Holy crap, it’s Earth

Yeah, check out this amazing stopmotion video of Earth captured from the International Space Station.

Time lapse sequences of photographs taken with a 4K-camera by Ron Garan fragileoasis.org/​bloggernauts/​Astro_Ron and the crew of expedition 28 & 29 onboard the International Space Station from August to October, 2011. All credit goes to them, who to my knowledge shot these pictures at an altitude of around 350 km. I intend to upload a FullHD-version presently.

HD, refurbished, smoothed, retimed, denoised, deflickered, cut, etc. All in all I tried to keep the looks of the material as original as possible, avoided adjusting the colors and the like, since in my opinion the original footage itself already has an almost surreal and aestethical visual nature.

More on those robots that will end us all

Honda shows off the new ASIMO robot. It can now run, hop, and dance better than I can. Don’t they know they’re making machines that will one day end humanity?

Your latest in “science is bad-ass” – Dinosaur migrations

CC photo by Flickr user Akbar Simonse

It’s been awhile since I brought you some bad-ass science. So, here is some from the Guardian, about researching dinosaur migrations:

Fricke’s team attempted to reconstruct camarasaur migrations by measuring oxygen isotopes (variants of particular elements that have different numbers of neutrons in their nucleus) in their teeth. The work relied on the fact that ratios of two oxygen isotopes differ markedly in the waters of streams and lakes, depending on local environmental conditions, such as how high and arid the landscape was at the time.

The dinosaurs kept an unwitting record of these oxygen isotopes as they roamed the land, because the oxygen in the water they drank became incorporated into successive layers of enamel as their teeth developed.

Most of the teeth, from remains collected at Thermopolis in Wyoming andDinosaur National Monument in Utah, were worn and retained only a month or two of enamel growth, but others were in far better condition with up to four or five months of enamel still intact.

The scientists analysed oxygen isotopes in the dinosaurs’ teeth and compared them with ancient soil samples from their lowland habitats and bordering uplands. From this, they pieced together the dinosaurs’ movements over several months of their lives, concluding that the beasts made seasonal migrations to the uplands. Studies of one tooth suggest the dinosaur left its lowland habitat to find food and water in the highlands and returned home within five to six months.

The Singularity

ReasonTV did an interview with Vernor Vinge, the San Diego State University math professor and sci-fi novelist who came up with the idea of singularity in his 1993 essay “The Coming Technological Singularity,” in which he wrote “Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.”

Mostly I am posting this because Estes is freaked out by the singularity, even though it’s kind of silly.

This is a pretty awesome rumination on the concept, how it has affected the newer, more diverse generation of sci-fi writers, and how their ideas of identity and gender make it almost obsolete.

Modern human’s wisdom teeth problem

I used to wonder how wisdom teeth could be such a problem (so many people have to get them removed!), and, yet, before dentistry happened, it couldn’t have been. Surely all those people back then weren’t suffering from impacted wisdom teeth? Well, Dr. Lieberman, an evolutionary biology professor at Harvard, points out in an interview with Claudia Dreifus at the New York Times:

[I]mpacted wisdom teeth and malocclusions are very recent problems. They arise because we now process our food so much that we chew with little force. These interactions affect how our faces grow, which causes previously unknown dental problems. Hunter-gatherers — who live in ways similar to our ancestors — don’t have impacted wisdom teeth or cavities. There are many other conditions rooted in the mismatch — fallen arches, osteoporosis, cancer, myopia, diabetes and back trouble.

Huh. The more you know.

How Hubble makes its pictures

From the YouTube description:

Hubble images are made, not born. Images must be woven together from the incoming data from the cameras, cleaned up and given colors that bring out features that eyes would otherwise miss. In this video from HubbleSite.org, online home of the Hubble Space Telescope, a Hubble-imaged galaxy comes together on the screen at super-fast speed.

It’s utterly fascinating, and I had no idea. The process seems not that dissimilar to how photographers do HDR images.

Robot makes a cookie

Via NYTimes Bits* Blog. Yup. I have a robot that vacuums my floor, now there’s a robot that makes cookies. I’m sure there’s a LOLSEXISM joke in there somewhere, but whatever.

Mario Bollini and Daniela Rus of the Distributed Robotics Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have taken a PR2 robot, which is made by the robotics company Willow Garage, and programmed it to mix dough from scratch, make a giant cookie and then bake it in an oven.

* Something that bugs me: In NYTimes style, acronyms with fewer than five letters are capitalized, but in the name of their tech blog, which stands for “Business – Innovation – Technology – Society,” they only capitalize the first letter.

Male Organs and Economic Growth

I somehow have absolutely nothing to say about this (pdf):

Male Organ and Economic Growth: Does Size Matter?

Abstract

This paper explores the link between economic development and penile length between 1960 and 1985. It estimates an augmented Solow model utilizing the Mankiw-Romer-Weil 121 country dataset. The size of male organ is found to have an inverse U-shaped relationship with the level of GDP in 1985. It can alone explain over 15% of the variation in GDP. The GDP maximizing size is around 13.5 centimetres, and a collapse in economic development is identified as the size of male organ exceeds 16 centimetres. Economic growth between 1960 and 1985 is negatively associated with the size of male organ, and it alone explains 20% of the variation in GDP growth. With due reservations it is also found to be more important determinant of GDP growth than country’s political regime type. Controlling for male organ slows convergence and mitigates the negative effect of population growth on economic development slightly. Although all evidence is suggestive at this stage, the `male organ hypothesis’ put forward here is robust to exhaustive set of controls and rests on surprisingly strong correlations.

h/t Kedrosky.

