Archive Category: Science & Tech
Astronomical Clocks – Literally and Metaphorically
Astronomical clocks – amazing works of engineering that are sometimes six hundred years old – can be found throughout the world. Europe, however, has the lion’s share. Here are some of the more remarkable examples of the form.
To say that this clock is astronomical is, perhaps, stating the obvious. Another word that might describe the Prague Orloj is exquisite. The first and perhaps most astonishing fact about this astronomical clock is that it was finished and in place in 1410, over eighty years before Columbus made his voyage of discovery to the Americas. The first thing that draws the eye is the dial at the center of the clock which shows the positions of the moon and the sun. What makes the Orloj a magnet for visitors to the Czech city is the clockwork show of the figures of the apostles, which on the hour parade themselves. There are other moving sculptures too – plus a dial which pitted with medallions which represent the months of the years.
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Virtual Cow Butt
Veterinarians have no choice when they need to check a cow for pregnancy or infection. The standard procedure is to stick your arm up the cow’s rectum. The technique is difficult to teach to veterinary students because, well, it’s dark in there.
That’s why veterinarian and computer scientist Sarah Baillie has created the “Haptic Cow,” a virtual, touch-feedback device that mimics the feeling of real bovine anatomy, placed inside a fiberglass model of a cow’s rear end.
“With this technology, students can feel something that feels like the inside of a real cow, but I or another instructor can be following their movements on a monitor,” said Baillie, who teaches at the Royal Veterinary College in London. “This means we can say, ‘Come back a bit or go left a bit.’ It actually means you can direct them.”
Not only can professors follow a student’s exact movements and critique the technique, but they can also keep track of how much force is being applied. If a fledgling vet gets too rough and exceeds the number of Newtons considered safe by experienced vets, virtual Bessie will belt out a cautionary “Moo-oo!”
(image credit: Sarah Baillie/Royal Veterinary College)
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Martian Landscape
Photo: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
Alan Taylor’s excellent photoblog The Big Picture over at Boston.com has a really nifty collection of images of the Martian landscape:
Since 2006, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has been orbiting Mars, currently circling approximately 300 km (187 mi) above the Martian surface. On board the MRO is HiRISE, the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera, which has been photographing the planet for several years now at resolutions as fine as mere inches per pixel. Collected here is a group of images from HiRISE over the past few years, in either false color or grayscale, showing intricate details of landscapes both familiar and alien, from the surface of our neighboring planet, Mars. I invite you to take your time looking through these, imagining the settings – very cold, dry and distant, yet real.
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Volunteers Work to Save Ash Trees
7.5 billion ash trees are endangered in the United States. (Photo credit Elizabeth Flores, Star Tribune)
The culprit is the well-known emerald ash borer, an invasive Asian beetle that first arrived in Michigan seven years ago. The infestation has spread to Ohio, Canada, and now Minnesota, threatening to do a log power more damage than the famous Dutch Elm Disease. Federal and state authorities have responded to the emerald ash borer by limiting transportation of timber and wood products, but have been unable to quarantine the disease.
Now volunteers in are spreading out across Minnesota and several other states, collecting seeds which may be needed to restore the white, green, and black ash species if the current epidemic destroys the currently standing trees. Some of the seeds will be stored in the National Plant Germplasm System, a depository maintained by the Agriculture Department and at the National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation. Others will be retained by Native American tribal authorities.
A map showing states and Canadian provinces at risk, with links to sources of local assistance, is available at the Emerald Ash Borer website.
Further details on seed preservation are available in a story written by Bill McAuliffe for the Star Tribune.
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Should we let some endangered species die?
Marine biologist and blogger WhySharksMatter presents the latest in his award-winning "ethical debate" series, showcasing a "hot topic" from the environmental movement, presenting both sides, and asking readers to argue it out in the comments. Since his readership includes scientists, politicians, and leaders from the environmental movement, these discussions are always interesting, and this one is sure to generate some strong opinions.
WhySharksMatter is claiming in this ethical debate that North Atlantic Right Whales, one of the most endangered animals on Earth, are going to go extinct whether or not we help them, and therefore we should stop wasting so much of the environmental movement’s limited resources on protecting them.
“For the sake of this debate, I will concede the following points (i.e. there is no need to debate them any further).
* Right whales are a unique and interesting animal. They, like us, are mammals.
* Without our protection, they will certainly go extinct
* It is undeniably, 100% our fault that they are so endangered in the first place”
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Bird Drops Bread, LHC Shuts Down
You can’t make stuff like this up. A piece of a baguette dropped by a passing bird caused a shutdown at the CERN Large Hadron Collider.
The bird dropped some bread on a section of outdoor machinery, eventually leading to significant over heating in parts of the accelerator. The LHC was not operational at the time of the incident, but the spike produced so much heat that had the beam been on, automatic failsafes would have shut down the machine.
