NEWS

Study Reveals How Magic Works. By Charles Q. Choi

Scientists are figuring out how magicians fool our brains in research that also helps uncover how our mind actually works

Who wants to be a cognitive neuroscientist millionaire . By Ogi Ogas

A researcher uses his understanding of the human brain to advance on a popular quiz show.

PHOTO COURTESY:Valleycrest production

Hew Yon Long claims his book gives a guide to proper relationships.

Keys to secret code

By MAJORIE CHIEW


MALAYSIAN civil engineer Hew Yon Long, 42, has a new theory to explain and predict human behaviour. In Correlativity, The Secret Code of Life, Hew’s fifth and latest book, he claims to provide the keys to unlock the secret code of life (that is, to predict human behaviour).

Renaissance masterpieces found behind bedroom door

ANGELICO

Books

GOOGLE,
With the cooperation of prestigious libraries, has been digitizing books to make them findable.

Web 3.0

"We are going from a Web of connected documents to a Web of connected data."
Said Nova Spivack, the founder of a start-up firm whose technology detects relationships between nuggets of information by mining the World Wide Web.

NYTIMES.COM BY JOHN MARKOFF

Solar flare largest ever seen

The most colossal x-ray flare ever detected has been caught in the act of zapping its solar system with planet-killing radiation.

The star is II Pegasi in the constellation Pegasus, about 135 light-years from Earth.

UK supercomputer sets faster pace

More than 1,200 processors have been added to the system
The UK's fastest-proven supercomputer used by the academic community has doubled in size and performance.

Pacific Ocean gives birth to new volcanic island: eyewitnesses

One mile in diameter and with four peaks and a central crater smoking with steam and once in a while an outburst high in the sky with lava and ashes. I think we're the first ones out here," a crew member who identified himself as Haken wrote on the yacht's web log.

Z machine melts diamond to puddle

Sandia’s Z machine, by creating pressures more than 10 million times that of the atmosphere at sea level, has turned a diamond sheet into a pool of liquid.

The object of the experiment was to better understand the characteristics of diamond under the extreme pressure it would face when used as a capsule for a BB- sized pellet intended to fuel a nuclear fusion reaction.

The experiment is another step in the drive to release enough energy from fused atoms to create unlimited electrical power for humanity. Control of this process has been sought for 50 years.

Ask a Philosopher

School of Philosophy

academicblogs wiki

Main portal page for the academic blogs wiki

Art and the Conscious Brain

<<... There are two aspects to viewing art: nativistic perception--the synchronicity of eye and brain that transforms electromagnetic energy into neuro-chemical codes--which is "hard-wired" into the sensory-cognitive system; and directed perception, which incorporates personal history and knowledge--the entire set of our expectations and past experiences. Both forms of perception are part of the appreciation of art, and both are products of the evolution of the conscious brain over hundreds of thousands of years...>> . ( Robert L. Solso in The Psychology of Art and the Evolution of the Conscious Brain ).

When science dissects art

The noted neuroscientist Vilayanur Subramanian Ramachandran of San Diego has attempted to answer this question, using the principles of cognitive neurosciences.



He believes that there is such universality. He further proposes ten universal `laws' of art, or basic features that evoke responses in the human brain.

These are (1) peak shift, (2) grouping, (3) contrast, (4) isolation, (5) perceptual problem solving, (6) symmetry, (7) abhorrence of coincidence/generic viewpoint, (8) repetition, rhythm and orderliness, (9) balance and (10) metaphor. These might be thought of as the ten features that form the basis of `neuroaesthetics.' And they may well have an evolutionary origin and basis.

Robotics

Optical Camouflage

Photo courtesy ©Tachi Laboratory, the University of Tokyo


What is Optical Camouflage?
Optical camouflage is a kind of active camouflage.

This idea is very simple. If you project background image onto the masked object, you can observe the masked object just as if it were virtually transparent.

Super-light body vests to beat bullets

A SUPER lightweight fabric which could stop a bullet is being developed by scientists in Cheshire.

Experts at the Daresbury Laboratory, near Warrington, believe that by weaving tiny particles - called nanoparticles - into materials they should be able to create strong but lightweight suits which could be worn by police instead of heavy body armour.

X-rays reveal Archimedes secrets

Creating a stink in the name of science

"Our intention is to make all smells reproducible," Professor Nakamoto said. "So, in this case we have combined two techniques: smell detection and smell generation."

At the moment, the prototype can only reproduce certain fragrances, including apples, bananas, oranges and lemons.

Exploratorium

On this site you can find information ABOUT the collection, a selection of online EXHIBITS illustrating visual phenomena, a set of pages exploring novel and thought-provoking IDEAS about seeing, and many LINKS to other sites where you can find more information about the science and mystery of how we see the world.

ArsScientia

ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY :A VIBRANT UNIVERSE IN VIVID COLOURS

Virgin spaceships

Sir Richard Branson has unveiled a mock-up of the rocket-powered vehicle that will carry clients into space through his Virgin Galactic business.

Is your betty ready?

Introducing the first safe color specially formulated for the hair down there.

Rock clocks help identify and date ore deposits

Reddish-brown crystals of a radioactive mineral called monazite can act as microscopic clocks that allow geologists to date earthquake faults, ore deposits and other rock formations altered by the action of high-temperature fluids....

