 PM
Fast, venomous, face-sized tarantula discovered in Sri Lanka. (http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/04/04/oh-good-face-sized-tarantulas-discovered-in-sri-lanka/)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Ted Belmont on April 05, 2013, 12:54:15 PM
Technically, pretty much all tarantulas are venomous.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on April 05, 2013, 01:22:27 PM
Man, how the hell did something like THAT go undiscovered all this time?
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on April 05, 2013, 01:36:27 PM
There were no survivors.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on April 05, 2013, 02:09:42 PM
We didn't discover it.  It discovered us.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on April 24, 2013, 04:26:09 AM
Seems we have some trolls at NASA.

(http://www-robotics.jpl.nasa.gov/images/mer2-590.jpg)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on April 24, 2013, 07:42:21 AM
Crude penis drawings: The one true universal human constant.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Sharkey on April 24, 2013, 02:40:56 PM
What? Like we were going to spend however many billion dollars to not draw dicks all over another planet. Pretty sure Holden Caulfield had something to say about that, but I make a point of keeping that book far the fuck away from me. You know why we haven't gone back to the moon? Because Neil Armstrong already teabagged the thing. Right underneath Nixon's signature. The presence of which was already way more obscene. If Mariner 10 has already made it past the heliopause then we've got a drawing of a dick in interstellar space.

Point is, we already did what humanity came to do. Ancient monolith dropping bastards actually engineered us as an efficient mechanism to spread drawings,  impressions, and signatures of dicks all over the goddamn universe. For some inscrotable reason.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Kayma on April 25, 2013, 01:55:09 AM
inscrotable

perfect
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on May 07, 2013, 04:46:04 AM
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/05/02/republican-congressman-introduces-bill-to-require-political-approval-of-scientific-papers/ (http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/05/02/republican-congressman-introduces-bill-to-require-political-approval-of-scientific-papers/)

Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Joxam on May 07, 2013, 04:48:57 AM
Oh fuck that guy, Jesus Christ. FUCK. What the fuck is wrong with people!?
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Royal☭ on May 07, 2013, 04:57:10 AM
Of course he's from Texas. Of course.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on May 07, 2013, 02:00:58 PM
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh... it's the SOPA guy again. So that's what he's doing now.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on May 21, 2013, 08:47:25 AM
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2326869/Is-universe-merely-billions-Evidence-existence-multiverse-revealed-time-cosmic-map.html (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2326869/Is-universe-merely-billions-Evidence-existence-multiverse-revealed-time-cosmic-map.html)

(http://i.imgur.com/o5xCHy6.gif)

:mydogitsfullofstars:
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on May 22, 2013, 01:55:30 AM
Agriculture may have been the single greatest mistake in human history (http://www.ditext.com/diamond/mistake.html)

Before you dismiss that entirely out of hand, consider the author.

EDIT: That also led to my finding this old unrelated article (http://discovermagazine.com/1997/may/kinshipwiththest1130) musing on Carl Sagan and scientific publicity.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on May 22, 2013, 02:59:07 AM
Wasn't this the same conclusion that Ishmael (the psychic gorilla) came to?
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Classic on May 22, 2013, 03:33:27 AM
Dr. Diamond's books have shaped too much of my view of anthropology to count myself as unbiased, but his calling agriculture a mistake is done for two reasons:
It get readers.
It gets those readers thinking about the attitude Dr. Diamond was raised with, that agriculture was chosen because it was superior to hunting and gathering, and how even if it wasn't wrong it's ultimately somewhat patronizing and self-aggrandizing.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on May 22, 2013, 10:39:12 AM
To make it clear, I can't blindly agree with the thesis. I think settled civilization has given us a large number of benefits - large and small - that are not mentioned or trivialized in that short essay. A longer book by Diamond with the same thesis might have dealt with those points, but I'm not replying to some imaginary book which was never made. Not the least of which has been what looks like a gradual reduction in violence levels since the adoption of settled life (though the jury's still out on that - it could be that we just save up our violence now, blowing it all in massive periodic eruptions).