The LHC is scheduled to be reactivated later this month. The bread incident won’t affect those plans. Link -via Boing Boing
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The Blue Sun
Image: Alan Friedman of Averted Imagination
Alan Friedman, a greeting cards-maker by day and astronomer by night, took this amazing photo of the Sun. APOD explains why it’s blue:
Our Sun may look like all soft and fluffy, but it’s not. Our Sun is an extremely large ball of bubbling hot gas, mostly hydrogen gas. The above picture of our Sun was taken last month in a specific red color of light emitted by hydrogen gas called Hydrogen-alpha and then color inverted to appear blue. In this light, details of the Sun’s chromosphere are particularly visible, highlighting numerous thin tubes of magnetically-confined hot gas known as spicules rising from the Sun like bristles from a shag carpet. Our Sun glows because it is hot, but it is not on fire. Fire is the rapid acquisition of oxygen, and there is very little oxygen on the Sun. The energy source of our Sun is the nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium deep within its core. No sunspots or large active regions were visible on the Sun this day, although some solar prominences are visible around the edges.
For a larger pic, be sure to check out APOD: Link
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Energy-Harvesting Rocking Chair
Photo: Design Boom
Rochus Jacob designed and built the Murakami Chair. As the user rocks back and forth during the day, the chair charges a battery that powers the lamp. Jacob writes:
I was looking for opportunities to generate energy through activities we naturally do. The final result is a rocking chair that enables the user to experience production and consumption of electricity in a gentle and rewarding way. An abstract process becomes tangible and eventually cultivates natural awareness. Complexity is covered by simplicity. Advanced nano-dynamo technology which is built in to the skids of the chair and more efficient light sources such as the newly developed OLED generation makes it possible to build a rocking chair with a reading lamp running on electricity generated from the rocking motion. During daylight the energy gets stored in a battery pack. The construction of the flat and bendable organic light emitting diodes allows new form factors such as using the traditional shape of a lamp but instead of having a light bulb the lampshade himself turns out to be the light source. To have a drastic reduction of consumption the big challenge will be to make consuming less feel like getting more.
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Julia Child Recreates Primordial Soup
Preparing food is probably a mere child’s play for master chef Julia Child, so here’s something a little more challenging: cooking up a batch of primordial soup.
This delightful video of Julia Child in her kitchen boiling up a batch of primordial soup was made for the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum and shown in Life in The Universe gallery from 1976 until the exhibit closed.
Julia Child explains primordial soup
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Top 10 Mad Science-Worthy Chemistry Experiments
From the Neatorama Shop: I
Love Chemistry T-Shirt
Chemistry is a fascinating science, but it's often taught poorly in today's boring schools. Here's how chemistry should be taught: by mad scientists! Here's Neatorama's list of the Top 10 Mad Science-Worthy Chemistry Experiments:
1. Briggs-Rauscher Reaction
The Briggs-Rauscher reaction is a well known example of oscillating chemical reactions, also known as chemical clocks because the periodicity can be used to tell time. What's going on in the beaker is actually quite a complex set of chemical reactions. Here's how to do it: Link
2. Gummy Bear and Molten Potassium Chlorate
Who'da thunk that Gummy Bear can be so ... violent? Here's what happen if you drop a Gummy Bear (which is mostly sugar), to a tube of molten potassium chlorate:
3. Diet Coke and Mentos
Mentos in various carbonated liquids. From left to right: carbonated water
(Perrier), Classic Coke, Sprite, and Diet Coke. By K.
Shimada [Wikipedia]
You've all seen this before. The Diet Coke and Mentos experiment by Fritz Grobe and Stephen Voltz of EepyBird was the stuff of Internet legend back in 2007. But what exactly happens when you drop a Mentos into a solution of Diet Coke?
MythBusters explain:
According to Hyneman (he's the mustachioed MythBuster), it's a process called "nucleation," in which the particular chemistry of the Mentos candy interacts with the chemistry of the carbonated Diet Coke, causing the carbon dioxide gas, or CO2, to suddenly come out of suspension in the liquid and make a break for freedom. [...]
Hyneman says, "There's a cascade that happens with -- it's a little esoteric -- an ion exchange. Basically the Mentos start to dissolve, and it's like tripping a switch. It's not what you would call a chain reaction, because that's something else in chemistry terms, but it's a cascade whereon all of a sudden, all of the CO2 that was contained in the liquid is suddenly not as attracted to the liquid as it was before, because of this slight change in the chemistry that occurs."
Whatever you do, don't eat a mentos then chug a mouthful of diet soda, mmkay?
