This is a repository for all cool scientific discussion and fascination. Scientific facts, theories, and overall cool scientific stuff that you'd like to share with others. Stuff that makes you smile and wonder at the amazing shit going on around us, that most people don't notice.
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Originally Posted by Dayze:
Too many switches / Omaha Astronaut
I went to Space Camp for Educators in Huntsville, Ala a few years ago. I commanded the Shuttle mission for our group. The model was more from the Columbia instead of the Endeavor but yes-buttons, switches oh my.
I was thinking it would be technologically advanced-but my classroom has more technology. The shuttle was based on 1970's computers and memory. Our phones have more memory than the shuttle. The screens are programmed by a number pad. A code needs to be entered to move to a different screen. My smart board can do those things faster.
Yo mama's so fat that she expresses her weight in scientific notation.
Yo mama's so fat that a recursive function computing her weight causes a stack overflow.
Yo mama's so fat that the long double numeric variable type in C++ is insufficient to express her weight.
Yo mama's so promiscuous that electrons have a positive charge when they're around her.
Yo mama's so fat that IEEE is working on a wifi protocol so people can get the signals to reach users on opposite sides of her. It's called 802.11 Draft Fat Momma
If we were to code your mom in a C++ function she would look like this: double mom (double fat){ mom(fat);return mom;}; //your mom is recursively fat. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Fish:
Yo mama's so fat that she expresses her weight in scientific notation.
Yo mama's so fat that a recursive function computing her weight causes a stack overflow.
Yo mama's so fat that the long double numeric variable type in C++ is insufficient to express her weight.
Yo mama's so promiscuous that electrons have a positive charge when they're around her.
Yo mama's so fat that IEEE is working on a wifi protocol so people can get the signals to reach users on opposite sides of her. It's called 802.11 Draft Fat Momma
If we were to code your mom in a C++ function she would look like this: double mom (double fat){ mom(fat);return mom;}; //your mom is recursively fat.
The only thing your mother splits worse than infinitives is her Lane Bryant panties, which is fine because I've been using them for bathmats.
Yeah, I schtupped your mother. I'm not proud of it, but it was something that simply had to be done.
That and I had a bag of flour opened and figured it wouldn't be good to let it go to waste so I rolled her in it to find the wet spot. [Reply]
Neil Tyson is one of my heroes. And I love his approach to parenting and education here...
Let your kids break things... Let them be curious. Inspire their curiosity. Let them break things, teach them to fix them. That's how our next generation makes things better...
We all blink. A lot. The average person blinks some 15-20 times per minute—so frequently that our eyes are closed for roughly 10% of our waking hours overall.
Although some of this blinking has a clear purpose—mostly to lubricate the eyeballs, and occasionally protect them from dust or other debris—scientists say that we blink far more often than necessary for these functions alone. Thus, blinking is physiological riddle. Why do we do it so darn often? In a paper published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a group of scientists from Japan offers up a surprising new answer—that briefly closing our eyes might actually help us to gather our thoughts and focus attention on the world around us.
The researchers came to the hypothesis after noting an interesting fact revealed by previous research on blinking: that the exact moments when we blink aren’t actually random. Although seemingly spontaneous, studies have revealed that people tend to blink at predictable moments. For someone reading, blinking often occurs after each sentence is finished, while for a person listening to a speech, it frequently comes when the speaker pauses between statements. A group of people all watching the same video tend to blink around the same time, too, when action briefly lags.
As a result, the researchers guessed that we might subconsciously use blinks as a sort of mental resting point, to briefly shut off visual stimuli and allow us to focus our attention. To test the idea, they put 10 different volunteers in an fMRI machine and had them watch the TV show “Mr. Bean” (they had used the same show in their previous work on blinking, showing that it came at implicit break points in the video). They then monitored which areas of the brain showed increased or decreased activity when the study participants blinked.
Their analysis showed that when the Bean-watchers blinked, mental activity briefly spiked in areas related to the default network, areas of the brain that operate when the mind is in a state of wakeful rest, rather than focusing on the outside world. Momentary activation of this alternate network, they theorize, could serve as a mental break, allowing for increased attention capacity when the eyes are opened again.
