Discussion about weather is often relegated to the realm of awkward small-talk and complaints about the heat/snow/rain, but extraplanetary weather is a different thing altogether... at least for me. These images of a storm over Saturn's surface--the largest ever recorded on the planet--are interesting and beautiful. The false color doesn't hurt, but it's still so massive that imagining it takes a bit of brain yoga.
First detected in December 2010, the storm has developed from a small spot into a raging storm covering an area about 4 billion square kilometres, or eight times the surface of the Earth, in Saturn's northern hemisphere.
The false colours on the images mark the different altitudes of clouds: blue clouds reside at the highest altitude with those in red at the lowest. The two high-resolution images at the bottom are mosaics, each made up of 84 images taken over 4.5 hours. The lower of the two was taken 11 hours, or one Saturn day, after the first.
The top two images are enlargements taken from the earlier of the two bottom images. They show the head of the storm (top left) and its turbulent middle (top right). Calculations reveal that the head of the storm is moving west at a speed of about 100 kilometres per hour.
When people ask actors and directors and authors who their influences are, I always feel like those people answer with the names they think are most appropriate. That's why I love when there's evidence, like this fan letter, that predates the fame of the adoring fan. In 1960, at 31 years of age, Stanley Kubrick wrote a letter to Ingmar Bergman praising the filmmaker's vision and skill.
I believe you are the greatest film-maker at work today. Beyond that, allow me to say you are unsurpassed by anyone in the creation of mood and atmosphere, the subtlety of performance, the avoidance of the obvious, the truthfullness and completeness of characterization. To this one must also add everything else that goes into the making of a film.
The letter is available in full with a transcript over at Letters of Note. Link
With the final launch of NASA's space shuttle program scheduled for Friday, it's the perfect time to do a little shuttle retrospective. Over on mental_floss, Miss Cellania talks about the beginnings of the 35-year space shuttle program and what NASA has to do with Star Trek.
As soon as Apollo 11 delivered astronauts to the lunar surface, NASA was asked to develop a new space program that would be more immediately useful and (most importantly) more cost-efficient. The Apollo program continued through mission 17 in 1972, but meanwhile engineers were developing a reusable spacecraft. It was a totally new concept, a vehicle tough enough to go into space, complete mission after mission, and land on earth with such little damage that it could be sent up again. We didn’t see the first space shuttle until 1976. It was called Enterprise.
Sigh. I don't really know what to say about this, so I'll just leave the rules here.
RULES
1) Got to pick up the bag with your mouth standing on 1 foot. 2) You can use whatever foot you would like and you can change up the foot you stand on. 3) Each bag height you have 3 tries to pick up the bag while being on 1 foot, if you do not get it in 3 tries you are out of the game. 4) Every time you have people advancing you roll the bag down so it gets lower. 5) You roll the bag down until there is a champion standing.
Do I detect a note of pestilence? Farmers in Virginia, Oregon, Washington and California are battling an invasion of the Asian brown marmorated stink bug, an invasive pest with no native enemies which has been decimating farmers' fruit and vegetable crops; now, the stink bug has moved into the vineyards.
The bugs are a nuisance to farmers due to using their tongues to suck juice from fruits and vegetables. While this does not influence the flavor of the produce, it does leave visible damage that makes it less appealing to shoppers. Crops such as apples, peaches, blackberries, sweet and field corn, soybeans, tomatoes, lima beans and green peppers were all damaged last season.
This year, wineries have noticed the insects clinging to grapes that are being harvested for wine, according to usnews.com. If the stink bugs get crushed with the grapes, it only takes 10 of them crushed into one ton of grapes to affect the flavor of the wine. Workers who harvest the grapes have been removing the insects from the clumps by hand.
Scientists have been searching for a way to combat the stink bug problem. One area of research involves using the Asian wasp. The non-stinging wasps lay their eggs inside of the eggs of the stink bugs. The developing wasps then eat the developing stink bugs.
Tests are still being done to determine if the wasps would cause additional problems if they were introduced to areas of the U.S. The tests could take an additional two years to complete before the wasps would be approved for use in orchards, vineyards and gardens.
Every time the idea of controlling one pest species involves introducing another non-native species, I spend a few minutes thinking about the episode of The Simpsons in which Bart lets loose a frog in Australia. Let's hope this wasp they're thinking of introducing isn't like that.
