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Researchers at the University of Manitoba are working on a robot that plays hockey. They called it Jennifer, after player Jennifer Botterill. The robot was built by the Korean company Robotis, and the university has modified it and is working on its hockey and skating skills. As far as George Carlin’s three activities of hockey, Jennifer does pretty well with a puck, she could use some work on her skating, but can she fight? The project team hopes to get Jennifer into the the DARwin-op Humanoid Application Challenge in May. Link -via BroBible
Fake Science is a great blog filled with all kinds of fun facts like the one above. Who knew that cats actually have built in danger sensors?
One of the newest chameleon species discovered in the wild is so small it’s no wonder they’ve slipped through the cracks for so many years. Found in Madagascar, the Brookesia micra is a miniscule 3cm in length, and is so cute that the Geico gecko has started looking for a new job!
Here’s more on this little cutie:
Ted Townsend, of San Diego State University did some genetic testing on the little guys and has come to the conclusion that they probably trace their roots back to a smaller variety of chameleon than what most of us are familiar with. “Their size suggests that chameleons might have evolved in Madagascar from small and inconspicuous ancestors, quite unlike the larger and more colourful chameleons most familiar to us today,” he told the Daily Mail.
As for the smallest reptile overall, that title still belongs to 16 millimeter Jaragua Sphaero, or dwarf gecko, but even at twice the size, the Brookesia micra are tiny little guys.
If you ever visit Madagascar, tread lightly and check your pockets before you head home, because these chameleons are so tiny that they’re easy to miss!
Link –image credit: Animal Press/Barcroft Media
A 20-million-year-old bat fly was discovered in a mine in the Dominican Republic, the first fossilized fly of its type ever found. Its descendants are still around, sucking blood from modern bats, but scientists did not know how far back these parasites existed. But what’s even more enlightening is that this fly carried an ancient strain of bat malaria, of a species new to science. George Poinar, Jr. of Oregon State University found the fly, and also found the malaria while examining the fly under a microscope.
Before he became a specialist in ancient diseases inside equally ancient bugs, Poinar had worked on attempting to extract DNA from insects trapped in amber—work which author Michael Crichton has acknowledged as part of his inspiration for Jurassic Park.
But no ancient bats will be reconstructed from this specimen, even if it were possible.
“As far as I’m concerned,” Poinar said, “this specimen is so rare that we wouldn’t want to attempt to try it.”
Read more about the bat fly at National Geographic News. Link
Huzzah! Another scientific mystery bites the dust! Scientists have finally cracked a problem that has "perplexed humanity since Leonardo da Vinci pondered it 500 years ago."
Learn all about the Rapunzel Number, which provides a key ratio needed to calculate the effect of gravity on hair relative to its length. In the right hands, this dangerous number can predict the shape of any ponytail:
Cambridge Professor Raymond Goldstein told Reuters that he and his colleagues took account of the stiffness of individual hairs, the effects of gravity and the average waviness of human hair to come up with their formula. [...]
"That determines whether the ponytail looks like a fan or whether it arcs over and becomes nearly vertical at the bottom," Goldstein said in a telephone interview.
The research also took into account how a bundle of hair is swelled by the outward pressure that arises from collisions between the component hairs.
Oh, he also mentioned how the Rapunzel Number would also help scientists deepend their understanding of fibers, as well as be useful in computer graphics and animation, but we all know that the real reason for the study is to break the stronghold of the hair stylist mafia on ponytail-wearing populace.
By now you’ve discovered that the man in the picture is not Steve Jobs, but rather a mutton chopped Asian man impersonating the tech superstar.
However, that thing standing next to him has to be a cyborg, a real life cybernetic organism, although I’m pretty sure it must be quite underpowered since it’s been constructed out of Mac parts.
In true Macborg fashion it won’t be compatible with 80% of the world, it will be impossible to fix once broken, and don’t even think about upgrading- if you want more memory you’re just going to have to break down and buy a new one every four or five years.