To test whether this mental break was simply a result of the participants’ visual inputs being blocked, rather than a subconscious effort to clear their minds, the researchers also manually inserted “blackouts” into the video at random intervals that lasted roughly as long as a blink. In the fMRI data, though, the brain areas related to the default network weren’t similarly activated. Blinking is something more than temporarily not seeing anything.
It’s far from conclusive, but the research demonstrates that we do enter some sort of altered mental state when we blink—we’re not just doing it to lubricate our eyes. A blink could provide a momentary island of introspective calm in the ocean of visual stimuli that defines our lives.
Interesting. I'd venture to guess that as we've evolved, the rate of blinking on average would have been far LESS back in the day. There is a TON more visual stimulation these days, and that would imply that we need far more "quick breaks" today.
And that dude in the pic is freaking me out. I've never seen anyone not blink with both eyes at once.
Originally Posted by Fish:
Blinking. It's not just about lube...
We all blink. A lot. The average person blinks some 15-20 times per minute—so frequently that our eyes are closed for roughly 10% of our waking hours overall.
Although some of this blinking has a clear purpose—mostly to lubricate the eyeballs, and occasionally protect them from dust or other debris—scientists say that we blink far more often than necessary for these functions alone. Thus, blinking is physiological riddle. Why do we do it so darn often? In a paper published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a group of scientists from Japan offers up a surprising new answer—that briefly closing our eyes might actually help us to gather our thoughts and focus attention on the world around us.
The researchers came to the hypothesis after noting an interesting fact revealed by previous research on blinking: that the exact moments when we blink aren’t actually random. Although seemingly spontaneous, studies have revealed that people tend to blink at predictable moments. For someone reading, blinking often occurs after each sentence is finished, while for a person listening to a speech, it frequently comes when the speaker pauses between statements. A group of people all watching the same video tend to blink around the same time, too, when action briefly lags.
As a result, the researchers guessed that we might subconsciously use blinks as a sort of mental resting point, to briefly shut off visual stimuli and allow us to focus our attention. To test the idea, they put 10 different volunteers in an fMRI machine and had them watch the TV show “Mr. Bean” (they had used the same show in their previous work on blinking, showing that it came at implicit break points in the video). They then monitored which areas of the brain showed increased or decreased activity when the study participants blinked.
Their analysis showed that when the Bean-watchers blinked, mental activity briefly spiked in areas related to the default network, areas of the brain that operate when the mind is in a state of wakeful rest, rather than focusing on the outside world. Momentary activation of this alternate network, they theorize, could serve as a mental break, allowing for increased attention capacity when the eyes are opened again.
To test whether this mental break was simply a result of the participants’ visual inputs being blocked, rather than a subconscious effort to clear their minds, the researchers also manually inserted “blackouts” into the video at random intervals that lasted roughly as long as a blink. In the fMRI data, though, the brain areas related to the default network weren’t similarly activated. Blinking is something more than temporarily not seeing anything.
It’s far from conclusive, but the research demonstrates that we do enter some sort of altered mental state when we blink—we’re not just doing it to lubricate our eyes. A blink could provide a momentary island of introspective calm in the ocean of visual stimuli that defines our lives.
Originally Posted by "Bob" Dobbs:
Interesting. I'd venture to guess that as we've evolved, the rate of blinking on average would have been far LESS back in the day. There is a TON more visual stimulation these days, and that would imply that we need far more "quick breaks" today.
And that dude in the pic is freaking me out. I've never seen anyone not blink with both eyes at once.
Exactly. It seems to me we blink more than necessary b/c we're strategically blinking to maximize efficiency in our intake of visual information. [Reply]
I only have recently discovered Dr. Tyson, but he is one of my heroes now as well. He really articulates a fantastic case for science education, which I'm 100% on board with.
Originally Posted by Fish:
Neil Tyson is one of my heroes. And I love his approach to parenting and education here...
Let your kids break things... Let them be curious. Inspire their curiosity. Let them break things, teach them to fix them. That's how our next generation makes things better...
