The big one we have all been waiting for is on it’s way.  The Mars Science Laboratory, better known as the Curiosity rover, lifted off yesterday from Florida and began it’s 8 and half month journey to the red planet.  Curiosity carries with it the hopes and dreams of, not just a lot of scientists and NASA engineers, but also a lot of average Americans who can only dream of this trip and what can be discovered there.

Carried into space on an Atlas 5 rocket, Curiosity, a rover the size of a car, will touch down in the Gale Crater and begin it’s systematic experiments in search of the building blocks of life on Mars.  Gale Crater is described by Universe Today as “one of the most scientifically interesting locations on the Red Planet because it exhibits exposures of clay minerals that formed in the presence of neutral liquid water that could be conducive to the genesis of life.”

The launch yesterday went off without a hitch and the rover is now on it’s way to the red planet.  Before you get too excited, Curiosity won’t discover life (if any), but only find if the necessary conditions are present.  Finding actual life will have to wait for the next mission.  As with all things this complicated, expensive, and time-consuming the scale of time is much greater than we all would like it to be.

You can watch a video of yesterday’s launch below.

One of my favorite web sites, Universe Today, has linked up a video that really captured my imagination.  The video, captured by Bryan Stewart and posted to Vimeo, shows the International Space Station (ISS) passing overhead during the recent Perseid Meteor Shower.

The video is 1:06 in length and was filmed in Texas at 6:25am on August 10, 2011.  In addition to some great videography, it also features a soundtrack that is Carl Sagan set to music.  What more could you ask for?!

If you have never seen the ISS pass over, it’s a steady, non-blinking white light that moves fairly quickly across the sky.  Not meteor-fast, but you will only have 1-2 minutes of viewing time to follow it from one horizon to the other.

If you want to find out if/when it will be viewable in your area, I recommend the Heaven’s Above website.  You will to need to enter the coordinates of your location, but once you have it set up you can bookmark it with your coordinates and you will not need to ever enter them again.  In addition to the ISS, it also gives information on such passes as Iridium Satellites.

The video is posted below.  Enjoy.

ISS pass with perseid meteor from Bryan Stewart on Vimeo.

Sixty years of the BBC’s Reith Lectures archive have been made available as downloadable .mp3s, a fantastic resource for Renaissance geeks and lovers of 20th century history. The Reith Lectures are an annual short series of lectures on issues of the day pitched to the general public and given by respected individuals. They cover a wide range of topics but are touched by the era in which they were recorded. There’s usually four or five lectures in a series.

They’re named after Lord Reith, the first Director General of the BBC and started in 1948, continuing to this day. This year’s lectures on “Securing Freedom” will be given by Aung San Suu Kyi, Burmese pro-democracy leader and Baroness Manningham-Buller, Director General of MI5 from 2002 to 2007. Last year’s were on “Scientific Horizons” and were presented by Martin Rees, President of the Royal Society. As you can see, these aren’t irrelevant boring lectures by dull academics.

Until now, if you didn’t catch the lectures when they were broadcast through the RSS feed, you had to use iPlayer to listen to the lectures and the on-line archive has been expanded right back to the start in 1948. Currently, they appear as three tranches, 1948-1975, 1976-2010 and this year’s, 2011.

Hopefully, the downloads aren’t restricted to the UK as there’s some very interesting content that’s worth listening to, some still relevant to today and other material that will help you in understanding previous decades and the impact they’ve had on today.

I think my broadband’s going to take a hammering this month…

If you were to draw a Venn diagram of the whole of science, I’d like to think that us geeks fit in there as a subset. Many of us come from a scientific background and appreciate science, scientific method and the benefits it brings to humanity. This isn’t to say that we don’t value art, but rather we have critical approach to life that uses evidence and method rather than doubt and misinformation. Theories aren’t always right but we value the outcome when they are disproved.

Regrettably science and scientists have often failed to engage with public, either retreating into academia or else becoming the boffins in the backrooms of organisations that capitalise on their work. The Internet has given plenty of space for pseudo-science to become widespread and thought of as fact. Validated research and evidence rarely gets the weight it deserves.

The New Statesman has published an excellent article on how the scientific community needs to take a look and learn from other social groups such as gays and blacks which have managed to get the respect that they deserve. Scientists need to stand up and speak out against pseudo-science and misinformation.