I cannot express how badly I want to hula hoop now. I'm not even joking. This instructional video from Hoopsmiles (John Coyne) with a guest appearance by Spinyang is almost frighteningly catchy while offering tips on proper hooping position, weight and diameter. From a dude who's wearing tie-dyed cargo shorts, you guys.
This little guy is the offspring of a female zebra and a male donkey, born in Haicang Zoo in China. His unusual genetic make-up has graced him with a donkey-shaped body and zebra-like head, with just a smattering of black and white stripes in his mostly brown hide. There were difficulties during birth, but zoo officials say the donkra is thriving and already weighs in at over 30kg. To watch a video of the cutest little crossbreed in China, check out the report on BBC News. Link
Though there are always exceptions, most of us were born with the five basic senses of human perception: sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell. These aren’t the only means of interpreting sensory clues we have in our arsenals, though—the sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth senses are all equally important for our survival. I'm not talking about ESP or telekinesis; these are actual physiological tools we're utilizing right now.
THERMOCEPTION, or the ability to detect heat and cold.
The detection of heat (or lack thereof) is removed from the sense of touch. Mammals have two different methods of thermoception: one detects heat (temperatures above body temperature) and the other signals cold (or temperatures below body temperature). The most advanced thermoception in nature belongs to the pit viper and boa snakes, which use ultra-specialized thermoreceptors to “see” infrared radiation emanated by nearby warm-blooded animals.
Right:Master of thermoception: Pope's Pit Viper. (Image: Amod Zambre)
The fire-chaser beetle Melanophila acuminate uses a similar system to detect forest fires over long range distances; the fire-chaser lays its eggs inside of newly burned conifers. This sixth sense may not seem as awesome as reading minds or seeing dead people, but it’s pretty useful for keeping us from dying of exposure or getting burned. Aside from constantly catching your fingers on the iron, there are some drawbacks to losing your ability to sense heat and cold. Especially with injury-induced neuropathy and HSAN disorders (see below), the risk of heatstroke, hypothermia, and serious household injury are ever-present dangers.
NOCICEPTION, or how you know when something hurts.
Again, just as with temperature detection, the sense of physiological pain is removed from the sense of touch. Nociceptors (often called “pain receptors”) are an integral part of the human nervous system. When nociceptors detect potentially damaging stimuli--say, a bump on the elbow or a splinter in your finger—a signal fires from the source of pain through the spinal cord into the brain, giving you both an awareness of danger and the approximate location of injury. So what happens when your pain receptors go on vacation? It sounds really pleasant on the surface, the idea of not feeling pain, but the reality is a little bit horrifying.
Loss of nociception is a hallmark symptom of leprosy; damaged receptors leave sufferers unaware of injuries, which are susceptible to repeat injury, viral, fungal and bacterial infection, and excessive blood loss. Leprosy doesn't cause body parts to "fall off" as is commonly believed, but amputation, accidental removal and necrosis aren't uncommon in cases of untreated leprosy. If, say, you're one of the few people in a hundred-thousand who are born with any of the four types of Hereditary Sensory and Autonomic Neuropathy (HSAN), a set of congenital disorders which inhibit (or completely prevent) the nerves from transmitting sensations to the brain, then you're likely to have difficulty detecting the movement of your deep muscle tissue, have limited or absent sensation in the lower limbs, and will probably have issues with skin ulceration and reduced circulation from limited range of motion.
PROPRIOCEPTION: knowing where your parts are.
Proprioception tells us how our body is arranged; that is, it lets us know our arms are attached to our shoulders, and that our hands are at the ends of those arms. It also informs us of our body's muscular activities--whether they're functioning as intended and how well our muscular system responds to command.
If you've lost your sense of propioception after a highly experimental brain surgery or spinal cord injury, you may end up suffering from Alien Hand Syndrome just like Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove. Well, sort of like that. Your hand or other affected limb will seem to move independently of your command, with apparent agency and purpose. It probably won't be a Nazi, though.
If you've had a few too many drinks and your friendly neighborhood police officer asks you to take a field sobriety test, you're probably going to miss your nose when your fingertip gets lost in the space between your face and the end of your arm. Likewise, you'll have a hard time walking a straight line and judging the distance of objects from yourself. (Seriously, just don't drink and drive.)
EQUILIBRIOCEPTION, the sense of balance.
