Interesting Stuff Thread

legspin

Not quite sure where to put this...

Today is the late Douglas Adams' birthday. Check out the Google doodle for today.

Only decent tune the Eagles ever did, afaic.

Turtwig

Google Doodle had better feature him on Towel Day too.

Delirium

Support Cells Found in Human Brain Make Mice Smarter

Glial cells – a family of cells found in the human central nervous system and, until recently, considered mere “housekeepers” – now appear to be essential to the unique complexity of the human brain. Scientists reached this conclusion after demonstrating that when transplanted into mice, these human cells could influence communication within the brain, allowing the animals to learn more rapidly.

The study, out today in the journal Cell Stem Cell, suggests that the evolution of a subset of glia called astrocytes – which are larger and more complex in humans than other species – may have been one of the key events that led to the higher cognitive functions that distinguish us from other species.

“This study indicates that glia are not only essential to neural transmission, but also suggest that the development of human cognition may reflect the evolution of human-specific glial form and function,” said University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) neurologist Steven Goldman, M.D., Ph.D., co-senior author of the study. “We believe that this is the first demonstration that human glia have unique functional advantages. This finding also provides us with a fundamentally new model to investigate a range of diseases in which these cells may play a role.”

Sarky

I love reading about new discoveries. Each one is another "F*CK YOU" to the ignorance-is-bliss status quo religion and its associated organisations like to promote.

Liamario

Interesting video with depressing comments.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3Dqn1m6Rok

recedite

koth wrote: »

Support Cells Found in Human Brain Make Mice Smarter

On the basis of these findings, the team then evaluated the mice in a series of behavioral tasks designed to test memory and learning ability. They found that the transplanted mice were more rapid learners and both acquired new associations and performed a variety of tasks significantly faster than mice without the human glial cells.

Hmmm... I'm thinking if you transplanted some of these human astrocytes into puppies, then sell them as "smart-puppies". When they start winning at all kinds of trials, everyone will want one.... Is that unethical?

ShooterSF

I want to see what happens if they're transplanted into a gorilla!

recedite

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74-WSM0xTyE

OK, admittedly its a chimp, and its a set-up, but still one of my favourites

robindch

Survival of the fittest, Ukrainian Navy style:

http://en.ria.ru/world/20130312/179963392.html

RIA wrote:

SEVASTOPOL, March 12 (RIA Novosti) - Three of the Ukrainian navy's “killer” dolphins that swam away from their handlers during training exercises probably left to look for mates, an expert said on Tuesday. Ukrainian media reported earlier this month that only two of five military-trained dolphins returned to their base in the Crimean port of Sevastopol after a recent exercise.
Ukraine’s Defense Ministry denied the reports, while refusing to confirm the navy makes use of dolphins, despite the frequent appearance in Ukrainian media of photographs of dolphins with military equipment strapped to them.

“Control over dolphins was quite common in the 1980's,” said Yury Plyachenko, a former Soviet naval anti-sabotage officer. “If a male dolphin saw a female dolphin during the mating season, then he would immediately set off after her. But they came back in a week or so.” Dolphins were trained at Sevastopol for the Soviet Navy as far back as 1973. They were trained to find military equipment such as mines on the seabed, as well as attacking divers and even carrying explosives on their heads to plant on enemy ships.

After the breakup of the USSR and the division of the Black Sea Fleet into Ukrainian and Russian fleets, the dolphin training section and its specialists were handed over to the Ukrainian navy. They were then used for civilian tasks such as working with disabled children, in order to keep the unit intact. A military source in Sevastopol told RIA Novosti last year that the Ukrainian navy had restarted training dolphins to attack enemy combat swimmers and detect mines. The killer-dolphins would be trained to attack enemy combat swimmers using special knives or pistols fixed to their heads, the source said.

Sarky

They're going to train an army of their dolphin brothers, and retake the Black Sea in a tide of blood.

recedite

They were then used for civilian tasks such as working with disabled children, in order to keep the unit intact. A military source in Sevastopol told RIA Novosti last year that the Ukrainian navy had restarted training dolphins to attack enemy combat swimmers

The disabled children will be in for a nasty surprise next summer, when they come down to the beach to say hello again to their dolphin buddies...