4. Elephant Toothpaste
Yes, even elephants need to maintain good dental hygiene, but what kind of toothpaste do they use? Here's a favorite chemistry demo called Elephant Toothpaste (no, elephants don't actually use this as a toothpaste, silly - it's only called that because it looks like the kind and quantity of toothpaste an elephant would use).
This one's easy to do, all you need is dish soap, hydrogen peroxide, and potassium iodide: Link
5. Grape Plasma
What happens if you put a grape and nuke it in a microwave? You get something very cool ... and dangerous at the same time, because it *will* ruin your microwave, release poisonous gases, and you *can* burn down your house - so don't do it, mmkay? Watch:
What just happened? Here's the explanation, according to The Plasma Universe:
It is relatively easy to generate a plasmoid using a microwave and a medium that will initiate the formation of a plasmoid, this can be caused by the carbon microparticles in the smoke from a naked flame or match, which ignites and moves about as plasmoids, and some biological cells are known to produce plasma under microwave conditions, such as grapes (electrons try to move through highly resistive grape-skin, and plasmoids may form) This is due to the fact that microwaves, being high frequency electromagnetic radiation in the GHz range, are capable of exciting electrodeless gas discharges in air, similar to the process used in Sulfur lamps.
Got that?
6. Burning Salts
Quick: what color is fire? Orangey red? Obviously you haven't seen alcohol, barium chloride, boron, strontium, calcium, lithium, sodium, copper, and potassium salts set aflame ...
7. Magnesium in Dry Ice
You've probably heard that fire needs oxygen to burn (indeed, the principle behind CO2 fire extinguisher is to use the heavier carbon dioxide to displace the oxygen needed by the flame).
But does a fire really need oxygen? Not burning magnesium! It'll burn even when encased in dry ice (solid CO2). Note: magnesium shavings are used - not powder, which will explode if you try to set it on fire.
8. Ferrofluid
Ferrofluid, a colloidal mixture of nanoscale magnetic particles in a solvent, reacts to magnetic field in an awesomely bizarre way. Sachiko Kodama uses ferrofluid to create dynamic sculptures called Morpho Towers:
9. Mercury Beating Heart
A drop of mercury in a solution of potassium chromate and sulfuric acid, set so it's almost touching an iron nail, will start to beat like a heart. Journal of Chemical Education explains why: Link
10. The World of Chemistry
John Farrier posted this back in May, 2009 but it's too good not to post again here. Behold, the World of Chemistry, a video from the Europe Research Commission using a dance party to explain basic chemical reactions.
__________
Don't miss these other fun science articles from Neatorama:
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Algae Mines
Here’s another story about abandoned man-made structures, but this one may have a happy ending.
Instead of using aboveground ponds to grow algae for biofuels, researchers at the Missouri University of Science and Technology have proposed growing algae underground in abandoned mines. What are the advantages? Underground mines are cheap, maintain constant temperature, solve the aboveground evaporation and contamination problems, and the site preparation has already been done by the mining companies.
But don’t algae need sunlight to grow? Not necessarily, says mining engineering professor David Summers.
It happens that algae work best when they use only the blue and red parts of the light spectrum, which can be provided by LED lights, and they need periods of darkness in which to process the photons.
An added benefit: Mine owners like the idea because it eliminates the need for them to clean up the sites, as algae are particularly good at sequestering metals.
Win + win + win? I guess we’ll find out.
More information at Scientific American.
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Why Roosters Have Wattles
A wattle is the bit of flesh below a rooster’s beak. What purpose does it serve? Carolynn Smith at Macquarie University in Australia conducted a study that suggests that it’s pure chicken bling. Sarah Zielinski writes in Scientific American about the results:
Cutting off the wattles of roosters and seeing how the behavior of hens changed wasn’t an option. Instead, Smith created four animated roosters. The animated roosters (see second part of the video below) all acted the same, performing the tidbitting routine over and over, and they all looked the same, except for their wattles. One had a normal wattle, one was missing his, a third had a wattle that didn’t move, and the fourth had an extra floppy wattle.
A test chicken would be placed inside a test pen with two “audience hens,” a couple of buddies intended to make the test hen more comfortable in the less familiar surroundings (fowl are social creatures). One of the videos was then played for the test chicken and her response was recorded: How quickly did she respond to the animated rooster? How quickly did she start searching for food (the normal response to a male tidbitting)? And how long did she search for food?
The test hens responded more quickly to the tidbitting males that had the normal or stationary wattles, less quickly to the one with the extra floppy wattle (the wattle moved so much that it swung up the side of the rooster’s head and appeared much smaller than it was) and slowest to the male lacking wattles. After the hen’s attention was gained, though, she reacted about the same to each of the four animated chickens. Smith suggests that the wattle helps a rooster gain a hen’s attention when he is tidbitting, rather like a human guy wearing flashy clothes while doing his best dance moves to try and pick up chicks.
Video at the link.