The UK’s Government Chief  Scientific Adviser John Beddington said, “We are grossly intolerant, and properly so, of racism. We are grossly intolerant, and properly so, of people who [are] anti-homosexuality… We are not – and I genuinely think we should think about how we do this – grossly intolerant of pseudo-science, the building up of what purports to be science by the cherry-picking of the facts and the failure to use scientific evidence and the failure to use scientific method.“

Okay, the headline may be an exaggeration.  After all, I don’t know if records exist for such things and if they do, I didn’t look for them.  However, be it a record or not, this is still an absolutely amazing natural phenomena.

In Wyoming, recently, a large amount of rain and snow-melt has resulted in unstable conditions.  This, in turn, lead to a massive landslide in the Snake River Canyon, which came down across Highway US 26-89.  Even now, days later, the landslide is still moving at about a half meter (18 inches) per hour.  The Wyoming Department of Transportation has been following it and took a time-lapse video which can be seen below.  To get a sense of scale, pay attention to the man who enters the video and walks around RIGHT ON THE LANDSLIDE.

Image credit: NASA

To conclude our short series of posts on Yuri Gagarin’s first orbit of the Earth in Vostok 1 fifty years’ ago, I thought I might put together a few of the best links that I’ve found on the web for those who want to know more about Yuri and his historic flight.

1. Yuri Gagarin’s Wikipedia Entry
2. YuriGagarin50.org – A comprehensive site dedicated to the 50th Anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s Flight Into Space
3. BBC Gagarin 50 Years On – The BBC’s micro-site about Gagarin and space flight.
4. Sky at Night magazine – I’m afraid you’ll have to find a bookstore or newsagents and buy this one.
5. NASA – Yuri Gagarin – NASA’s celebration of Yuri.
6. RIA Novosti’s Gagarin Coverage – Russia’s state-owned newsgency’s take on Yury and the celebrations.
7. RIA Novosti’s Image Library – Do an advanced search for Gagarin and put in dates from 1960 to 1965.
8. Astronautix – This is a fascinating site. Once you’ve finished with Gagarin, have a browse round some of the other articles.
9. Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre – Bit difficult to navigate around and translated from Russian but some interesting stuff and photos.
10. Yuri Gagarin Flight Video on YouTube – Just turn the sound down.
11. Vostok 1 Mission on YouTube
12. Propaganda Booklet
13. Starman: The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin – Generally considered to be the best biography – available from good bookstores everywhere.

Did I miss any? Let me know in the comments.

Continuing the celebration of Yuri Gagarin’s orbit of the Earth in Vostok 1 back in 1961, First Orbit is a documentary film that joins archive footage of the event with modern shots taken from the International Space Station (ISS). The filmmaker, Christopher Riley, collaborated with the European Space Agency to see if it would be possible to film the same view across the planet that Gagarin saw out of the window of his tiny spacecraft. As you might guess, it was possible, and by filming at particular time on a particular orbit, astronaut Paolo Nespoli captured a re-creation of that historic flight.

The film unfolds in real-time and includes Gagarin’s original communications with ground control, call sign Dawn. Fortunately there are English subtitles if your Russian is a bit rusty. There’s a stirring soundtrack by Philip Sheppard and it’s really quite mesmerising to watch. You almost forget that it happened 50 years ago and the real-time nature of it makes it feel that it’s unfolding as you watch.

The film is available on YouTube (below) but you can also freely download it in a variety of sizes. I’d recommend downloading the 1.9 GB hi-def version, and putting on the big TV. Set aside 108 minutes and become Yuri.

As you’ll know from all the coverage, yesterday was the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s historic first orbit of the Earth by a human. Back in 1961 at the height of the Cold War, it was a demonstration of superiority by one superpower over another rather than any altruistic motive that sent him into space.

Regardless of how it was viewed then or now, I can’t help but feel we’ve let Yuri down. In the fifty years since then, human exploration has travelled no further than the moon and that was done in the immediate decades after his orbit. There’s no doubt that we extensively use space-based satellites for telecommunications, GPS and a myriad of other functions. And yes, the International Space Station is a remarkable achievement. But we haven’t really gone anywhere.