But it sure is shiny, and clean looking, with lots of white and silver bits and a fruit shaped logo, that counts for something, right?
It
looks like an insignificant spec of dust, but if scientists are right,
it could be the ancestor of us all.
Meet Otavia antiqua, a microscopic, sponge-like African fossil that could be the earliest known animal:
The creature, Otavia antiqua, was found in 760-million-year-old rock in Namibia and was as tiny as it may be important.
"The fossils are small, about the size of a grain of sand, and we have found many hundreds of them," said study leader Anthony Prave, a geologist at the University of St. Andrews in the U.K.
"In fact, when we look at thin sections of the rocks, certain samples would likely yield thousands of specimens. Thus, it is possible that the organisms were very abundant."
From these tiny "sponges" sprang very big things, the authors suggest. As possibly the first muticellular animals, Otavia could well be the forerunner of dinosaurs, humans-basically everything we think of as "animal."
Read more at National Geographic: Link (Photo: Anthony Prave/University of St. Andrews)
Jordan Correa, a developer on the Microsoft Robotics Team, built a robot to interact with his dog, Darwin, while he was away at work. It’s got a lot of neat features. Geeks that don’t even have dogs would enjoy having one of these around! -via The Daily What Geek
Photo: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University
NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera captured a boulder on the Moon that decided to go on a little journey. Looking at the track, you'd think that this happened recently. Well, in geologic times perhaps:
The lonely journey of this large boulder is apparent from its track in a sloping regolith surface. A casual glance might suggest that it happened last week, or even that its rolling might resume at any moment. However, closer inspection will detect a few craters that clearly superpose and therefore post-date the track, showing that this 9-meter diameter boulder stopped rolling some time ago. Impacts are used in this way to provide a relative sense for the timing of events on planetary surfaces across the solar system. The procedure assumes a steady flux of impacting bodies in each size range, with smaller impacts being much more frequent than large impacts.
Though long ago to humans, however, this boulder's journey was made in geologically recent times. Studies suggest that regolith development from micrometeorite impacts will erase tracks like these over time intervals of tens of millions of years. If rate estimates are accurate, this boulder track might not be older than 50-100 million years. Eventually its track will be erased completely.
That's how a lunar rock roll, dudes: Link
I don’t know about you guys, but unless the applicant was absolutely terrible, I would totally hire him after that.
3d printing continues to take us boldly into the brave new world of the 21st century, and not surprisingly medical applications are at the top of the innovation ladder, since replacement parts are always in demand.
Recently, an entire mandible was created in a 3d printer by mixing titanium with the printing compound, and an elderly woman got a new lease on life thanks to the 3d printing of this replacement part. Here’s the scoop:
The patient was an elderly woman of 83 years who had developed a chronic bone infection in her lower jaw. Reconstructive surgery would be risky (and expensive) at her age so they decided to try something new – an operation that is literally the first of its kind.
They crafted a brand new jaw for her, made from titanium powder fused in a 3D printer. The complex body part comes complete with articulated joints, cavities to promote muscle attachment, and grooves to direct regrowth of nerves and veins. It will also be equipped with a specially made dental bridge into which false teeth can be screwed into holes. That will happen later this month during a follow-up surgery.
The operation was done in June last year, but has only recently been publicized – probably because they decided to make sure it actually worked first!
And work it did: our lovely old granny got to walk away from the hospital only four days after a surgery that only took four hours – a fifth of the time it would have taken to do a traditional reconstructive surgery. The day after the surgery the woman was already able to swallow with her new mouth!
Now, doctors just need to team up with Pirate Bay and start sending bones to each other via torrent file. Modern medicine just keeps getting cooler and cooler!