Link | Photo: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
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Robot Plays Volleyball
With the aid of onboard, fast-moving cameras, “Mr. Tomorrow” will most likely beat me in a game of volleyball. Created by the mad scientists at Toshiba.
via UniqueDaily
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A "Holzbibliothek" is a "wooden library." A library of wooden books. Literally.
In the late 18th century, Carl Schildbach was manager of a German estate famous for its ornamental park. He had no formal academic or scientific training, but at the request of his employer began compiling a reference collection of the natural history of each type of tree and shrub in the estate, eventually totalling 546 items…
“The format… was that of a box or casket, the raw materials for which were provided by the specimen itself, made up in the form of a book – varying in size from folio to duodecimo – with the ‘front cover’ forming a sliding lid…
For the left side of the ‘volume’ mature wood was selected and for the right side sapwood, while the fore-edge was made from heartwood; the top surface incorporated cross-sections from branches of various ages while the bottom surface showed a section through the trunk…
While the box itself served to illustrate the characteristics of the timber, the interior was reserved for an exposition of the whole natural history of the plant… a complete seedling is included to one side, with its roots, seminal capsule and first pair of leaves. In the centre of the box the tip of a branch displays buds and leaves in various stages of development…blossoms are shown varying from full blooms to faded flowers, while fruits are similarly represented at every stage in their development… Examples of associated parasites and lichens are included…”
The empress Catherine tried to purchase Schildbach’s collection, but he deeded it to his master, Landgrave Wilhelm IX; it now resides in the Naturalienkabinett in Kassel, where it is still used as reference material. Schildbach inspired several imitators, including Candid Huber, a Benedictine monk, whose collection survives in the Bavarian Burgmuseum. Peter the Great eventually acquired a collection for his Kunstkamera in St. Petersburg, and another resides in the Musee National des Techniques of the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers in Paris.
The cited text above is excerpted from Chapter IV (“Museums and the Natural World”) in Curiosity and Enlightenment: Collectors and Collections from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century, by Arthur MacGregor (Yale Univ. Press, New Haven, 2007) – a comprehensive history of cabinets of curiosities, museums, and specialized collections.
Small-format photos of Schildbach’s collection are available at the webpage of the Naturkundemuseum in the Ottoneum at Kassel. The embedded photo is from a similar Holzbuch in a collection at the Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe. Other examples may be seen here and here. The creation of such “wooden books” seems to have been primarily a European endeavor; a related project by Romeyn B. Hough collecting North American woods in book form (using thin sections of wood attached to cardboard within a conventional book binding) was produced at the turn of the last century.
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Bloodybelly Comb Jelly
A creature with a musical name presents a spectacular light show to the cameras of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute’s remotely operated vehicle. This ctenophore seems to be exhibiting bioluminescence, but what the “lights” actually represent is reflection or refraction of the photoflood lights from rhythmically beating cilia. The deep red color is a survival adaptation, helping to mask the bioluminescence of creatures it ingests, so that it does not itself become visible to other predators.
It has been suggested that comb jellies such as the ctenophores are ancestors of all life on earth.
YouTube link, via The Daily Dish and Nerdcore.
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Why So Many Different Plugs?
I went to China and took an electrical adapter with eight different plug-ins, and still managed to stay at one hotel in which none of them fit. Why are there so many types of electrical plugs and sockets in the world? When household electric use began in the late 1800s, different areas of the world settled on basically two voltage systems, 110-120 and 220-240 (with some exceptions). Then each nation had their own reasons for developing the plug-in system they have.
But once they were set up, who cared what style plug their customers used? What were you gonna do, lug your new vacuum cleaner across the ocean on a boat? Early efforts to standardize the plug by organizations like the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) had trouble taking hold—who were they to tell a country which plug to adopt?
For example, Britain incorporated fuses in the appliance plug instead of the wiring system because of a shortage of copper at the time.
You know how the British had control over India for, like, ninety years? Well, along with exporting cricket and inflicting unquantifiable cultural damage, they showed the subcontinent how to plug stuff in, the British way! Problem is, they left in 1947. The BS 1363 plug—the new one—wasn’t introduced until 1946, and didn’t see widespread adoption until a few years later. So India still uses the old British plug, as does Sri Lanka, Nepal and Namibia. Basically, the best way to guess who’s got which socket is to brush up on your WW1/WW2 history, and to have a deep passion for postcolonial literature. No, really.
Despite widespread global travel, the expense of rewiring electrical grids all over the world means there won’t be any standardization of plugs anytime soon. Read the whole story at Gizmodo. Link -via Geeks Are Sexy
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Dinosaur Built (and Named) Like a Tank
Paleontologists Bill and Kris Parsons of the Buffalo Museum of Science in New York found a dinosaur skull in Montana in 1997. In the years since, they’ve excavated the rest of the skeleton of a new dinosaur called Tatankacephalus cooneyorum.