Delirium

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOvNQXDLoi4

Bannasidhe

recedite wrote: »

The disabled children will be in for a nasty surprise next summer, when they come down to the beach to say hello again to their dolphin buddies...

Extreme Eugenics :eek:

joseph brand

robindch wrote: »

There is no "direction" in evolution -- there's just generation-by-generation adaption to changing conditions over time.

One simple example of complex adaptions evolving, but subsequently being lost, are the many species of cave fish, snails etc which used to have colors and the eyes to see them, but which lost both as neither conferred any advantage in the absence of light.

Or Dinesh D'Souza.

He evolved a second ar*e, which was a necessity, considering how full of sh1te he is.

recedite

This doctor evolved a whole set of extra fingers.....

A doctor at a hospital in Brazil has been arrested after she was caught using silicon "fingers" to sign in up to six colleagues who then failed to turn up for work...... as many as 300 civil servants in the town were "ghost workers" who claimed their pay packets but never showed up to work.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/brazil/9926151/Doctor-in-Brazil-used-fake-fingers-to-sign-in-absent-colleagues.html

Hotblack Desiato

The alternative approach to defeating fingerprint recognition:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biometrics

Danger to owners of secured items

When thieves cannot get access to secure properties, there is a chance that the thieves will stalk and assault the property owner to gain access. If the item is secured with a biometric device, the damage to the owner could be irreversible, and potentially cost more than the secured property. For example, in 2005, Malaysian car thieves cut off the finger of a Mercedes-Benz S-Class owner when attempting to steal the car.[19]

This is akin to 'rubber hose cryptography' i.e. don't bother guessing or cracking a password, get someone who knows it and beat/torture them until they give it up. Thankfully most of us will never know secrets valuable enough for this approach to be employed :cool:

Liamario

Republican senator changes his mind on gay marriage, now that the shoe is on the other foot

seamus

recedite wrote: »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74-WSM0xTyE

OK, admittedly its a chimp, and its a set-up, but still one of my favourites

I initially thought it was just a simple funny, but as Fox are behind it, I reckon it's a viral for the next Planet of the Apes instalment...

recedite

It came out just before the last movie, AFAIK.

[-0-]

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21828202

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21828202 wrote:

American Nobel Laureate John Mather believes the bar has been set very high for the European Space Agency's (Esa) Planck surveyor.

The satellite was launched in 2009 to make temperature maps of the sky, and on Thursday this data will finally be released to the worldwide scientific community.

There is great hope that Planck will be able to tell us what happened in the first fractions of a second after the Big Bang when the Universe that we can observe today occupied almost no space at all. And by fractions, we mean about a millionth of a billionth, of a billionth, of a billionth of a second after it all got going.

To get at this information, Planck has sampled the "oldest light" in the cosmos - the light that was finally allowed to spread out across space once the Universe had cooled sufficiently to permit the formation of hydrogen atoms.

Before that time, about 375,000 years into the life of the cosmos, conditions would have been so hot that all the light would have been bounced around and trapped in a fog of ionised matter. The Universe would have been opaque.

The "fossil" light is still evident today. It bathes the Earth in a near-uniform glow which, thanks to the expansion of the Universe, can now be found at microwave frequencies.

Its temperature profile has also dropped to just 2.7 degrees above absolute zero, with only a minute excess of warmth or cold either side of this signal depending on where you look on the sky.

These temperature fluctuations reflect differences in the density of matter when the light parted company and set out on its journey.

American satellites, including Mather's historic COBE mission in 1989, have already extracted astonishing insights from this Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation. These include refined estimates for:

The age of Universe - 13.7 billion years old
Its contents - 4.6% atomic matter; 24% dark matter; and 71.4% dark energy
Its shape - it is "flat", meaning space adheres to Euclidean geometry, where straight lines can be extended to infinity and the angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees, etc.
The ignition of the first stars - now timed to have occurred some 400 million years after the Big Bang
"Planck has the extra sensitivity and resolution to retrieve yet more information," the Nasa scientist told BBC News. "The question then is: have they done the right things with the data?"