Link –image credit: organprinter
Scientific breakthroughs inspire science fiction. But that door swings both ways, because popular science fiction and its reception also affect scientific research and its reputation, as the general public is more likely to read a science fiction novel or see a movie than to discuss the merits of the latest genetic studies. The most popular science fiction comes from someone who follows science and thinks, “What could possibly go wrong?” The classic example is the group of young educated writers who got together around the time Luigi Galvani was getting publicity for his experiments in animating frog muscles with electricity.
While the group of friends at Lake Geneva imagined the ghoulish possibilities of galvanism, one young woman was so horrified by the idea of reanimating corpses that she subsequently had a dream in which she saw “the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together.” This dream inspired her to write a horror story in which a “mad scientist” creates a monster out of dead body parts, a monster that wreaks havoc and kills innocents. The author is Mary Shelley. The story, of course, is Frankenstein. Considered by many to be the first true work of science fiction, it was certainly the world’s first cautionary tale about the perils of science messing around with life.
There are other examples in a post at Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Author Laura H. Kahn wants to encourage scientists to write more fiction, so that stories about science could be more informative, and maybe a little less horrifying. Link -Thanks, Janice!
Movies and television shows always show scientists as being stuffy older folks shrouded in white lab coats, but real scientists look much more like the rest of us than they would have you think. That’s why This Is What A Scientist is so great -it shows real scientists living their everyday lives, looking like regular people. What a great way to counter the stereotypes.
The short answer, according to speculation by veterinary medicine professor Alan Beck, is that it would be a disaster. Cats play a critical role in keeping the rodent population down. If there were no cats, we’d be overrun with rats:
By killing mice and rats in barns and grain storage areas, cats are vital for keeping those pests in check. In India, Beck said, cats are believed to play a significant role in lessening the amount of grain loss caused by consumption or contamination by rodents. In other words, it may be true that humans feed cats, but without cats, humans would have less food in the first place. [...]
And if the rodent population shot up, this would of course trigger a cascade of other ecological effects. On that same island in New Zealand, for instance, ecologists observed that, as rat numbers increased in the absence of cats, the population of seabirds whose eggs rats preyed upon declined. If the approximately 220 million domestic cats in the world all bit the dust, seabird populations would likely fall worldwide, while the populations of non-cat predators that prey on rats would be expected to increase.
Link -via @AlexisMadrigal | Photo: Flickr user wapico
Don Pettit, an astronaut and science educator whose work we’ve featured extensively on Neatorama, is now on the International Space Station. For his most recent demonstration, Pettit charged knitting needles with static electricity and then shot water drops at them. The drops, attracted by the charge, orbited the needles.
-via Geekologie | Pettit’s Twitter Feed
Antdude, if you’ve been waiting for an article to be specifically dedicated to only you, here you go. Of course, even those of you who aren’t insect/human hybrids will be sure to enjoy io9′s fascinating article featuring 10 frightening facts about ants. For example, did you know:
Ants have already survived a mass extinction event
The Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event is thought to have occurred approximately 65 million years ago following an absolutely massive impact event. Widely regarded as the downfall of the dinosaurs (and, incidentally, the rise of mammals), the years following the KT-extinction event are actually believed to have been a time of incredibly rapid speciation and worldwide expansion for ants, marking what researchers Bert Hölldobler and Edward O. Wilson call “a rise to ecological dominance.”
Really, there’s a good chance ants will outlive humans as well.
The future of waste receptacle technology is here, and it has an LCD screen that can tell you how your stocks are doing today, how long it will take you to get home on public transit, and what the weather looks like for tomorrow.
It’s bombproof, offers a free Wi-Fi connection, and it appears that the only thing that hasn’t improved is how it handles waste.
One hundred of these computerized trash bins are going to be placed in London’s financial district before the 2012 Olympic Games begin in July, so if you’re heading to London this summer you can stop by and say hi, then you’ll have a great story to tell your grandchildren!
Obviously,
there's a lot of money to be made from hit pop songs. But can you predict
or even make which songs will make it ot the top of the charts?
Bring in the scientists! Artificial Intelligence researcher Tijl De Bie and colleagues analyzed 50 years' worth of hit songs on Britain's top 40 charts and came up with a formula.