“These were big dinosaur versions of a Sherman tank,” Bill Parsons said. “They were armored and they withstood whatever came at them, and they just kept going.” T. cooneyorum was about 15 to 20 feet (4.5 to 6 meters) in length.
And this dinosaur had its share of protection, with two sets of stubby horns, one on the cheeks and the other around its eyes, two thick domes at the back of the skull and thickened areas around the nasal region.
Bill Parsons suspects T. cooneyorum was covered with hundreds or even thousands of bony plates equipped with spikes and a tail tipped with a club, similar to other ankylosaurs. Such protection, along with a swinging clubbed tail, would have kept at bay any of the small dinosaurs around at the time, Parsons said.
T. cooneyorum dates from around 112 million years ago. Link -via the Presurfer
(image credit: Bill Parsons)
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Cell Size and Scale
This is a fun little learning tool, provided by The University of Utah. Use the slider bar to zoom smaller and smaller in scale, from 12 millimeters (coffee bean) to 140 picameters (carbon atom), and track progress with the graph in the upper left. And if something looks fishy about that sperm cell…
How can an X chromosome be nearly as big as the head of the sperm cell?
No, this isn’t a mistake. First, there’s less DNA in a sperm cell than there is in a non-reproductive cell such as a skin cell. Second, the DNA in a sperm cell is super-condensed and compacted into a highly dense form. Third, the head of a sperm cell is almost all nucleus. Most of the cytoplasm has been squeezed out in order to make the sperm an efficient torpedo-like swimming machine.
Link via Twisted Sifter
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5 Frightening (But True) Space Stories
There are no aliens in these stories from NASA and the Soviet space program, just true tales of how being an astronaut is no picnic. Decompression? Landing in the wrong place? Using the toilet without a toilet? Not pleasant!
On May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard wet his pants aboard Freedom 7, but Apollo bathroom facilities would get a lot worse before they got any better. I don’t think I’m the only guy to find something fundamentally frightening about a urinal that consists only of a “condom-like fitting,” a valve and the empty void of outer space. I keep thinking about that scene from “Goldfinger.”
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Periodic Picnic Table
In 2003, Wake Forest University students Nazila Alimohammadi and Anna Clark built this picnic table in the shape of the periodic table of elements. From a campus newspaper:
The two women students created the sculpture as part of a public art course taught in the fall by David Finn, associate professor of art. Students in the class were paired up and assigned to work with campus organizations in creating works for public display. “We wanted our project to be fun and functional without a lot of emotional or political content,” Clark says. An aspiring dentist, Alimohammadi had taken several chemistry classes and suggested working with that department. They devised their “Periodic Table” concept — a pun of the familiar Periodic Table of Elements configuration — and the department responded enthusiastically. Alimohammadi did the structural steel work and Clark hand-painted the surface tiles. The piece, which was dedicated in an informal picnic ceremony on April 15, is accurate in every detail, right down to the auxiliary lanthanides and actinides tables that constitute the table’s bench.
Link via Make | Image: Anonymous Make reader
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Alphabet of Computing
Every geek knows that "A" is for Apple, but I bet not many know that Apple had a "third founder" who gave up his stake for $800 (it would've been worth at least $17 billion today). Or that Cisco was named for San Francisco. Or that Twitter used to be called twttr? Let's take a stroll through the A to Z of computing trivia, Neatorama style!
If you think that Apple was founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, think again: there was a "third founder" of Apple. In 1976, Ronald Wayne gave up his 10% stake of the fledgling company for $800 because he was worried that the company would fold and that he would be liable for debts incurred by the other partners (at the time Apple wasn't a corporation yet). Of course Apple became the big company, and Wayne's stake could've been worth as much as $17 billion today.
Originally, Research in Motion wanted its wireless messaging device to have the word "e-mail" in its name. When RIM hired Lexicon Branding to do a little research, they found out that people associate "e-mail" with work and therefore can raise blood pressure. Someone said that the buttons look like small berries, so they decided to name it BlackBerry.
Evolution of Cisco logo, by Design Maven via Speak
Up
Cisco System was named after the city San Francisco (the founders of the company worked for Stanford University, which is just a couple of town over). Indeed, first Cisco System's logo was the Golden Gate Bridge. (See also: Evolution of Tech Logos)
Ben Curtis, in his very first
Dell commercial
In 2003, after three years of playing the Dell Dude, actor Ben Curtis was arrested while attempting to buy a bag of marijuana. People immediately parodied his tag line "Dude, you're getting a Dell" to "Dude, you're getting a cell." Though charges were dropped, Dell canceled the Dell Dude commercials. Curtis was working as a waiter in 2007 but he's making a come back with a (supposedly) upcoming play "Dude! I'm Going to Hell"
In 1977, the US Postal Service recognized that email would pose a serious challenge to its monopoly on delivering mail. At first, it wanted to ban emails (like it did mails delivered by underground pneumatic tubes), but the FCC objected and the Postal Rate Commission refused. So it created an experimental email service called E-COM ("Electronic Computer-Originated Mail"). The idea was simple: You send the emails, which the post office would then print out and deliver as physical letters at the price of 26¢ each (it was said that it actually cost the USPS $5 to deliver the message). Oh, and the service was one-way. If something went wrong, you'd get an error message delivered two days later ... in form of a letter! Needless to say, E-COM failed.