Space Oddity

Atlantis is currently out flying its final mission in space, and when it lands, it will signal the end of the U.S. shuttle program and an end to its 30 years of space exploration and experimentation.

Incredible to think that David Bowie’s single Space Oddity was released on this day in 1969, just five days before the launch of Apollo 11—the mission that first put a person on the moon.

Chewing gum makes you smarter, happier

Paul Kedrosky points to a new study showing that chewing gum makes you (not your teacher, of course) smarter and happier:

RATIONALE:

Recent research suggests that chewing gum may improve aspects of cognitive function and mood. There is also evidence suggesting that chewing gum reduces stress. It is important, therefore, to examine these two areas and to determine whether contextual factors (chewing habit, type of gum, and personality) modify such effects.

OBJECTIVES:

The aims of the present study were: (i) to determine whether chewing gum improved mood and mental performance; (ii) to determine whether chewing gum had benefits in stressed individuals; and (iii) to determine whether chewing habit, type of gum and level of anxiety modified the effects of gum.

SUBJECTS AND METHODS:

A cross-over study involving 133 volunteers was carried out. Each volunteer carried out a test session when they were chewing gum and without gum, with order of gum conditions counterbalanced across subjects. Baseline sessions were conducted prior to each test session. Approximately half of the volunteers were tested in 75 dBA noise (the stress condition) and the rest in quiet. Volunteers were stratified on chewing habit and anxiety level. Approximately, half of the volunteers were given mint gum and half fruit gum. The volunteers rated their mood at the start and end of each session and had their heart rate monitored over the session. Saliva samples were taken to allow cortisol levels (good indicator of alertness and stress) to be assayed. During the session, volunteers carried out tasks measuring a range of cognitive functions (aspects of memory, selective and sustained attention, psychomotor speed and accuracy).

RESULTS:

Chewing gum was associated with greater alertness and a more positive mood. Reaction times were quicker in the gum condition, and this effect became bigger as the task became more difficult. Chewing gum also improved selective and sustained attention. Heart rate and cortisol levels were higher when chewing which confirms the alerting effect of chewing gum.

CONCLUSIONS:

Overall, the results suggest that chewing gum produces a number of benefits that are generally observed and not context-dependent. In contrast to some previous research, chewing gum failed to improve memory. Further research is now required to increase our knowledge of the behavioral effects of chewing gum and to identify the underlying mechanisms.

Ever seen water flow right through concrete?

Now you have. 1500 gallons of water in 5 minutes.

Cassini Mission – A short film made with NASA footage

Chris Abbas made the short homage to the Cassini Solstice mission above using only footage from NASA. He explains:

I truly enjoy outer space. It’s absolutely amazing that we now have the ability to send instruments out into the void of the universe to observe all sorts of interesting things. Asteroids! Moons! Planets! Dark matter! This is the perfect opportunity for a Carl Sagan quote:

“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”

The footage in this little film was captured by the hardworking men and women at NASA with the Cassini Imaging Science System. If you’re interested in learning more about Cassini and the on-going Cassini Solstice Mission, check it out at NASA’s website:

saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/​science/​index.cfm

Interview with astronauts Mark Kelly and the Shuttle crew

This is awesome.

Google, YouTube and the PBS NewsHour took you aboard space shuttle Endeavour and the International Space Station for a live interview with Commander Mark Kelly and crew as they orbit the earth at 17,500 mph.

Endeavor heads to space one last time

NASA mission STS-134 launched this morning at 8:56 a.m. as planned.

The mission:

The crew members for space shuttle Endeavour’s STS-134 mission are Commander Mark Kelly, Pilot Gregory H. Johnson and Mission Specialists Michael Fincke, Greg Chamitoff, Andrew Feustel and European Space Agency astronaut Roberto Vittori.

During the 16-day mission, Endeavour and its crew will deliver the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) and spare parts including two S-band communications antennas, a high-pressure gas tank and additional spare parts for Dextre.

Endeavor is NASA’s newest shuttle; construction on the vessel began in 1987 and finished in the spring of 1991, flying its first mission on 7 May 1992. Its name came from a contest of elementary and secondary school students, and refers to a 19th-century ship captained by British explorer James Cook.

Endeavor is making the trip into space for the 25th and final time.

The Osama/Obama mix-up

The Atlantic’s Rebecca Greenfield asked U. of Penn linguistics professor Mark Liberman why the names Osama and Obama are so frequently mixed up, and how it goes beyond just the switch of B and S*:

The syntactic category rule means that when two words are confused for one another the “target” (the word replaced) and the substituting word are almost always of the same syntactic category. In normal speak: nouns replace nouns, verbs replace verbs, and so on. If “Obama” were a verb instead of a noun (as in, the Democrats are going to Obama the GOP in 2012), we would be substantially less likely to confuse it with the noun “Osama.”

Of course the gaffe doesn’t just happen because both words are of the same part of speech. The speaker is also subject to what linguists call “priming.” Your brain makes certain words more accessible to your tongue when they resemble–in pronunciation, in meaning, in subject matter–words that you frequently hear. “Priming means that when you’ve been reading/hearing/thinking about hospitals, words like ‘doctor’ and ‘nurse’ will be recognized more quickly, and are also more likely to be substituted in a slip of the tongue,” Liberman explains. So hearing Osama and Obama in the same context makes your brain more apt to use them interchangeably in speech. “Normally this is a good thing for communication,” Liberman adds, “because it takes less effort to think of primed words.”

Unless, of course, you’re just a racist. A bad racist, really, because you don’t realize that not all Muslims are Arabs.

* Zing! See what I did there?

** Categorized as “Science” because, apparently, some people think linguistics is science.