Let’s look at this another way. In December 1903, the Wright brothers made the first human flight. By the 1930s, there were commercial transatlantic flights and jet airliners took over the route in 1958.  So in approximately 50 years, flight went from 850 feet in 1 minute to thousands of miles at hundreds of miles per hour.

The comparison with space travel doesn’t look so good.

I understand well the arguments between human and machine space travel. The latter does give better bang-for-buck and machines can go places that we could not. But has the “PlayStation generation” become so ingrained in our psyche that we have to travel by remote control? Is there still no imperative “to boldly go”?

George Mallory, the mountaineer was asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest. “Because it’s there” was his reply. His journey wasn’t about the accumulation of scientific knowledge, it was about personal conquest and fighting against the odds. And it ultimately cost Mallory his life.

Physics fights against us. We like our explorers to come back and tourists want a return ticket, but this makes exploration twice as hard as the round trip isn’t always easy to achieve. But I bet you that if NASA offered one way tickets to Mars, there would be no shortage of volunteers.

I’m sure Yuri Gagarin would be disappointed with how little we have achieved now and how little we expect to achieve in the coming years for human space exploration. Regrettably we can’t ask him as he died in 1968 before we reached the moon. Yuri, thanks for freeing us from Earth back in 1961 and I’m sorry we let you down.

If you’ve got a mobile phone from htc or a Samsung Galaxy Tab, then there’s a good chance you’re looking at the display through Corning glass. Todd talks to James Hollis, Director of  Corning Display Technologies, to find out what Corning brings to the electronics market.

Well…Gorilla Glass is probably their most well known and flagship product. Developed in 2007, it’s an aluminosilicate glass that is optically pure and has excellent scratch resistance and strength properties. James describes how this glass is manufactured and the chemical structure that gives the glass its hardness. Gorilla Glass is 3-to-5 times harder than standard glass (well, I think that’s what he means when he talks about “soda lime glass”).

Todd has a lot of fun scratching and breaking samples of glass…or not breaking in the case of the Gorilla Glass. It’s a great demonstration of what you are buying when you buy a gadget with Gorilla Glass, so watch the video to understand the value.

Interview by Todd Cochrane of Geek News Central.

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The politics of the green movement and the polarity of views have often prevented real debate on climate change from happening.   Each side will reinforce their opinion with selective facts from the data and use every opportunity to ridicule their opposition’s theories.  A great deal of the climate discussion that has appeared in the media has been coloured by specious facts and bad science.

To counter this and open up the debate, the Royal Society has published a 19 page document (.pdf) called, “Climate Change: A Summary of the Science“, which is effectively a primer on the science behind climate change.  It attempts to be a balanced view, with notes on the background science, what is widely agreed, what is still debated, what is not well understood and what developments we can expect.

The Royal Society is an independent ”Fellowship of more than 1400 outstanding individuals from all areas of science, mathematics, engineering and medicine, who form a global scientific network of the highest calibre.“  Consequently, I think that we can be confident that the working group setup to produce the document has used a scientific approach to assess the climate change data and present the information fairly.  In several areas, uncertainty is acknowledged.

However, the concluding remarks are fairly clear with regard to the evidence for climate change.
“There is strong evidence that changes in greenhouse gas concentrations due to human
activity are the dominant cause of the global warming that has taken place over the last
half century. This warming trend is expected to continue as are changes in precipitation
over the long term in many regions. Further and more rapid increases in sea level are
likely which will have profound implications for coastal communities and ecosystems.”

I would encourage everyone to read this document (there’s only about 11 pages of reading) so that you can understand the science, take part in the debate and help develop the policies in response to climate change.

Do you consider yourself to be an observant kind of person?  Someone who really pays attention to detail?  If you are, then you’ll be interested in watching and participating in a couple of video tests by researchers Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons.  These are genuine experiments – there’s no skull or shriek going to pop out half way through.

The first is a over ten years old and is considered to be a classic – just follow the instructions. It’s best if you can run it full-screen.

Now, if you’ve seen that one before, or if you want to try it for a second time, you can watch this newer version. Again just follow the instructions and also best viewed full-screen.

If you’ve been totally fascinated by what you’ve just seen, then head on over to the source site here or the YouTube Channel for more videos.