From an interview over at The Los Angeles Times:
You used artificial intelligence to devise an equation that could predict which songs made it to the top of the charts. How does it work?
To predict the hit potential of a given song, we used a computer to quantify how similar it is to previous "hits" and "flops." Time frame is important: If you're scoring a song from today, then we will consider the songs in 2011 more important than the songs in the '60s.
We represent each song using a set of 23 different features that characterize the audio. Some are very simple features — such as how fast it is, how long the song is — and some are more complex features, such as how energetic the song is, how loud it is, how danceable and how stable the beat is throughout the song. We also took into account the highest rank that songs ever achieved on the chart.
The computer can combine a song's features in an equation that can be used to score any given song.
We can then evaluate how accurately the computer scored it by seeing how well the song actually did.
Every single week now we're updating our equation based on how recent releases have done on the chart. So the equation will continue to evolve, because music tastes will evolve as well.
Any good examples of the computer guessing correctly?
Wiley's "Wearing My Rolex" did well, strongly based on loudness. So that was an expected hit. It went to No. 2 in 2008.
Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy," which went to No. 1 in 2006, scored well thanks to its danceability, among other things.
Elvis Presley's "Suspicious Minds," which went to No. 2 in 1970, had a fairly simple harmonic movement, which at that time was a good thing if you wanted to score a hit.
Previously on Neatorama: Is There a Scientific Explanation for Justin Bieber?
Science has progressed to the point that we know how cats purr. In house cats, purrs are produced by vibrations of folds in the larynx. This was difficult to determine, as cats tend to stop purring when examined by a scientist, and cats that are restrained or unconscious do not purr. Such research is much more difficult for those studying lions and tigers.
But the details of who can purr and who can’t is not so simple. In a review of purring in cats, G. Peters tabulated that 20 of 36 species of cat have been said to purr, including lions, leopards, and other big cats. (As for the other 16, Peters wrote, there is not yet enough information to know whether they purr or not.) The question is whether the noises made by the big cats within the genus Panthera are true purrs — a sound created by moving air modulated by vocal folds as in smaller cats — or are actually different noises that only vaguely sound like purrs. The “rolling, gurgling growl” female big cats emit while in heat may be a kind of purr, or it may be something else entirely. And, Peters says, big cats might have the ability to purr but simply don’t. Somebody is going to have to make careful, close-up acoustic recordings of these purr-like sounds to better understand how they correspond to purrs of smaller cats, although I imagine finding volunteers for taping tigers in heat is a difficult task.
How much more frightening would it be to try looking down the throat of an actively purring big cat? Still, there is some research on the subject.
In 1989 anatomist M.H. Hast published a study on the larynges of big cats and found that lions, tigers, jaguars, and leopards had “a large pad of fibro-elastic tissue” near the forward portion of their paired vocal folds. (The exception was the snow leopard, a big cat that has never been heard to roar.) These expansions, in addition to the ability of these cats to lower the larynx thanks to the flexibility of the hyoid bone and its attachments, allowed lions, tigers, leopards, and jaguars to better transfer the energy required to make loud, low-frequency roars.
So it is possible that the biological differences that allows some big cats to roar has left them unable to purr. Read more about purr research at Laelaps. Link
(Image credit: Brian Switek)
Here’s one of those studies you probably didn’t need science to tell you: guys show off to impress women.
In the experiment, a group of men and women (on the younger side, with an average age of 21) were given the opportunity to donate money to a fund, knowing they would get nothing in return other than the pride of their selflessness. Whether they were watched or not, women donated at the same rate. But men, when watched by women, donated at higher rates. They didn’t donate at higher rates when men watched.
I don’t know about you guys, but I’m sure flabbergasted by this one. Who would have guessed?