John Backus, the inventor of FORTRAN programming language, said this about his invention: "Much of my work has come from being lazy. I didn't like writing programs, and so, when I was working on the IBM 701 (an early computer), writing programs for computing missile trajectories, I started work on a programming system to make it easier to write programs."
When Paul Buchheit started the Gmail project at Google, he named it "Project Caribou" after a Dilbert cartoon strip.
HP could've easily have been PH. In 1939, when Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard formed HP in a Palo Alto garage, they flipped a coin to decide the name of the company. Packard actually won the toss, but decided to name it Hewlett-Packard instead of Packard-Hewlett.
In 1999, Al Gore was asked by Wolf Blitzer what distinguished him from other contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, and he famously said: "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet." Gore was immediately ridiculed for claiming to have invented the Internet. Not to be outdone, Dan Quayle said "If Al Gore invented the Internet, I invented spell check."
JPEG stands for the Joint Photographic Experts Group, who created the method of compression for photo images. Like all image processing algo, JPEG was tested on the standard test image of "Lenna", a cropped photo of a 1972 Playboy magazine centerfold Lena Soderberg.
Knuth reward check, photo via Upto11.net
Legendary computer scientist Donald Knuth offers to pay a reward of $2.56 for the first finder of errors in his books. Why $2.56? Because 256 pennies is one hexadecimal dollar, which is sort of a joke that only a programmer can appreciate. But that's okay since that's Knuth's target audience anyhow. Indeed, Knuth reward checks are "among computerdom's most prized trophies," according to MIT's Technology Review. If the name Don Knuth sounds familiar, that's because we've featured his Potrzebie System of Weights and Measure before on Neatorama. (see also: Fun and Unusual Units of Measurements)
At first, Linus Torvalds wanted to name his new operating system Freax, a portmanteau of "freak," "free," and "x" (for Unix). A co-worker thought that it was a horrible name and renamed it Linux without telling him.
In 1996, Monty Widenius and David Axmark created MySQL, a relational database management system that would later become one of the most widely used software in the world, powering many of the web's largest sites (WordPress, Neatorama's blogging engine, uses it). What most people don't know is that the "My" in MySQL doesn't refer to "me" - it's actually the name of Monty's daughter My.
The
term newbie or noob, originally thought to be from British
public-school and military slang "new boy," was first spotted
in the Usenet newsgroup talk.bizarre as an insult to a clueless newcomer.
(N
is for Newbie Onesies/Kids T-Shirt at the Neatorama Shop)
In 1977, Larry Ellison, Bob Miner and Ed Oates were working on a CIA-funded project codenamed Oracle (because the CIA believed that it would give them answers to all questions). The project failed, but Larry and friends took the idea and used it to create a company that would later become the Oracle Corporation.
The most common passwords in the world are:
1. password
2. 123456
3. qwerty
4. abc123
5. letmein
6. monkey
7. myspace1
8. password1
9. link182
10. (your first name)
And you thought you were clever to do a derivative of Blink-182 as your password!
The keyboard you're using now is most likely set in a QWERTY layout (named for the first 6 characters of the top row of letters). This layout was invented by Christopher Sholes in 1874 because people were typing too fast on typewriters back then, thus causing the machine to jam. Sholes did frequency analysis on letter-pairs and separated pairs of letters that tend to cause mechanical jams when typed in quick successions like TH. Sholes' new layout was designed to slow down typists (technically, he aimed to improve typing speed by reducing jams - and indeed, that's exactly what happened.)
ROT13: Jung qbrf Whyvhf Pnrfne unir nalguvat gb qb jvgu zbqrea qnl Vagrearg? Pnrfne vairagrq n fvzcyr rapelcgvba zrgubq gung orpnzr dhvgr cbchyne va Hfrarg arjftebhcf nf n zrna gb uvqr fcbvyref, chapuyvarf naq chmmyr fbyhgvbaf. Gur vqrn vf fvzcyr: ercynpr n cvrpr bs grkg jvgu yrggref 13 cynprf shegure nybat va gur nycunorg ("ebgngr ol 13 cynprf" be EBG13). Gur travhf bs gur zrgubq vf gung orpnhfr gurer ner 26 yrggref va gur Ratyvfu nycunorg, gur fnzr rapelcgvba zrgubq jvyy qrpelcg n ebgngrq grkg!