The European team behind Planck will present maps of the sky in nine frequencies - six more than COBE, and three more than its US successor, WMAP, which flew in 2001.

This broader sweep was designed to give the Esa mission a sharper, cleaner view of the CMB, and the minuscule fluctuations in temperature that are seen around that mean of 2.7 kelvins (-270C).

It is with this keener vision that Planck will endeavour to find "some new phenomenon", not at 375,000 years after the Big Bang but long before then.

Information encoded in the satellite's maps should also tell us about "inflation", the faster than light expansion that cosmologists believe the Universe may have experienced in its first fleeting moments.

Inflation has become the accepted add-on to Big Bang theory in the past 30 years, even though its physics is highly speculative. Scientists like the concept because it would explain some important observations, not least the geometry of space - a superluminal expansion could have stretched everything until it was flat. The tiny quantum fluctuations that drove the expansion could also have given rise to small variations in the amount of matter from one place to another, seeding the later gravitational growth of stars and galaxies.

But there are numerous models for how inflation might have worked. They cannot all be right.

"What we need to do now is back some of these models into the corner, and Planck can help us do that," said Prof Andrew Jaffe from Imperial College London.

One of the ways scientists study the CMB is by subjecting the warm and cold spots in the radiation to a detailed statistical analysis, examining the deviations in temperature as a function of their size on the sky - their angular scale.

This produces a characteristic wiggle on a graph, a so-called power spectrum, which can then be matched against theoretical expectation.

Inflation - if it happened - predicts that this spectrum should be ever so slightly tilted; and WMAP has seen evidence for this.

"It's not yet very precisely determined but this is one of the instances in which Planck will make a real difference," explained Prof Bruce Partridge of Haverford College, Philadelphia.

"Because it has high resolution, it is spanning a wide range of angular scale. And what you want to do to see a slight tilt with respect to angular scale is to have as large a lever arm as possible, and Planck will do that," he told BBC News.

Another prediction of inflation is that the CMB should be gaussian. If you pick up all the temperature data points in the sky map and put them in histogram, you should get a nice bell curve.


"If it's not gaussian then we have to re-think inflation or maybe inflation is more complicated than the simplest models suggest," said Prof Marc Kamionkowski from Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.

Planck's capabilities mean it will provide one of the best checks yet for non-gaussianity.

The ultimate test, however, would be to look for a special signal in the CMB referred to as B-Modes.

Most models of inflation suggest the expansion would have been accompanied by ripples of gravitational energy. These should have been imprinted on the fossil light in its polarisation.

Even if they are there, these B-modes will be very hard to detect, and the Planck team does not intend to make a statement on the issue until a further year of analysis has been completed.

Nonetheless, Thursday's announcement is likely to make some important statements on inflationary tests. A whole swathe of models will probably be confined to the bin at the end of the day.

Esa's Planck project scientist, Dr Jan Tauber, will not be drawn on the findings before the release in Paris. Asked to describe the new temperature maps, he says merely: "They're beautiful."

Great article. The comments make me sad, however.

For example:

YAWN!!! What a waste of 2 minutes of my life reading this
GOD CREATED THE UNIVERSE....THERE WAS NO BIG BANG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I really think it's time we moved to another planet.

wretcheddomain

[-0-] wrote: »

I really think it's time we moved to another planet.

Any suggestions?

Sarky

Comment sections could probably be safely renamed "Ignorant tosspot" sections and nobody important would care. That's an exciting article, very much interested in whatever statements they have to share. Also, heat maps are beautiful.

Beruthiel

[-0-] wrote: »

I really think it's time we moved to another planet.

I hear that Gliese 581g (reportedly a Class M planet) is quite nice this time of year.

[-0-]

Beruthiel wrote: »

I hear that Gliese 581g (reportedly a Class M planet) is quite nice this time of year.

Lets go! I have a towel and everything!