Today is the 98th anniversary of the birth Alan Turing, one of most brilliant minds of the 20th Century.  Born on was born on 23rd June 1912 in London, England, he is known as one of the fathers of modern computing, though his ideas for programmable computers were ahead of their time.

He is widely know for the test which bears his name – the Turing Test – which Alan Turing designed to test for machine intelligence. In the test, a person communicates in natural language via keyboard and screen with two hidden respondents, one human, one computer.  If the person cannot tell which of the respondents is the machine, the computer is said to have passed the Turing test.  So far no computer has consistently passed the test.

Turing is also famous for his work during the Second World War at Bletchley Park and the breaking of the German naval Enigma code.  In collaboration with Gordon Welchman, he designed an electromechanical machine called a “bombe” that eliminated unworkable Enigma settings, leaving only a few to be investigated by analysts.  He went on to make a several further contributions to the war effort in different areas.

Regrettably, in 1952, Turing was arrested, tried and convicted for homosexuality which at that time was a criminal offence.  As result, and despite his wartime record, his security clearance to work for the government was revoked.  Sadly, in 7 June 1954, he committed suicide, eating an apple laced with cyanide.

Happy Birthday, Alan.

On the 16th May 1960, Theodore Maiman at the Hughes Research Lab in California fired up the first confirmed demonstration of a laser using a synthetic ruby.   A few months later on 12th December and persuing a different line of research, Ali Javan at Bell Labs, showed the first helium-neon gas-discharge laser.

One of the key differences between the two versions, was that the latter could operate continuously and within 3 months Bell demonstrated a phone call between two handsets using a laser to transmit the modulated voice signal.  One of the underlying building blocks for the telecommunications era had arrived (the other being the semi-conductor).

Einstein had originally theorised back in 1917 that it would be possible to excite atoms such that when electrons change state, light (photons) would be emitted with a predictable wavelength.  However, it wasn’t until 1954 when Charles Townes and two colleagues James Gordon and Herbert Zeiger at Columbia University produced a similar effect for the first time using ammonia molecules and microwaves.  Townes later shared the Nobel Prize for Physics with two Russian scientists, Aleksandr Prokhorov and Nicolay Basov who produced similar results in the same year.

However, this was a MASER which used microwaves rather than light and there were significant difficulties in getting the technique to work for the shorter wavelengths involved.  Townes developed ideas for an “optical maser” but it was Gordon Gould, a student at Columbia who came up with name LASER – light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation.

2010 marks the 50th anniversary of the creation of the first lasers and there’s a little bit of celebration going on.  The UK’s Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET) has a selection of articles in its monthly magazine.  The first two, “The Laser Reaches 50” and “Ten Unexpected Uses for Lasers” are the most accessible (and formed the basis for this post).   Over in North America, LaserFest celebrates all things laser.

Now, where’s my lightsaber…

If, like me, you have always believed that you never stop learning, and that the pursuit of knowledge and understanding is part of the human condition, then I think you will love this.  “In Our Time” , one of the BBC‘s flagship radio programmes, now has its archive online, going back to 1998.

“In Our Time” is a weekly radio programme about 40 minutes long, with Melvyn Bragg, the presenter, and usually three experts from the field.  The programme discusses topics from art to science to history to literature: it’s the history of ideas, as they term it, and it exposes you to the whole gamut of life and human development.  Recent episodes included the Cool Universe, the Rise and Fall of the Zulu Nation, Munch and The Scream and the Infant Brain.  As you can see, it covers some pretty wide ground.

For sure, there’s the odd programme which will be of no interest whatsoever, but I’m constantly fascinated by what I don’t know so every programme is surprise.  Even if I don’t think I’ll be interested, I’ll listen just for the context.

The archive is in a couple of different formats, some RealPlayer and some iPlayer, and you don’t seem to be able to download the programmes for listening on portable devices.  However, if you are hooked, there’s an podcast (in a variety of formats) for current programmes and you can download the audio for listening in the car / gym / wherever.

If you add one podcast to your playlist this year, this should be it (after GNC, of course!)