Before Digg, there was Slashdot. The technology-related news website was so huge that getting linked from it meant a massive increase of traffic that would cripple smaller web servers. Webmasters call this the Slashdot effect, which is the granddaddy of similar terms Digg effect, Farked, or Drudged.
The very first Twitter message was sent by its co-creator Jack Dorsey on March 21, 2006: "just setting up my twttr." That's not a typo - twttr was the original codename for the project (inspired by Flickr). At least twttr was better than one of the first names they were considering for it: twitch.
I'm including USB (Universal Serial Bus) here so I can play this awesome "Intel Star" commercial starring Ajay Bhatt, the co-inventor of the USB. Watch it and weep:
Before the World Wide Web, there was Gopher (note: it's gopher://, not http:// - you'd need Firefox to see it) and Veronica was its search engine. Why Veronica? It's because the first search engine of the Internet, a tool that indexes FTP archives, is called Archie. Officially, Veronica is an acronym for "Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Net-wide Index to Computer Archives."
Call it user-generated content, Bubble 2.0, millionth-word in the English language or whatever you want, but know this: Web 2.0 is trademarked by CMP Media (who partnered with O'Reilly in producing the Web 2.0 conference) in 2004. In 2006, they sent a cease-and-desist nastygram to the Irish non-profit organization IT@Cork for using the word in the name of their conference and sparked a kerfuffle over the ownership of "Web 2.0"
What's the company that invented the personal computer, graphical user interface, the computer mouse, but didn't bother to market them because it couldn't see their commercial potentials? Yep, Xerox. In 1979, Steve Jobs of Apple visited Xerox Palo Alto Research Center and saw the Xerox Alto workstation. Several years later, Jobs brought the Apple Macintosh to market.
When YouTube was sold to Google for $1.7 billion, the spotlight was on Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. But did you know that there was a third YouTube founder? That's right: Jawed Karim left the company to become a graduate student at Stanford University. He did, however, fare better than Ronald Wayne - Jawed got about $64 million worth in stock. Jawed also uploaded the very first video on YouTube on April 23, 2005:
If you own a PC in the late 80s/early 90s, then you're savvy about the ZIP file format. Back then, disk space was at a premium (a regular 3-1/2" HD floppy disk can only hold 1.44 MB worth of data) so compression was a big thing. In 1986, Phil Katz created PKZIP (Yep, PK is his initials) and released it as a shareware. He chose the name "zip" to imply that his software was faster than other compression formats available at the time. Sadly, Phil, the alcoholic computer genius, died alone in a cheap hotel cradling an empty bottle of peppermint schnapps.
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Flammable Ice
(YouTube Link)
High school science teacher “Mr. Kent” has a YouTube channel full of neat chemistry demonstration videos. In this one, he sets ice on fire. Here’s how:
Ice is added to a dry Pyrex bowl. When the Ice melts the water reacts with the calcium carbide (place on the bottom) to produce acetylene gas and calcium hydroxide. The acetylene gas then explodes into flames when a match is place on top. It will continue to burn even as the ice melts because it keeps producing acetylene until the calcium carbide runs out.
via Urlesque | Mr. Kent’s Chemistry Page | YouTube Channel
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An Interactive Illustration of the Size of Atoms
The Genetic Science Learning Center at the University of Utah has created an interactive feature that allows you to see the relative size of small objects, starting with a coffee bean and magnifying down to a carbon atom. Click on the link and use the sliding bar at the bottom of the application to zoom in.
Link via Radley Balko | Image: U.S. Department of Energy
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Geologists: Experts in the Art of Subduction
Geologists: Experts in the Art of Subduction – $11.95, modeled by Zac.
Ever been seduced by a geologist? No? Well, you can’t blame them – though they’re not well versed in seduction, they are experts in the art of subduction. Y’know, tectonic plate movements and such. And in case you’re going to get it on with a geologist, remember that subduction zones can result in absolutely volcanic … er, eruptions.
Design by Chris Murphy.
Available from the Neatorama Shop: Link – Don’t forget to check out our wide selection of Science T-Shirts and Scientists Do It T-Shirts
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Starfish Bulk Up to Cool Down
How do starfish keep cool when lying on the sand during low tide? Dr Sylvain Pincebourde and colleagues at the University of California, Davis and Bodega Marine Laboratory, Bodega Bay, California, studied starfish (okay, sea stars) in an aquarium, replicating tides and environmental conditions.
They discovered that a starfish will ingest cold seawater to lower its body temperature before a hot day on the beach. Sucking up water large amounts of water increases a starfish’s body mass, which means its body temperature increases more slowly. Pretty cool!