But I'm all for anything that questions the generally unquestioned view that agriculture and the development of settled society were Good Things, because proper science means you don't ever accept anything at face value without testing or at least some study. And I do agree that settled life has brought with it a raft of severe and pervasive drawbacks, many of which are dismissed or blindly accepted as inevitable. Consideration of how we used to deal with those problems may well bring about a new way of solving them, without having to give up all of the benefits of modern technology.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on May 29, 2013, 02:06:48 AM
Japan finds a way to make cement conduct electricity. (http://thestar.blogs.com/worlddaily/2013/05/how-to-turn-cement-into-metal.html)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on May 29, 2013, 08:14:31 AM
Oh boy, here we go: Scientists put forth an attempt at an actual empirical study claiming that IQ has declined by 14 points in western nations since the Victorian era (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289613000470)

This isn't as easy to dismiss as deriding IQ as a meaningless measure, because IQ tests are not actually the basis for the study. They're just using IQ to quantify the results.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on May 31, 2013, 02:13:50 AM
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113176/science-loneliness-how-isolation-can-kill-you# (http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113176/science-loneliness-how-isolation-can-kill-you#)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on June 05, 2013, 04:23:21 AM
Could have also gone in Good News:

The toll from Fukushima's radiation dispersal? None dead and few-to-none expected (http://www.theage.com.au/comment/japans-radiation-disaster-toll-none-dead-none-sick-20130604-2nomz.html)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on June 13, 2013, 06:07:51 AM
SCOTUS upholds patents on artificially-created DNA and confirms that naturally-ocurring DNA is not patentable (http://www.scotusblog.com/2013/06/details-on-association-for-molecular-pathology-v-myriad-genetics-inc/)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on June 18, 2013, 03:20:46 AM
http://io9.com/5977640/23+year-old-kim-suozzi-undergoes-cryonic-preservation-after-successful-fundraising-campaign (http://io9.com/5977640/23+year-old-kim-suozzi-undergoes-cryonic-preservation-after-successful-fundraising-campaign)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: patito on June 18, 2013, 04:36:24 AM
I think you were looking for the obituary thread.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on July 02, 2013, 12:53:41 AM
Paypal, Buzz Aldrin and SETI to address the issue of space money (http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20130627005913/en/PayPal-SETI-Institute-Buzz-Aldrin-Space-Leaders)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on July 25, 2013, 06:29:06 AM
How about batteries made of wood? (http://thestar.blogs.com/worlddaily/2013/07/a-wooden-battery-is-being-developed-imagine-the-potential-.html)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Caithness on July 25, 2013, 06:38:21 AM
Does the energy come from... burning the wood?

Quote
Hu told The Daily Mail that the inspiration for the battery came from trees.

“Wood fibres that make up a tree once held mineral-rich water and so are ideal for storing liquid electrolytes, making them not only the base but an active part of the battery,” he said to The Daily Mail.

Oh, they're rechargeable. That's pretty awesome, actually.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: TA on August 13, 2013, 11:21:10 AM
Remember when a man off of Wales found the first ever recorded Hexapus, an Octopus mutation with only six fully formed legs and no signs of missing ones?  Impossibly rare mutation, found in a lobster trap, turned over to the Blackpool Sea Life Centre for analysis and release. (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/03/080304-hexapus-picture.html)  Pretty fascinating stuff. 

Well, a second one has been found, in Greece, by a family of Greek tourists.  Who, dutifully, recorded the discovery before ... um, wait, it appears they're bashing it against the ground and ... now they're cooking it.  Great.  Wonderful. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2378775/Family-catch-eat-octopus-tentacles-Greek-vacation--second-specimen-rare-hexapus-found.html)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on August 13, 2013, 12:03:20 PM
Opa!
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on August 13, 2013, 12:09:04 PM
American tourists of Greek origin, technically.  I mean, as long as you're being specific about it.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: TA on August 13, 2013, 12:10:16 PM
Well, no.  The dad is from Greece.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Sharkey on August 13, 2013, 03:32:34 PM
Humans gonna human.