The BBC reports that the a team of scientists from Marche Polytechnic University in Ancona, Italy have found three new species of tiny creatures living over 2 miles down in the Mediterranean Sea.  It’s so deep and dark there’s almost no oxygen whatsoever and although only 1mm in size, this is the first time that anything other than bacteria have been found in such places.

Although it wasn’t possible to bring the creatures to the surface alive, eggs from them have been successfully hatched in an oxygen-free environment.  The leader of the team admits that it’s a complete mystery as to how these creatures survive and more research will be needed.  It’s likely that there’s some kind of animal-microbe relationship but it’s otherwise unclear.

I find this story interesting on two levels.  The first is that we’re still making discoveries about the world around us simply by looking.  For sure this was far down in the ocean but it’s not really far down – the Marianas trench is about 7 miles deep.  Secondly, the implications for different forms of life on both this planet and others is significant, given that multi-cellular life without oxygen now appears to be possible.

Every day’s a new adventure…

I think I’d better learn to knit and get a few sweaters and scarves under way. Just in case we step into a global cooling period, thanks to an Icelandic volcano with a hot temper. If you think it can’t happen, it’s only because your human memory is rather short.

I’m reading a really interesting book called “Cold,” by Bill Streever, in which he outlines several smaller global environmental crises over the last several hundred years that have plunged the earth into a mini ice age, or at least into a year “without summer.” One of those incidents was the eruption of Indonesia’s Mount Tambora on April 5th, 1815. The largest eruption in modern history, it plunged the earth into a darkened state for more than a year, leading to the “Year Without a Summer” in 1816. Tambora’s sulfur-laden gasses spewed 28 miles through the atmosphere and into the stratosphere, bringing a darkened haze to the entire northern Hemisphere, resulting in freezing temperatures well into August of 1816. Crops failed, livestock starved to death, and the world’s population reduced by an estimated 3.4 million people due to starvation or direct consequence of the eruption itself.

Iceland’s Katla volcano, currently covered with a thick glacier of ice, is often disturbed by the eruptions of its neighbor, the volcano Eyjafjallajokull. And right now, Eyjafjallajokull is burping lava day after day, greatly increasing the likelihood that Katla will erupt itself. The last time it had a major eruption, in the 1700′s, the north American continent experienced a very cold summer. Scientists in Iceland are continuing to monitor seismic activity in the area, and will likely be able to predict if an eruption is imminent.

Let me know if you’ll be needing that extra hand-knit scarf for next year. I’m taking orders now.

The Science Museum, London, is celebrating a century of science and as part of the festivities, it asked visitors to vote for the scientific discovery or invention that most “changed the future”.  The ten objects it put forward were:

1. Apollo 10 Capsule
2. DNA Double Helix
3. Electric Telegraph
4. Model T Ford
5. Penicillin
6. Pilot ACE Computer
7. Steam Engine
8. Stephenson’s Rocket
9. V2 Rocket Engine
10. X-ray Machine

And the winner was……the X-ray Machine, beating penicillin and the DNA double helix into 2^nd and 3^rd place respectively.  The discovery of X-rays in 1895 by Wilhelm Roentgen started a new era of medical diagnosis allowing medics to see inside living people without relying on surgery.  Today, the descendants of these first X-ray machines can almost measure what we think.

Amazingly, the particular X-ray machine shown was developed at home in under a year by Russell Reynolds while he was still at school.  He was assisted by his father, a general practitioner, and another inventor William Crookes.

Although some doctors were quick to pick up on the new invention it wasn’t until the 1920s that X-ray machines were widely used in medicine.

Making The Modern World is a complementary web site containing over a hundred scientific discoveries which helped shape civilisation.  Worth a browse.

What inventions today will have such an impact when we look back from 2109?

In #479 Todd mentioned about how much happier he was to be drinking tap water than the re-cycled urine the ISS occupants were looking forward to.  Now I was taught a long time ago about the water cycle of ocean, to rain, to river to ocean.  During this process animals drink it, or eat it in their food, then dispose of it in urine.  It got me thinking on a strange tangent about what the chances that Todd was actually drinking re-cycled without knowing.