Link Via The Jane Dough
In order to examine the way that the human brain evolved differently from that of other primates, scientists arranged for selected humans and monkeys to watch the Clint Eastwood movie The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly:
All the study participants watched 30 minutes of the Clint Eastwood spaghetti western, listening to the dialogue through headphones. The humans watched it once and the monkeys saw it six times, during which the participants’ eye movements were scanned and their neural activity monitored via functional magnetic resonance imaging.
The researchers found some similarities in brain activity locations among the species, but several differences, too. Monkey brain areas that fired up during movements on screen were quiescent in the humans, yet both species shared activity in other areas. This is a function of the species‘ separate evolutions — brain regions that may once have been very similar have adapted to focus on different tasks.
“The method may clarify whether specific functions are preserved in areas that anatomically correspond, are absent in one of the two species, or are shifted to other cortical locations,” Mantini and colleagues wrote. This, in turn, could shed light on how human cognitive function evolved, as compared to cognitive function in our closest cousins.
Which movie would you compel monkeys to watch?
Link | Image: United Artists
No matter how much you think you know, science is always coming up with new findings. Think you are safe from STDs? Think again:
Studies show over 80% of all sexually active adults will contract an STD at some point, although most won’t notice. That’s because 80% of all people who contract one of the 25 varieties of STDs don’t show any symptoms and most don’t even realize they have one. In fact, the American Social Health Association estimates that 80% of sexually active people contract the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) at one point in their life. While those statistics were taken before the HPV vaccine was released, the vaccine only prevents two of the most dangerous strains of the disease, meaning even those vaccinated can still catch one of the many other strains.
While the numbers sound scary, the upside is that most people who contract an STD won’t suffer any negative effects as a result.
That’s just one of a list of ten thing you probably didn’t know that you can learn about at Oddee. Be prepared that this list contains adults-only subject matter, but the images are SFW. Link
Modern technology might sound better, hold more songs and be easier to use than the vintage stuff, but it sure doesn’t have the same visual impact as a classic phonograph. Fortunately with this iPhonograph you get the stunning classic style blended with the beauty of new technology. If you’ve got the skills, Instructables has the steps to make your own.
Link Via Geekosystem
While I find it impossible highly unlikely that humans will still exist in 50 million years, it’s horrifying fun to see what some scientists artists think we will look like at the end of eternity.
According to these illustrations by madman speculative zoologist Dougal Dixon, humans will evolve into some sort of organ shaped being, with yucky cute trunk tail and our own built in bat wings umbrellas.
The illustrations were published in Omni magazine in the early 1980s, and I can’t help but wonder- would Dougal arrive at the same horrifying interesting conclusion if he were asked to draw future humans again today, or would modern scientific discoveries force him to simply leave the page blank?
Doctors from the Texas Heart Institute have successfully replaced a patient’s heart with a device that keeps the blood flowing, thereby allowing him to live without a detectable heartbeat or even a pulse. Here’s how it works:
The turbine-like device, that are simple whirling rotors, developed by the doctors does not beat like a heart, rather provides a ‘continuous flow’ like a garden hose.
Craig Lewis was a 55-year-old, dying from amyloidosis, which causes a build-up of abnormal proteins. The proteins clog the organs so much that they stop working, according to NPR.
But after the operation, with the ‘machine’ as his heart’s replacement, Lewis’ blood continued to spin and move through his body.
However, when doctors put a stethoscope to his chest, no heartbeat or pulse can be heard (only a ‘humming’ sound)—which “by all criteria that we conventionally use to analyze patients”, Doctor Cohn said, he is dead.
This is proof that “human physiology can be supported without a pulse”.
With all the talk of replacing human organs with those of an animal and electronic hearts, it’s surprising that medical researchers overlooked taking a trip to the plumbing section of the hardware store for replacement parts!
Taking into account human spacecraft going up and cloaked alien ships coming down, is the Earth gaining or losing mass? The BBC asked Cambridge University scientists to account for all of the material leaving and arriving on Earth:
But overall, Dr Smith has calculated that the Earth – including the sea and the atmosphere – is losing mass. He points to a handful of reasons.