At least this time it's pretty harmlessly funny.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: JDigital on August 14, 2013, 03:42:18 AM
Why mercury is liquid at room temperature (http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/2013/07/31/what-does-mercury-being-liquid-at-room-temperature-have-to-do-with-einsteins-theory-of-relativity/).
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: R^2 on August 14, 2013, 10:02:52 AM
I didn't understand a whole lot of that (I took physics in high school instead of chemistry) but what I did understand is awfully neat.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on August 14, 2013, 10:18:31 AM
(I took physics in high school instead of chemistry)

And you call yourself a chef? :humpf:
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on August 14, 2013, 10:24:51 AM
The nonspecifics of it are basically "because Mercury is very big and doesn't have a lot of possible bonds."

This implies that the next element down would be even less cohesive, and in fact all indicators seem to point to the fact that Copernicum probably is a gas at room temperature, but that's not very well documented because Copernicum is not a naturally occurring element and also HOLY SHIT IT'S METAL GAS GET IT AWAY FROM ME AAAAA

(Also it tends to explode when it comes into contact with practically anything in the physical universe.)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: R^2 on August 14, 2013, 02:42:49 PM
And you call yourself a chef? :humpf:

I don't, actually. Aside from that, which courses I took in high school was a decision I made about ten years before I started culinary school.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on August 19, 2013, 03:24:22 AM
Mobile wireless power? It's already here (http://news.discovery.com/tech/alternative-power-sources/no-battery-required-for-this-wireless-device-130816.htm) (albeit on a very small scale).
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on August 20, 2013, 12:11:51 PM
New study claims to find no causative link between casual use of hallucinogenic drugs and mental health issues (http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/08/19/213550995/study-finds-no-link-between-hallucinogens-and-mental-problems)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on August 31, 2013, 02:20:02 PM
NASA finds mega canyon under the Greenland ice sheet - including a flowing river (http://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/nasa-finds-mega-canyon-under-greenlands-ice-sheet/11997/)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on September 12, 2013, 07:34:38 AM
Today, NASA announced that they were finally able to confirm that at some point last august Voyager I became the first man-made object to ever leave the bounds of our solar system.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on September 12, 2013, 07:35:29 AM
And in other NASA news: http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2013/09/12/frog_gets_too_close_for_comfort_at_nasa_moon_launch.html (http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2013/09/12/frog_gets_too_close_for_comfort_at_nasa_moon_launch.html)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Sharkey on September 12, 2013, 09:38:21 AM
Today, NASA announced that they were finally able to confirm that at some point last august Voyager I became the first man-made object to ever leave the bounds of our solar system.

Relevant XKCD (http://xkcd.com/1189/)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: TA on September 13, 2013, 04:12:16 AM
Might I suggest a nice vacation to Mars? (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130910142334.htm)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on September 20, 2013, 02:54:24 AM
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/han-solo-spotted-on-mercury-by-nasa-probe-114501120.html (http://ca.news.yahoo.com/han-solo-spotted-on-mercury-by-nasa-probe-114501120.html)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on September 20, 2013, 03:27:36 AM
Oh my God Howard Taylor was right (http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2003-11-30)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Büge on September 20, 2013, 11:31:11 AM
I don't understand that reference.

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/science/2013/09/this-insect-has-the-only-mechanical-gears-ever-found-in-nature/ (http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/science/2013/09/this-insect-has-the-only-mechanical-gears-ever-found-in-nature/)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on September 20, 2013, 12:27:34 PM
Quote
a little known derivation of Eddington's Law (wherein an infinite number of monkeys at typewriters eventually bash out the script for Hamlet) in which in an infinite universe, with an infinite number of points of view upon an infinite number of vistas, eventually you'll recreate all the great movie posters of the 20th century.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on September 20, 2013, 02:30:46 PM
Yeah, it took me a while to realize that was the part you meant too. I read the comic three times looking for some kind of relevant reference.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on September 26, 2013, 03:13:20 AM
http://io9.com/5975173/ibms-watson-computer-has-parts-of-its-memory-cleared-after-developing-an-acute-case-of-potty-mouth@AnnaleeNewitz (http://io9.com/5975173/ibms-watson-computer-has-parts-of-its-memory-cleared-after-developing-an-acute-case-of-potty-mouth@AnnaleeNewitz)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Brentai on September 26, 2013, 07:31:15 PM
God damn vampire steroids. (http://www.healthline.com/health-news/policy-is-a-toxic-steroid-lurking-in-rivers-and-streams-092613)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Cthulhu-chan on September 29, 2013, 10:11:37 PM
Goddamn laser rifle.