So armed with Google and some very liberal over-simplification I have made a quick back of the envelope calculation.  There is no point in making any claim of accuracy in the amount of urine produced per day over all of time.  Taking today’s population of humans, cows, pigs and sheep we get roughly 87 Billion liters per day which will be substantially less than the actual total.  It needs to be because I am going to assume that this same volume is produced every day stretching back to when large animals are first recorded as being present 230 million years ago.

There’s a lot of water in the world, approximately 1.4 trillion cubic kilometers.  At 87 Billion liters a day it would take 16 Billion days to convert it all to urine.  Since the recorded beginning of large animals though, there has been 84 Billion days.  That would mean an average of 5 re-cycles for any given amount of water.

In reality there are lots of complications with these sums even outside the extremely inaccurate (but lowball) daily volume.  A lot of the water we drink leaves in sweat and our breath, and a lot of the water in urine comes from breaking down sugars fats.  The water gets into these through plants and then the animals in the food chain.  I think the numbers are good enough to make a solid claim that at least 10% of any volume of water has previously passed through a urinary tract.  The ISS is just increasing the percentage.

GO BADGERS

That was the post Adam Wilson made to Twitter by using only his brain.  Wearing a special red cap fitted with electrodes that connected to a computer flashing letters, by concentrating on the letters he wanted, Wilson was able to Twit the small message on the screen in front of him.

What this means for the rest of the world is almost beyond comprehension for those of us that regularly type, text, and click to send messages, visit websites, write emails, etc.  What this means for persons with physical disabilities, who have perfectly functioning brains but ill-functioning bodies, is that they may be able to communicate as easily someday as the rest of us do.  And all it takes is a silly red cap with electrodes.  No cumbersome pointing devices held by the teeth or strapped to the head, or custom keyboards that will take the pounding of a fist because the fingers can’t move.

What is even more surprising and exciting about this breakthrough is that it uses two existing products to do its job.  Twitter, of course, already exists and functions well for many people.  The electrode “brain cap” already exists as well, and is still being fine-tuned for work with computers.  Previous work had been focused on using brain implants to communicate, but this work is 10 years or more from any type of fruition.  Using existing products, Wilson, and his supervisor Justin Williams (both work for the University of Wisconsin) made the link that had not been made before.

This is exciting news for those suffering from debilitating, paralyzing injuries, whose brains are able to function normally in all ways except in the ability to communicate.  Hundreds of thousands of people in the United States alone suffer from such disabilities.  These types of breaks in technology can really leapfrog researchers ahead in their efforts to bring accessibility to all.

The Hubble space telescope, now active for nearly 20 years, continues to send back images that amaze and astound scientists. And it’s not only the newest pictures being sent that are providing all of the “ooh” moments these days.

Scientists studying land-based telescope views discovered a gassy planet orbiting a nearby star (HR 8799), and then went back to images from Hubble that are at least ten years old to see if they could get a closer look. By using computer technology to “clean” the image, they were able to get a closer look at the gassy planet, which may not be as gassy as once thought. It might actually be water and land-filled, refueling the speculation that other planets can hold life as well. As in, “we are not alone.”

I’ve always been fascinated by Hubble’s images, and when images can be used to further develop scientific theories and expand on unkowns in our astronomical world, that is all that much better. It still bothers me to think that Hubble will be retired some day, as it is providing so much right now for scientists studying “other worlds.”

At 8:30 PM your time, Earthhour.org is encouraging you to turn off your lights to say “Yes! I care about the Earth”. Is turning off lights the answer?

It’s all about global warming. We use too much resources which release Carbon emissions and therefore, warm up the planet. Our children will then be living in a ecological nightmare.

There are some that say there is no real proof to show we are affecting the planet from raising in temperature. There are others that will argue we are going through a cycle that will revert back eventually. Maybe it’s just the fact the Earth is getting older, the moon is getting a millimeter closer and we are orbiting the Sun at a Whopping 67,000 Miles per Hour.

So we set aside an hour to turn off lights. Will that make a difference? Well, it will until we turn back on those lights. At least it’s 8:30 PM in your timezone. Could you imagine the powerdrain if the world turned back on the lights at the same time?

Earth Hour says if you don’t turn off the lights, you are saying NO to the Earth and yes to global warming. But if you have switched all your lights to energy saving bulbs and done your part in other ways, will you be a hypocrite for not doing Earth Hour?