Image: Bikram Yoga Queens, NY
If you enjoy walking upright and not falling down when you turn your head, then you're a fan of equilibrioception. This is one of the more complicated senses in that, ideally, it requires the function of at least three others to work properly.
A sense of sight, a working vestibular (ear) system, and a working sense of proprioception work in conjunction to keep us upright. If sight or vestibular health are impaired--by sudden blindness or an inner ear infection, perhaps--equilibrioception is also impaired.
A fun result of having a multiple-system sensory network is that it can be knocked askew pretty easily. Most balance disorders are caused by changes in fluid level in the inner ear--as with Ménière's disease and perilymph fistula, both of which cause vertigo, dizziness and nausea--but aging, traveling at sea, and upper respiratory infections can all make you wobbly, clumsy, or unable to stand or walk. Source info: 9senses
Randy Hage is a Los Angeles-based artist on a mission to preserve the crumbling storefronts of Manhattan--one 1/12-scale miniature at a time. The project started when Hage noticed the generic and mass-produced logos of chain stores and restaurants shoving the small, worn shopfronts right out of the city. “My goal is to document and bring greater attention to those disappearing storefronts,” he said. There are more examples of Hage's awesome miniatures in the capsule he curated for How to Be a Retronaut. http://www.howtobearetronaut.com/2011/07/manhattan-in-miniature/
HEYHEYHEY, the studio behind Melvin the Magical Mixed Media Machine (or just Melvin the Machine, or just Melvin) designed this Rube Goldberg machine with a bit of a twist--instead of just performing simple tasks with mind-bending inefficiency, Melvin's also in the business of self-promotion. While Melvin is performing, he takes pictures, makes videos of his audience, then uploads them to his blog, Facebook and Twitter accounts. He also screen-prints merchandise. All of these things can be found on Melvin's site. Link
A national education program being carried out right now on the International Space Station involves watching the behavior or animals and insects in microgravity. This video is of Esmerelda, a golden silk orb-weaver spider (Nephila clavipes), weaving a web in her new low-gravity home. Typically, an orb-weaver will spin an asymmetrical web, but researchers have noticed that those spun by the two spiders on the ISS are becoming more circular. In addition, the spiders no longer sit at the tops of their webs facing downwards, and are instead hanging out in all sorts of positions to look out for their captured prey--something that doesn't happen here on Earth.
Read more about the experiment and the oddities in Esmeralda's behavior on New Scientist. Link
In the aftermath of the devastating Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995, the Japanese city of Kobe needed something to symbolize its recovery and inspire the masses. Enter Tetsujin-28-go! (or his English-translation counterpart, Gigantor) to the rescue. The city banded together to raise funds for design and construction of the much-loved comics character, created by Kobe-born Mitsuteru Yokoyama in 1956. WebUrbanist has the history of the project, along with the inspiring story and lots of images of Gigantor's construction. Link
I fall under the group of "cat people," though I admit that this isn't exactly by choice. The fact that I have a cat but no dog indicates a little bit about my personality, according to a survey by hunch.com. For instance, I am more likely than dog people to skew liberal, live in a city, own an Android device, and be self-professedly fashion-challenged. (Two of these are correct; I'll leave the guessing up to you.)
What does your pet-owner status say about you? Check out the infographic at Hunch and find out. Link
Neatorama has featured lots of very strange beards in the past, but this... this I've never seen. The audience at the 1991 Beard and Moustache Championship in Tacoma, WA, had a double-rainbow moment when competitor Dean Beacon revealed his entry for the Freestyle Beard portion of the contest. I think commenter moosewomb says it best: "You would never be sad with a beard like that. You would? wake up every day and think 'Yes. My beard is incredible.'"
Untitled (Comb), Mr. Kartick, Mr. Ram, Mr. Vikash; Star Creations Ltd, Kolkata, India
Jeremy Hutchison had an idea: get companies to make products that don't work. "I asked them to make me one of their products, but to make it with an error," Hutchison explains. "I specified that this error should render the object dysfunctional. And rather than my choosing the error, I wanted the factory worker who made it to choose what error to make. Whatever this worker chose to do, I would accept and pay for."
Hutchison's collection of these useless products, called Err, will be on display in London beginning July 8. Check out more information about the project (along with lots more pictures) on Creative Review. http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2011/june/jeremy-hutchinson