Obliq

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/18/where-the-wild-things-are/?smid=tw-share

These are amazing photos! I like number 13 best.

robindch

Obliq wrote: »

These are amazing photos! I like number 13 best.

My votes are for numbers 7 and 8

I'm surprised that there are no photos from Russia which, in Siberia at least, still has a few shamans left who engage in this kind of slightly nutty fun.

Obliq

robindch wrote: »

My votes are for numbers 7 and 8

I'm surprised that there are no photos from Russia which, in Siberia at least, still has a few shamans left who engage in this kind of slightly nutty fun.

True - perhaps it was a bit of a trek! These are all in Europe aren't they? Goes off for another look.....

recedite

#19 The Angry Badger rocks. Are "the wren boys" anything to do with this stuff?

Obliq

You'd think so alright. Seems pretty pagan to me! Maybe because the ritual has been associated with St. Stephen it didn't get a look in, Y'kno, like with all our ancient celtic customs having been taken over by B*ST*RD religion :mad:

kylith

Now that's the kind of religion I could get behind!

legspin

[-0-] wrote: »

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21828202

I may be wide of the mark but this seems to be related material.
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2013/03/signals-from-before-the-big-bang-patterns-glimpsed-in-the-cmb-todays-most-popular.html

legspin

And more of the same.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/mar/21/planck-telescope-light-big-bang-universe

TheChizler

legspin wrote: »

And more of the same.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/mar/21/planck-telescope-light-big-bang-universe

Damn it! Reading that made me think of Monty Python's universe song and now it's stuck in my head. Thanks a lot :-P

robindch

The Wee Frees worry about other people with silly beliefs muscling into the marriage game:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-21842269

BBC wrote:

Proposed changes to marriage would open the way for Star Wars Jedi to perform ceremonies, a church has said.

The Free Church of Scotland said the Marriage and Civil Partnership (Scotland) Bill will allow groups promoting a belief to marry couples. The government said the change was relevant to bodies such as humanists, who are classed as religious rather than non-religious at the moment.

A spokeswoman said the reputation of Scottish ceremonies would be protected. The Free Church of Scotland has raised concerns about religious and civil partnership ceremonies being joined by a third category. Church spokesman, the Reverend Iver Martin, told BBC Alba: "The third category is quite astonishing because it is the so-called belief category without really defining what belief means.

"There are loads of people in a diverse society like this for whom belief can mean virtually anything - the Flat Earth Society and Jedi Knights Society - who knows? "I am not saying that we don't give place to that kind of personal belief, but when you start making allowances for marriages to be performed within those categories then you are all over the place."

The Scottish government is holding public consultation on bill. A spokeswoman said: "Our current consultation covers not only the introduction of same sex marriage but also the detail of important protections in relation to religious bodies and celebrants, freedom of speech and education. "As part of the consultation we have outlined the reason for suggesting a third type of ceremony.

"At the moment, marriage ceremonies by bodies such as humanists have been classed as religious, even though the beliefs of such organisations are non-religious." She said that the bill made clear the government's determination to ensure the continued reputation of Scottish marriage ceremonies. The spokeswoman added: "We are proposing the introduction of tests which a religious or belief body would have to meet before they could be authorised to solemnise marriage."

The Flat Earth Society encourages discussion on a theory that the Earth is a flat disk centred at the North Pole. The society also archives literature on the theory. Founded in the 1800s by English inventor Samuel Birley Rowbotham, the society's theory is largely based on literal interpretations of passages in the Bible.

Jedi knights are characters in the Star Wars franchise, which includes books, comics, toys and films. Disney, which owns the rights to the franchise, is preparing to release new movies. Various groups promote interest in the Jedi and include the Jedi Knight Society - which offers lessons from Master Yoda - and Temple of the Jedi Order. Training in Jedi skills - such as use of light sabres, are also offered at a knights' school in California.