However you look at it, there is a statement there. Be aware of your environment. It saves you money and could possibly help with Global warming. Happy Earth Hour, everyone

A new study published in the February 26th journal Applied Cognitive Psychology suggests that doodling while listening actually can encourage memorization of facts and events. The UK’s Medical Research Council’s Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, U.K., tasked 40 members to participate in the study, which required them to listen to a 2 1/2 minute tape giving several names of people and places, and were told to write down only the names of people going to a party.

Half of that group were asked to shade in shapes on a piece of paper at the same time, not attending to neatness. Participants did not know it was a memory test and were not told directly to doodle naturally.

After the exercise, all participants were asked to recall the eight names of party-goers, and eight additional place names which were included in the tape as incidental information. The doodlers were able to recall 7.5 names of people and places compared to only 5.8 for the non-doodlers.

Apparently, if someone is completing a boring task, like listening to a lecture or seminar, it is easy to let the mind wander to more interesting things. The act of doodling may rewire synapses in a way that keeps part of the brain available for the boring listening task, while the fidgety part of the brain has something to do with itself.

This could suggest that those that doodle, fidget, or otherwise make use of their hands may be looking for a way to help keep the brain on-track with the boring, but necessary activity.

I wonder, myself, why I listen so much better to podcasts when I’m alone in the car than I do riding in the car or sitting in a waiting room. In the car my hands and presumably my eyes are occupied with driving the daily commute, leaving the listening part of my brain ready and willing to absorb the spoken words of a podcaster. Or maybe it’s the reverse, that the driving is the boring part, and my mind is being enlivened by the podcaster, which then keeps me on task with the boring commute thing.

Either way, more interesting facts about the brain and how it operates in daily life. Now when my boss tells me to stop scribbling in my notebook during a meeting, I can tell her that I’m doodling to help my brain concentrate better on the meeting. She’ll buy that, I’m sure.

I am sure that most of the GNC audience are familiar with the names Schrodinger, Bohr, Heisenberg, Young and potentially Hardy. All of these people have been instrumentally involved in quantum theory, and specifically for this article, in uncertainty theory. This is the paradox that the act of observation changes the observed. The classic example of this is a photon of light, where it is not possible to measure both its position and its momentum accurately. In fact the more accurately you determine position the less accurate your momentum observation can be and vice versa.

This goes beyond the observer effect, where the physical interaction of the observer directly changes what is measured. The paradox is that simply observing is enough to change the reality. While demonstratable in small particles the principle has been extended to larger objects like cats in boxes, trees in forests and even to ponder whether the physical properties of the universe we take for granted actually exist without our observation.

The Economist has reported on an experiment two groups of scientists have independantly taken to try and prove whether the universe actually exists when it isn’t observed. They have done this by performing experiments where they don’t actually collect all the data but using multiple experiments so that the aggregate parts were enough to draw conclusions.

The article is a little technical in that it uses casual throw-away lines like “photons are their own antiparticles, and are pure energy in any case”, but if your feeling really smart today here is a link to one of the actual papers. And just because I like it a link to an explanation of 10 dimensional space.

Who knew that an ordinary roll of Scotch (TM) tape could be used to create Xrays?

Apparently, the Russians did in the 1950′s, but it was never developed. Researchers at UCLA have been toying with the power that comes from peeling tape from a roll in a vacuum. In fact, a mere piece of tape can produce an enormous amount of power, which surprised researchers. In an article being published in the Journal Nature, researchers are suggesting that the finding could lead to the production of inexpensive and easy-to-use equipment that could be used by paramedics on accident scenes or for places where electricity is not available.

The researchers have applied for a patent to protect their work. In this new research, a machine was used to peel ordinary Scotch tape off a roll in a vacuum chamber at about 1.2 inches per second. This caused rapid pulses of X-rays, each about a billionth of a second long, to emerge from very close to where the tape was coming off the roll. And that is where electrons jumped from the roll to the sticky underside of the tape that was being pulled away, As those electrons touched the sticky part of the tape, they slowed down, emitting readable Xrays.

So the question is, does this pose a danger for those of us slaving over wrapping paper this coming holiday season? Not so much. The research shows that this only works in a vacuum, and most of us are not wrapping presents in a vacuum.

