Saturday, December 14, 2013
Simulations back up theory that Universe is a hologram
A team of physicists has provided some of the clearest evidence yet that our Universe could be just one big projection.
At a black hole, Albert Einstein's theory of gravity apparently clashes with quantum physics, but that conflict could be solved if the Universe were a holographic projection.
Trigger Effect
On a clear blue day on Jan. 17, 1989, a man whose peripatetic life included years as a troubled Sacramento youth walked onto a playground in Stockton and shot 35 children, killing five. In the span of only a few minutes, the act marked the first mass shooting of schoolchildren in American history. Today, 25 years later—and one year after the massacre at Newtown—these once-unthinkable tragedies have become terrifyingly familiar as citizens and political leaders from Sacramento to Washington choose sides in the fight over the future of guns in America.
U.S. Women Are Dying Younger Than Their Mothers, and No One Knows Why
While advancements in medicine and technology have prolonged life expectancy and decreased premature deaths overall, women in parts of the country have been left behind.
Daniel Wolpert: The real reason for brains
Neuroscientist Daniel Wolpert starts from a surprising premise: the brain evolved, not to think or feel, but to control movement. In this entertaining, data-rich talk he gives us a glimpse into how the brain creates the grace and agility of human motion.
Sizing Up Consciousness by Its Bits
If Dr. Tononi is right, he and his colleagues may be able to build a “consciousness meter” that doctors can use to measure consciousness as easily as they measure blood pressure and body temperature.
Friday, December 13, 2013
Big Thinkers - Daniel Dennett [Philosopher]
This episode features Daniel Dennett. He is a prominent American philosopher whose research centers on philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science.
I thought this was a good follow up to the previous post "Keeping Alive The Big Question".
Keeping Alive The Big Questions
Evgenia Cherkasova, a philosophy professor at Suffolk University, will teach a course next year that's called, What is the Meaning of Life?
Washington's Open Secret
Most Americans believe it's illegal for politicians to profit from their public office but, as Steve Kroft reports, that's not the case.
CHINA IS ENGINEERING GENIUS BABIES
Scientists have collected DNA samples from 2,000 of the world’s smartest people and are sequencing their entire genomes in an attempt to identify the alleles which determine human intelligence. Apparently they’re not far from finding them, and when they do, embryo screening will allow parents to pick their brightest zygote and potentially bump up every generation's intelligence by five to 15 IQ points.
Bullying Complaint After Lopsided Football Score
The final score, 91-0 led one parent to file an official complaint of bullying against the entire coaching staff.
Rudy
An animated self-portrait exploring the idea of rebirth and illustrating the transfer of energy from one incarnation to another. I painted this stop frame animation on myself over 5 days, using some face paints, a mirror and a camera.
By Emma Allen
Photo captures an eagle wrestling a deer
A camera trap set out for endangered Siberian (Amur) tigers in the Russian Far East photographed something far more rare: a golden eagle capturing a young sika deer.
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Cicada 3301
For the past two years, a mysterious online organisation has been setting the world's finest code-breakers a series of seemingly unsolveable problems. But to what end? Welcome to the world of Cicada 3301
Toms River: Cancer Clusters
One of New Jersey’s seemingly innumerable quiet seaside towns, Toms River became the unlikely setting for a decades-long drama that culminated in 2001 with one of the largest legal settlements in the annals of toxic dumping. A town that would rather have been known for its Little League World Series champions ended up making history for an entirely different reason: a notorious cluster of childhood cancers scientifically linked to local air and water pollution. For years, large chemical companies had been using Toms River as their private dumping ground, burying tens of thousands of leaky drums in open pits and discharging billions of gallons of acid-laced wastewater into the town’s namesake river.
Fermi Paradox
Why haven't we been contacted yet ?
Maybe it's not that life is rare in the universe...
Maybe it's that intelligent life is really rare...
Could we speak the language of dolphins?
Denise Herzing discusses what she learned in 28 years of working with dolphins.
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
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