Hand-operated laser cutting for nuclear decommissioning (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3YCACZQ72Q#ws)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Cthulhu-chan on September 29, 2013, 10:17:26 PM
In less silly news, potentially massive leap forward in particle accelerator tech (http://natmonitor.com/2013/09/28/researchers-develop-particle-accelerator-the-size-of-a-grain-of-rice/).
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Royal☭ on October 08, 2013, 07:39:52 AM
The National Ignition Facility has achieved net-positive nuclear fusion for the first time (http://io9.com/breakthrough-the-worlds-first-net-positive-nuclear-fu-1442537401)

Not there yet, but damn.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Royal☭ on November 08, 2013, 09:57:11 AM
Highly accurate method for modifying genes discovered (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/exclusive-jawdropping-breakthrough-hailed-as-landmark-in-fight-against-hereditary-diseases-as-crispr-technique-heralds-genetic-revolution-8925295.html)

I want to pierce more on this, but man that science article is written like a press release.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on November 10, 2013, 04:19:39 AM
"Peacock" fruitflies have evolved to have perfect portraits of imaginary ant-like insects on their wings (http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/science/fruit-fly-with-the-wings-of-beauty)

This one really just boggles the mind.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on November 18, 2013, 01:54:12 PM
http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/soylent-no-food-for-30-days (http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/soylent-no-food-for-30-days)

Man, I just don't know about that stuff.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on November 22, 2013, 05:56:07 AM
Want to gauge how racist/sexist/whatever you are? Try participating in Harvard's Implicit Association study. (https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/selectatest.html)

Hardly the be-all, end-all, but these are kind of neat. For black vs white, I actually put myself in as "slightly racist" since I've always been more attracted white girls than black ones, but apparently I showed no preference in testing.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on November 23, 2013, 01:43:01 PM
http://www.businessinsider.com/british-airways-interactive-billboards-2013-11 (http://www.businessinsider.com/british-airways-interactive-billboards-2013-11)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: McDohl on November 24, 2013, 04:00:11 PM
LIVE THE GOOD LIFE ON THE OFFWORLD COLONIES!
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on December 27, 2013, 09:17:27 AM
Quote from: Monty
In 2010, there were 883,715 deaths from suicide around the world. That's more than war (17,670), natural disasters (196,018), and murder (456,268) combined.

(The source is the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, quoted in this amazing article (http://mag.newsweek.com/2013/05/22/why-suicide-has-become-and-epidemic-and-what-we-can-do-to-help.html?utm_content=buffer6d94c&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer))
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Smiler on December 27, 2013, 09:55:12 AM
Take THAT war.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on January 01, 2014, 02:01:00 PM
http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/dogs-poop-in-alignment-with-earths-magnetic-field (http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/dogs-poop-in-alignment-with-earths-magnetic-field)
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Zaratustra on January 01, 2014, 11:51:34 PM
Quote from: Monty
In 2010, there were 883,715 deaths from suicide around the world. That's more than war (17,670), natural disasters (196,018), and murder (456,268) combined.

(The source is the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, quoted in this amazing article (http://mag.newsweek.com/2013/05/22/why-suicide-has-become-and-epidemic-and-what-we-can-do-to-help.html?utm_content=buffer6d94c&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer))


technically speaking wouldn't 100% deaths by suicide be the final target
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Classic on January 02, 2014, 05:22:11 AM
I don't think people actually want to rule away "natural causes" even though that usually means cancer or organ failure.
Title: Re: ¡Science!
Post by: Mongrel on January 02, 2014, 05:26:58 AM
Man, I found that article to be excellent and I was kind of surprised there wasn't more talk about it. It was almost amazing how little real research had actually been done, and the bit where they explain the venn diagram of causal factors is nuts, especially where they talk about the third circle (habitual self-supression), which is a factor that has been almost totally overlooked (at least in the medical community?).