So, no excuse for use geeks to not be wrapping presents this year. Dang it.

I may have reported on this before several months back, I’m not sure, but there have been some new advances in the potential manufacturing process for buckypaper.

Silly name for a product, but it has great potential for the future of planes, automobiles, and possibly even home construction. Buckypaper is 10 times lighter, but as much as 500 times stronger than steel. It is a composite product, but unlike other composites, it can conduct electricity like copper or silicon and disperses heat like steel or brass. It’s potential is unlimited, but only if the manufacture of it can be developed so that it is cost-effective and less time-intensive.

Buckypaper looks like ordinary carbon paper, but is actually created from tube-shaped carbon molecules 50,000 times thinner than a human hair. Because of its construction and conductivity, it can be used to lighten automobiles and airplanes, replace some functional components of computers and televisions, and even be used in the development of lower-cost solar options.

Researchers at Florida’s Rice University are working on revolutionary manufacturing techniques that may make the production of buckypaper much more cost-effective, as well as being less time-intensive. This new research is a major breakthrough on a project that has been taking shape over the last 15 years.

And if the name sounds funny, those that are science geeks like me will know right away that Buckminster Fuller had something to do with this. The discovery of “buckyballs” [buckminsterfullerene], soccer-ball-shaped molecules produced during an experiment with carbon, led to the development of buckypaper. Ah, the visionary and futurist Buckminster Fuller. He lives on!

We probably all have had times when we have had to step away from a problem before we can solve it. A new study reported in the Telegraph found that when solving problems, distractions can make the process faster. The theory behind this is that non-linear problem solving requires the help of the subconscious mind. When our conscious minds are completely engaged in a problem it drowns out any subconscious thoughts we might have on the subject. Distracting our conscious mind for a moment allows those thoughts to bubble to the surface where we can acknowledge them.

Sure makes me feel better about looking for interesting stories on the Internet when I should be working.

I finally went to the doctor this week for a pain in my neck. I figured it was just a muscle strain (it is) but they took an x-ray to check the bones. My wife works there so I was able to go “behind the curtain” to see my x-rays. I was looking for a wall light fixture to pin the sheets of x-rays on but there was not one there. Instead they had a scanner like machine that they placed the x-rays into & then it uploaded the images to the computer. So we were able to look at the images on a nice big screen. Pretty cool I thought. You could basically do anything you could with a regular photo. They moved it around and zoomed in on the bones they wanted to look at. The picture was crystal clear and much better than the old school way of doing this procedure. Now I have no idea how much this little gizmo cost but I reckon it was close to the cost of a small car. I don’t know if it is worth the cost but I do know it is better in many ways: visible details, digital storage, easily copied, can be emailed to the patient or a specialist. Things like this make better medical options available to us common geeks. I was just glad I got to see it in action.

Science daily has an article discussing a new book, “What Bugged the Dinosaurs? Insects, Disease and Death in the Cretaceous,” by George and Roberta Poinar. In it they discuss the effect that insect born disease and parasites possibly had on the mass extinction of the dinosaurs. Modern technigues have shown that diseases like malaria existed during the Cretaceous and were present in blood taken from parasites preserved in Amber.

I love the new information we can discover from materials that are so old, and build such complex pictures of what was essentially a completely different world. Well worth the time to read the full article. It sort of puts a damper on the Jurasic Park idea though, if there are parasitic organisms mixed up in the dino blood samples there is even less chance of sequencing dinosaur DNA than ever.

A new ability that is similar to a healing process found in nature could let aircrafts mend themselves during flight This self healing process could help in the construction of new airplanes in many ways. By making them lighter, help fuel savings, cut cost for airlines and passengers, and reducing carbon emissions.

The process is pretty remarkable If there is a hole in the plane somehow (due to wear and tear, something hitting the plane, etc) epoxy resin would “bleed” from embedded vessels near the hole/crack and quickly seal it up. And by simply adding color dye they can see the colored patches so they know to fix it when they land.

This could help in many ways. It could help save many lives on a commercial plane, possibly be able to help aircrafts in the military, or even private planes. This is just another improvement in technology thanks to mother nature. [ScienceDaily.com]

This article was submitted by William M. as part of a contest we are having on my podcast.