For instance, the Earth’s core is like a giant nuclear reactor that is gradually losing energy over time, and that loss in energy translates into a loss of mass.
But this is a tiny amount – he estimates no more than 16 tonnes a year.
And what about launching rockets and satellites into space, like Phobos-Grunt? Dr Smith discounts this as most of it will fall back down to Earth again.
But there is something else that is making the planet lose mass. Gases such as hydrogen are so light, they are escaping from the atmosphere.
Smith concluded that the Earth loses 50,000 metric tonnes each year.
Link -via @BrainPicker | Photo: NASA
What
triggered a massive ice age on Earth 480 million years ago? Scientists
have a surprising answer: the humble moss.
The simple plants' interactions with rocks are believed to be the cause.
"The humble moss has created the climate which we enjoy today, from which the life we see all around us evolved," said Prof Tim Lenton of Exeter University, one of the lead researchers.
Carbon dioxide insulates the planet, rather like a duvet wrapped around it: the higher the concentration of CO2, the higher the average global temperature.
Atmospheric levels of the gas 480 million years ago are thought to have been 16 times higher than they are now, and average global temperatures are thought to have been 25C, around 10C higher than they are now.
But by 460 million years ago, CO2 levels had fallen by half and the planet began to cool, allowing the formation of the polar ice caps.
The question is: what caused the drop in CO2 levels? The answer, according to an experiment by Prof Lenton and his colleague Prof Liam Dolan of Oxford University is "moss".
One of NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) lunar spacecraft has finally captured the far side (or the dark side, if you're poetically inclined) of the Moon on video. So far, no Cybertronian spacecraft was found.
In the video, the north pole of the moon is visible at the top of the screen as the spacecraft flies toward the lunar south pole. One of the first prominent geological features seen on the lower third of the moon is the Mare Orientale, a 560-mile-wide (900 kilometer) impact basin that straddles both the moon's near and far side.
The clip ends with rugged terrain just short of the lunar south pole. To the left of center, near the bottom of the screen, is the 93-mile-wide (149 kilometer) Drygalski crater with a distinctive star-shaped formation in the middle. The formation is a central peak, created many billions of years ago by a comet or asteroid impact.
You're looking at a "supergiant," a type of amphipod found at the Kermadec Trench off New Zealand, at an ocean depth of over 4 miles. Deep sea amphipods are not unusual, but they're usually only about 3/4" to 1" long. As you can see in the photo above, the supergiants are a lot bigger:
Alan Jamieson, from the University of Aberdeen's Oceanlab, said: "It's a bit like finding a foot-long cockroach."
"I stopped and thought: 'What on Earth was that?' This amphipod was far bigger than I ever thought possible."
The strange animals were found using a large metal trap, which had been equipped with a camera, housed in sapphire glass to keep it safe from the high pressures of the deep sea.
The one who didn't get away. A male Nephilengys malabarensis
snapped off his genitals (red box) in the female, but it was eaten anyway.
I suppose it's better to snap off your genitals rather than be devoured by your partner after mating, but it's not that much better. Here's a solution that the male orb-weaver spider Nephilengys malabarensis developed to increase its chance of survival after mating with a cannibalistic female:
Daiqin Li at the National University of Singapore and his colleagues studied the species and found that after the male breaks away his severed organ continues to pump sperm into the female. This allows him to fertilize her remotely, while denying entry to other males. Even though the male cannot regrow his genitals and so renders himself sterile, he increases the odds that he will father the offspring of his one and only mate. [...]
Li thinks that this bizarre strategy, found in only two spider families so far, evolved to counter the female’s penchant for cannibalism. “The females are very aggressive and 75% of them kill the males during sex,” he explains. “The duration of copulation is also very short, and the females initiate the break-off.”
Previously on Neatorama: 30 Strangest Animal Mating Habits