FUTURE HUMANITY INSTITUTE

The Future of Humanity Institute aims to become humanity's best effort at understanding and evaluating its own long-term prospects. The Institute looks at how anticipated technological developments could affect the human condition. There are currently three broad research areas: human enhancement, global catastrophic risks, and methodological issues that arise in the study of big picture issues.

Constellation Program

Lockheed to Build Orion Crew Vehicle
Orion, America's spacecraft for a new generation of explorers

The new crew spacecraft will have more volume than the Apollo capsules, reducing development time, boosting stability, and permitting safe travel for up to six crewmembers.

Hubble's eye

Capture the extraordinary. Explore the universe through Hubble's eye, and witness the most dangerous, spectacular and mysterious depths of the cosmos.

The world's only truly INTERNATIONAL architecture magazine

The Architectural Review is the world's only truly international architecture magazine. Every month, it presents a wide-ranging vision of international design to architects and architectural students worldwide. It is a source of inspiration to thousands, providing subscribers with detailed and finely-illustrated reviews of architectural projects - from small to large, residential to commercial, all over the globe.

Solar-Powered Autonomous Underwater Vehicle

The solar-powered autonomous underwater vehicle (SAUV) is equipped with sensors for long-term observation of chemical and biological properties of lakes, rivers and coastal oceans. Important applications include environmental monitoring and security and defense systems.

Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge 2006

Science and the National Science Foundation are pleased to announce the winners of the fourth annual Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge. The links on this page will take you to articles describing the accomplishments of the creative and gifted scientists, artists, and others who put the winning entries together, as well as an online slide presentation that showcases the competition's winners and honorable mentions. All material is freely available for all site visitors.

Some of science’s most powerful statements are not made in words. From the diagrams of DaVinci to Hooke’s microscopic bestiary, the beaks of Darwin’s finches, Rosalind Franklin’s x-rays or the latest photographic marvels retrieved from the remotest galactic outback, visualization of research has a long and literally illustrious history. To illustrate is, etymologically and actually, to enlighten.

You can do science without graphics. But it’s very difficult to communicate it in the absence of pictures. Indeed, some insights can only be made widely comprehensible as images. How many people would have heard of fractal geometry or the double helix or solar flares or synaptic morphology or the cosmic microwave background if they had been described solely in words?

Introduction to VRML 2.0

VRML stands for virtual reality modeling language


VRML is:
A text file format
A simple language for describing 3-D shapes and interactive environments
A web standard

Colourful beginning for humanity

Evidence is emerging from Africa that colours were being used in a symbolic way perhaps 200,000 years ago, a UK scientist working in the region claims.

Public 'needs to drive science'

Views are wanted on emerging areas of science and technology
A new project funded by the UK government aims to give the public a chance to drive science policy.

'Oldest' New World writing found

Ancient civilisations in Mexico developed a writing system as early as 900 BC, new evidence suggests.

The Hidden Pattern

The Hidden Pattern
A Patternist Philosophy of Mind
Ben Goertzel
ben@goertzel.org

The Hidden Pattern presents a novel philosophy of mind, intended to form a coherent conceptual framework within which it is possible to understand the diverse aspects of mind and intelligence in a unified way. The central concept of the philosophy presented is the concept of “pattern”: minds and the world they live in and co-create are viewed as patterned systems of patterns, evolving over time, and various aspects of subjective experience and individual and social intelligence are analyzed in detail in this light.

Web Journals

Advertisers circle realm of blogging
Web journals could become the next marketing frontier

Computers write news at Thomson

First it was the typewriter, then the teleprinter.
Now a US news service has found a way to replace human beings in the newsroom and is instead using computers to write some of its stories.

Thomson Financial, the business information group, has been using computers to generate some stories since March and is so pleased with the results that it plans to expand the practice.

Research investigates electricity in wound healing

An international team of scientists has discovered two genes that enable cells to respond to electrical signals in the body to heal wounds. They also showed that by applying an electrical field to a wound they could change the movement of cells and speed up the healing process. "Our studies show that electricity in the body is far more important than previously thought and that it has significant potential in wound healing and possibly also regeneration," said Professor Min Zhao, of the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, who headed the research team.

Radio memory

One to remember
Online challenge seeks to put your memory through its paces

Guggenheim Study Suggests Arts Education Benefits Literacy Skills

Guggenheim Study Suggests Arts Education Benefits Literacy Skills

In an era of widespread cuts in public-school art programs, the question has become increasingly relevant: does learning about paintings and sculpture help children become better students in other areas?

Skin onto metal

Science brings us closer to the cyborg self of science fiction.
In real life a group of British scientists from the University College London's Biomedical Centre has reportedly overcome what's described as one of the great challenges of modern medicine and devised technology that allows skin to bind with metal.

Astronomers glimpse exploded star

A star on the brink of exploding as a spectacular supernova
has been glimpsed by international astronomers.

Piloted aircraft powered by disposable batteries

An airplane powered by just 160 AA batteries has been flown by Japanese scientists – the first time dry-cell batteries have powered a crewed flight.

Incredible pictures: the moment lightning shared the sky with a rainbow

When a rainbow formed in the sky people stopped and stared at the natural wonder.

But then lightning sparked across the evening panorama as two of nature's most spectacular phenomenon created an unusual alliance.

Sex ID test

Some researchers say that men can have 'women's brains' and that women can think more like men.

Get a brain sex profile and find out if you think like a man or a woman.
See if you can gaze into someone's eyes and know what they're thinking.
Find out why scientists are interested in the length of your fingers.
See how your results relate to theories about brain sex.