Infrared photo above by B. Helmuth and S. Pincebourde shows cool areas in purple and warm areas in red, via BBC News.
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Entrance Found to Underground Lunar Tunnel
It has long been suspected that there are underground tunnels and caverns on the moon, presumably the residua of lava tubes. Now a group of scientists led by Junichi Haruyama of the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency are reporting the discovery of a “skylight” leading into an underground cavern.
The hole measures 65 metres across, and based on images taken at a variety of sun angles, the hole is thought to extend down at least 80 metres. It sits in the middle of a rille, suggesting the hole leads into a lava tube as wide as 370 metres across… Since the tubes may be hundreds of metres wide, they could provide plenty of space for an underground lunar outpost. The tubes’ ceilings could protect astronauts from space radiation, meteoroid impacts and wild temperature fluctuations…
This is reminiscent of the “doorway” found on Mars several years ago, but this discovery seems to be more clearly defined. More details at New Scientist, via NAACAL.
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Humans Evolved to Be Long-Distance Runners
Tara Parker-Pope writes in The New York Times about the conclusions of some medical researchers that long-distance running is a major evolutionary advantage for humans. The ability to remain cool by sweating instead of panting and a foot structure ideal for running helped early humans hunt:
Most mammals can sprint faster than humans — having four legs gives them the advantage. But when it comes to long distances, humans can outrun almost any animal. Because we cool by sweating rather than panting, we can stay cool at speeds and distances that would overheat other animals. On a hot day, the two scientists wrote, a human could even outrun a horse in a 26.2-mile marathon.
Why would evolution favor the distance runner? The prevailing theory is that endurance running allowed primitive humans to incorporate meat into their diet. They may have watched the sky for scavenging birds and then run long distances to reach a fresh kill and steal the meat from whatever animal was there first.
Other research suggests that before the development of slingshots or bows, early hunters engaged in persistence hunting, chasing an animal for hours until it overheated, making it easy to kill at close range. A 2006 report in the journal Current Anthropology documents persistence hunting among modern hunter-gatherers, including the Bushmen in Africa.[...]
There is other evidence that evolution favored endurance running. A study in The Journal of Experimental Biology last February showed that the short toes of the human foot allowed for more efficient running, compared with longer-toed animals. Increasing toe length as little as 20 percent doubles the mechanical work of the foot. Even the fact that the big toe is straight, rather than to the side, suggests that our feet evolved for running.
Link via Instapundit | Image: U.S. Secret Service
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Autonomous Robotic Race Car
(YouTube Link)
Stanford University’s robotics lab has built autonomous cars for several years. Recently, it established a land speed record for a robot car — 140 mph in an Audi TT-S nicknamed “Shelly”. But their next goal is even more ambitious: to have Shelly race the twisted dirt road that leads up to Pike’s Peak. Chris Dannen writes in Fast Company about the changes that allow the car to safely navigate sharper turns at higher speeds:
The new autonomous TT-S is markedly different from Junior, however. Junior was environmentally-aware; it had cameras that could see objects and road features, and it paired that data with GPS data. All that processing required two on-board Linux computers running quad-core Pentium chips and programmed in C and C++.
The new TT-S, unofficially dubbed “Shelly,” uses a different system. It has no cameras, only GPS, and a smaller, less powerful computing box running Sun’s Java Real Time System running on Solaris. Why? Despite Junior’s speedy processors, it still takes the car between 20-50 milliseconds to react to inputs from its sensory equipment. Because the TT-S “Shelly” is traveling at much higher speeds–the team has pushed it over 140 mph–even 20 milliseconds is too much of a delay.
You can view more videos of the project at the link.
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Study Suggests that Certain Smells Promote Good Behavior
Katie Liljenquist of Brigham Young University led a study that suggests that clean-smelling environments subtly encourage people to avoid abberant behavior. From Science Daily:
The study titled “The Smell of Virtue” was unusually simple and conclusive. Participants engaged in several tasks, the only difference being that some worked in unscented rooms, while others worked in rooms freshly spritzed with Windex.
The first experiment evaluated fairness.
As a test of whether clean scents would enhance reciprocity, participants played a classic “trust game.” Subjects received $12 of real money (allegedly sent by an anonymous partner in another room). They had to decide how much of it to either keep or return to their partners who had trusted them to divide it fairly. Subjects in clean-scented rooms were less likely to exploit the trust of their partners, returning a significantly higher share of the money.
Link via Instapundit | Image: flickr user rq?
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PETMAN Walks Like A Man
Looks like Boston Dynamics, the robot company that brought us BigDog and RHex, has worked out how to make a robot walk like a man. This is PETMAN, a robot that is supposed to serve humans. Currently it is used to test chemical warfare suits for the military. Link (with embedded YouTube clip)
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