The Black Oil

Pretty slick ad for atheism here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0ZqQznblZo

Turtwig

The Black Oil wrote: »

Pretty slick ad for atheism here.

x0ZqQznblZo

Lord Xenu called He wants His ad back.

legspin

legspin wrote: »

And more of the same.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/mar/21/planck-telescope-light-big-bang-universe

Another bit from the Grauniad from the same day.

robindch

For anybody on facebook who's not seen it, there's a great page called "I ****ing love science" which produces one or two interesting, well-written science-related articles per day and currently has around 4.5 million followers:

http://www.facebook.com/IFeakingLoveScience

It's run by Elise Andrew who was interviewed yesterday with Michio Kaku on CBS:

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50143686n

ShooterSF

Started following it initially for my shared love of both science and the liberal use of swear words. Then realised the science stuff is very good.

joseph brand

Gay online porn popular in conservative/ homophobic nations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4u_c87_w9A

This video is a must see, if only for the second most popular search words, used by Kenyans, @ 1:04.

Web users are defying legal bans on homosexuality to enjoy an array of gay pornography on their computers in countries where same-sex relations are prohibited.

Sex searches compiled by country reveal appetites for gay activity in African countries where homosexuals are stigmatised and hounded by the law.

In Iran, gay porn searches litter the top of the XXX search charts.

Porn searches in some countries revealed startling gaps between public social attitudes and private tastes, according to figures by PornMD.

In Kenya, homosexuality is a crime and an overwhelming 96 percent of Kenyans think it is unacceptable. Yet the second most popular search in the country was "gay monster cock".

Nigeria has similar homophobic attitudes woven in to its criminal justice system. However, web users there sought out "gay South African" on their computers and made it the fourth most popular search.

In Iran, search terms revealed a burgeoning appetite for gay pornography, despite protests by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that there were "no gays" in the fundamentalist Islamic state ruled over by strict shariah law.

Yet the presence of "daddy love" at No 4 in the search chart belies the president's bombastic denial.

Tastes in the United States were not so strongly based on nationality and showed a surprising penchant for hardcore gay pornography in religiously conservative southern states.

Kentucky emerged as the gay porn capital of Amercia, with browsers sending "free gay porn" to the top of the search charts. In Mississippi "black gay porn" was the second most popular sex search after "ebony".

Although this article is slightly amusing, it also highlights the fact that there are many gay men living in homophobic nations and communities, whose only outlet is on the net, behind a locked door.

In the case of Iran, Ahmadinejad is either lying or is in denial. Qualities I would associate with being religious. Britain’s leading Catholic homophobe, Cardinal Keith O’Brien springs to mind.

PopePalpatine

Just imagine the Tooters' search history.

Nolars

Welcome

joseph brand

Plastic-eating mushrooms discovered in the Amazon?

The Amazon is home to more species than almost anywhere else on earth. One of them, carried home recently by a group from Yale University, appears to be quite happy eating plastic in airless landfills.

Sarky

That Commander Hadfield chap has had the funniest gag so far today: https://twitter.com/Cmdr_Hadfield/status/318745732213522433/photo/1

Pherekydes

martoman wrote: »

Here's an article I recently wrote on the reactions have towards hot-button topics: http://martoman.blogspot.ie/2013/04/hot-button-issueslooking-at-more-than.html

I thought this was the interesting stuff thread?

Turtwig

Pherekydes wrote: »

I thought this was the interesting stuff thread?

Emphasis on the 'was'.

Hotblack Desiato

martoman wrote: »

Here's an article I recently wrote on the reactions have towards hot-button topics:

Why don't you set up a thread for pimping your blog, it'd be so much easier to ignore then.

martoman

Here's an article I recently wrote on dealing with reactions towards hot-button topics: http://martoman.blogspot.ie/2013/04/hot-button-issueslooking-at-more-than.html

robindch

martoman wrote: »

Here's an article I recently wrote [...]

A+A is a discussion forum. If you'd like to talk about something with everybody else, then it's best to post the text of your article, or the main points, here as original (not quoted) text, and not out there on the internet somewhere.

For the moment, this post has been moved to the "interesting stuff" thread.

cheers

Turtwig

Ahem.

Getting this thread back on topic, it's time for another installment Jernal's super awesome desktop background fodder. Only this time if any of yez have a monitor capable of producing this resolution!:eek: