Latest Science Talk Posts at VideoSift.com

BreaksTheEarth and GOLD discovered on Easter Island

rasch187 (http://rasch187.videosift.com) — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:59:40 -0700

(26 comments - 284 views)

B to the T to the motherfu**kin E got his gold star! He describes himself as "an American archaeologist in London", which sounds like a Sting remix or something. But don't hold that against him, BTE is a helluva guy! He's constantly excavating unsifted videos and helps send them on permanent display in Her Majesty Dag's Sift Museum. On his free time he posts some excellent videos, everything from the best of British comedy to fascinating scientific stuff.

America better watch out before Ye Olde England steals all her best citizens! Congrats, BreaksTheEarth, you're a quality member of this ~~secret society of terrorists~~ website! Have a look through his pqueue when you're done congratulating the man.

- rasch187

Science Book Sift

Sagemind (http://science.videosift.com/member/Sagemind) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 13:26:35 -0700

(4 comments - 122 views)
OK, so as some of you may know, I work at a college.
Now on my breaks, I am trying to force myself out of my desk and go for a walk around campus. A few times now I have been to the campus library.

Today I went there again, in fact I just got back. Now one of my hidden interests is science and physics. In high school, next to art class, my favorite was chemistry – I absolutely love it – some of the neatest stuff ever.

In Grade 10, Science I did extra credit building a (non-functioning) model of Light Amplifications of Stimulated Emissions of Radiation (aka: a LASER). It was cool and fun, even though the learning curve seemed slightly above me at the time.

I never took physics in school, Switching over to Senior High, my old school counselors flat out told me, “don’t bother with physics, you just an artist, you’ll just fail it anyway, and you don’t want that on your official records”. So I loaded up on arts classes (graphics, photography, drafting, woodworking) which in the end also conflicted with me taking Chemistry as well. And off I went… onto my career of being an artist.

Years later, I have discovered science again, having read books by Kerry Mullis, Richard Feynman, Jay Ingram, Richard Dawkins, David Bodanis, Stephen Hawking, many biographies and more. The math still eludes me a bit but the books find me wanting more and more.

OK, so there I am in the college library with shelves upon shelves of quantum mechanics, relativity, thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, cosmology, Molecular biology and so much more. It’s like being in a candy store. The problem is there are so many, I don’t know where to start. I pull out books, thinking, “this looks good” or “too much math” or “I need more of an introductory” or “that’s too introductory”.

So then my brain – heavily programmed, wants to start looking for the rankings of these books, see how they have been rated. My brain wants to look at the comments and see how many votes each book has gotten.

And then I realize.., I spend too much time on VideoSift!

I then headed back to my office, thinking “I must go back and try again on my next lunch break”

- Sagemind

A Simple Poll

EDD (http://science.videosift.com/member/EDD) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 11:15:22 -0700

(11 comments - 249 views)
In honor of Darwin's "Origin of Species" 150 anniversary, I presume, the CNN are holding a simple poll.

http://edition.cnn.com/

Do you believe in God?

Yes 69%
No 31%

Go get there and vote. Pretty please.

_{Tip of my hat to PZ Meyers}

- EDD

Post your favorite Popular Sciene and Non-fiction books

cybrbeast (http://science.videosift.com/member/cybrbeast) — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 02:39:16 -0700

(13 comments - 452 views)
I really enjoy reading popular science and other non-fiction books and would love to get some suggestions from other sifters. Please add amazon invocations and a bit on why you like a particular book.

- cybrbeast

MIT World: a good source for long science talks

dag (http://dag.videosift.com) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 04:35:17 -0700

(2 comments - 216 views)
I just found this Oryx and Crake talk on an MIT website that has all kinds ofinteresting, embeddable videos- kind of like a dryer, longer version of Ted Talks.

- dag

Cats 'exploit' humans by purring

Tymbrwulf (http://science.videosift.com/member/Tymbrwulf) — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 17:10:50 -0700

(3 comments - 491 views)
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/46053000/jpg/_46053673_cat_bbc_226.jpg

From BBC News:

Cat owners may have suspected as much, but it seems our feline friends have found a way to manipulate us humans.

Researchers at the University of Sussex have discovered that cats use a "soliciting purr" to overpower their owners and garner attention and food.

Unlike regular purring, this sound incorporates a "cry", with a similar frequency to a human baby's.

The team said cats have "tapped into" a human bias - producing a sound that humans find very difficult to ignore.

Dr Karen McComb, the lead author of the study that was published in the journal Current Biology, said the research was inspired by her own cat, Pepo.

"He would wake me up in the morning with this insistent purr that was really rather annoying," Dr McComb told BBC News.

"After a little bit of investigation, I discovered that there are other cat owners who are similarly bombarded early in the morning."

While meowing might get a cat expelled from the bedroom, Dr McComb said that this pestering purr often convinced beleaguered pet lovers to get up and fill their cat's bowl.

To find out why, her team had to train cat owners to make recordings of their own cats' vocal tactics - recording both their "soliciting purrs" and regular, "non-soliciting" purrs.

"When we played the recordings to human volunteers, even those people with no experience of cats found the soliciting purrs more urgent and less pleasant," said Dr McComb.

How annoying?

She and her team also asked the volunteers to rate the different purrs - giving them a score based on how urgent and pleasant they perceived them to be.

"We could then relate the scores back to the specific purrs," explained Dr McComb. "The key thing (that made the purrs more unpleasant and difficult to ignore) was the relative level of this embedded high-frequency sound."

"When an animal vocalises, the vocal folds (or cords) held across the stream of air snap shut at a particular frequency," explained Dr McComb. The perceived pitch of that sound depends on the size, length and tension of the vocal folds.

"But cats are able to produce a low frequency purr by activating the muscles of their vocal folds - stimulating them to vibrate," explained Dr McComb.

Since each of these sounds is produced by a different mechanism, cats are able to embed a high-pitched cry in an otherwise relaxing purr.

"How urgent and unpleasant the purr is seems to depend on how much energy the cat puts into producing that cry," said Dr McComb.

Previous studies have found similarities between a domestic cat's cry and the cry of a human baby - a sound that humans are highly sensitive to.

Dr McComb said that the cry occurs at a low level in cats' normal purring. "But we think that (they) learn to dramatically exaggerate it when it proves effective in generating a response from humans."

She added that the trait seemed to most often develop in cats that have a one-on-one relationship with their owners.

"Obviously we don't know what's going on inside their minds," said Dr McComb. "But they learn how to do this, and then they do it quite deliberately."

So how does Dr McComb feel about Pepo now she knows he has been manipulating her all these years?

"He's been the inspiration for this whole study, so I'll forgive him - credit where credit's due."

- Tymbrwulf

Astronauts witness eruption from International Space Station

Duckman33 (http://duckman33.videosift.com) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 11:09:22 -0700

(7 comments - 458 views)
http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1195215/Stunning-pictures-hole-clouds-astronauts-witness-volcano-eruption-International-Space-Station.html

Framed by a circle of clouds, this is a stunning illustration of Nature's powerful force. A plume of smoke, ash and steam soars five miles into the sky from an erupting volcano. The extraordinary image was captured by the crew of the International Space Station 220 miles above a remote Russian island in the North Pacific.

The round hole in the clouds is thought to have been caused by the shockwave of the initial explosion. At the centre lies the billowing mushroom tower of grey and brown ash.
For volcano experts, the most exciting part of the image is the layer of smooth white cloud that caps the plume - a little like a layer of snow on a mushroom. This cap of condensed air is created from the rapid rising and then cooling of the air directly above the ash column. When moist, warm air rises quickly it creates a cloud.

This cap, which meteorologists call a pileus cloud, is already beginning to break up in these images - and would have vanished soon afterwards. Far below, a thunderous line of light grey cloud can be seen falling down the sloping sides of the volcano.

This is a deadly pyroclastic flow - a mixture of hot gas and ash that destroys everything in its path. Reaching temperatures of 600C (1,112F) and moving at 130mph, a pyroclastic flow is the most dangerous part of a volcanic eruption. Thankfully, Matua Island is uninhabited. The eruption of Sarychev Peak began a week ago and is still under way. The International Space Station has continued to track the ash cloud over the last few days.

The plume is a few hundred miles from one of the world's busiest air corridors. Hundreds of flights across the Pacific have been diverted to avoid any chance of it knocking out plane engines. Sarychev Peak is one of the most active volcanoes in Russia's Kuril archipelago. Eruptions have been recorded as far back as the 1700s, with the last known one in 1989.

- Duckman33

WikiLeaks: supressed WHO global Cocaine Project Study ('95)

radx (http://science.videosift.com/member/radx) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 22:54:12 -0700

(0 comments - 316 views)

In March 1995, the WHO and UNICRI announced the publication of the results of a global study on cocaine. Information had been collected in 22 cities and 19 countries about the use of the coca leaf and its derivatives, its effects on consumers and the community as a whole, and the answers of the governments concerned to the cocaine problem. Preparations for the research began in 1991. Over more than two years, three sub-projects were developed which "proposed to collect up-to-date information about cocaine at regional and national levels." The study was never published despite being "the largest study ever on cocaine use."

Reference to the study can be found in the UNICRI (United Nations Interregional Institute of Crime Investigation) library, where it is still marked as "RESTRICTED" [1]

The Director of the PSA, Hans Emblad, sent a copy of the Briefing Kit to the United Nations Drugs Control Programme (UNDCP), where it caused a sensation. Two months later, on 9 May 1995 in Commission B of the forty-eighth General Health Assembly, the destiny of these years of labour was determined by the intervention of the representative of the United States of America, Mr Boyer. He expressed his government's concern with the results of this study: "which seem to make a case for the positive uses of cocaine, claiming that use of the coca leaf did not lead to noticeable damage to mental or physical health, that the positive health effects of coca leaf chewing might be transferable from traditional settings to other countries and cultures and that coca production provides financial benefits to peasants".

The representative said that his government considered suspending funds to WHO research if "activities related to drugs failed to reinforce proven drug control approaches." In reply, the representative of the Director General defended the study claiming it was "an important and objective analyses done by the experts", which "represented the views of the experts, and did not represent the stated policy position of the WHO, and WHO's continuing policy, which was to uphold the scheduling under the convention." It was not the intention to publish the study in its current form, the representative explained as it might lead to "misunderstanding." The debate concluded with agreement on a peer review by "genuine experts."

"The United States Government considered that, if WHO activities relating to drugs failed to reinforce proven drug control approaches, funds for the relevant programmes should be curtailed. In view of the gravity of the matter, he asked the Director-General for an assurance that WHO would dissociate itself from the conclusions of the study and that, in substance abuse activities, an approach would not be adopted that could be used to justify the continued production of coca."

Peer review is a fundamental part of every scientific study, including those of the WHO. The timeline set for the peer review procedure was programmed in the terms of reference as to be concluded by 30 September 1997. In fact, from March 1995, names of potential researchers were listed and, in accordance with procedure, sent to the US National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) in charge of selecting the candidates. Over the course of almost two years, an intensive fax exchange took place whereby the PSA proposed names and NIDA answered by refusing each and every one of them.

There has been no formal end to this 'Cocaine Initiative'. The majority of the participating scientists never heard what was done with their work.[2]

The document was obtained by the unaligned think tank, the Transnational Institute.

Source: WikiLeaks

- radx

WOOT! EDD goes for 250!

SlipperyPete (http://science.videosift.com/member/SlipperyPete) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 12:36:11 -0700

(43 comments - 941 views)

EDD is young & married, and his wife lets him surf the internets. That's what I call progress. A true role model for aspiring Sifters, he's a big fan of shit blowing up (as long as there's a plausible explanation), and posts frequently to just about every channel. He is also a great fan of the arts.

An upstanding Sifter for about two years now, it's great to see him reaching new heights here. He's promised a new channel is in the works, and I'm sure we'll all enjoy supporting it as he's supported us & this community.

Well done EDD!!

- SlipperyPete

Top 30 Failed Technology Predictions

yourhydra (http://science.videosift.com/member/yourhydra) — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 09:43:47 -0700

(15 comments - 713 views)
1. “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” — Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC), maker of big business mainframe computers, arguing against the PC in 1977.

2. “We will never make a 32 bit operating system.” — Bill Gates

3. “Lee DeForest has said in many newspapers and over his signature that it would be possible to transmit the human voice across the Atlantic before many years. Based on these absurd and deliberately misleading statements, the misguided public … has been persuaded to purchase stock in his company …” — a U.S. District Attorney, prosecuting American inventor Lee DeForest for selling stock fraudulently through the mail for his Radio Telephone Company in 1913.

4. “There is practically no chance communications space satellites will be used to provide better telephone, telegraph, television, or radio service inside the United States.” — T. Craven, FCC Commissioner, in 1961 (the first commercial communications satellite went into service in 1965).

5. “To place a man in a multi-stage rocket and project him into the controlling gravitational field of the moon where the passengers can make scientific observations, perhaps land alive, and then return to earth – all that constitutes a wild dream worthy of Jules Verne. I am bold enough to say that such a man-made voyage will never occur regardless of all future advances.” — Lee DeForest, American radio pioneer and inventor of the vacuum tube, in 1926

6. “A rocket will never be able to leave the Earth’s atmosphere.” — New York Times, 1936.

7. “Flight by machines heavier than air is unpractical (sic) and insignificant, if not utterly impossible.” – Simon Newcomb; The Wright Brothers flew at Kittyhawk 18 months later.

8. “Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.” — Lord Kelvin, British mathematician and physicist, president of the British Royal Society, 1895.

9. “There will never be a bigger plane built.” — A Boeing engineer, after the first flight of the 247, a twin engine plane that holds ten people

10. “Nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality in 10 years.” -– Alex Lewyt, president of vacuum cleaner company Lewyt Corp., in the New York Times in 1955.

11. “This is the biggest fool thing we have ever done. The bomb will never go off, and I speak as an expert in explosives.” — Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy during World War II, advising President Truman on the atomic bomb, 1945.[6] Leahy admitted the error five years later in his memoirs

12. “The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine.” — Ernest Rutherford, shortly after splitting the atom for the first time.

13. “There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.” — Albert Einstein, 1932

14. “The cinema is little more than a fad. It’s canned drama. What audiences really want to see is flesh and blood on the stage.” -– Charlie Chaplin, actor, producer, director, and studio founder, 1916

15. “The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty – a fad.” — The president of the Michigan Savings Bank advising Henry Ford’s lawyer, Horace Rackham, not to invest in the Ford Motor Co., 1903

16. “The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.” — Sir William Preece, Chief Engineer, British Post Office, 1878.

17. “This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.” — A memo at Western Union, 1878 (or 1876).

18. “The world potential market for copying machines is 5000 at most.” — IBM, to the eventual founders of Xerox, saying the photocopier had no market large enough to justify production, 1959.

19. “I must confess that my imagination refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocating its crew and floundering at sea.” — HG Wells, British novelist, in 1901.

20. “X-rays will prove to be a hoax.” — Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society, 1883.

21. “The idea that cavalry will be replaced by these iron coaches is absurd. It is little short of treasonous.” — Comment of Aide-de-camp to Field Marshal Haig, at tank demonstration, 1916.

22. “How, sir, would you make a ship sail against the wind and currents by lighting a bonfire under her deck? I pray you, excuse me, I have not the time to listen to such nonsense.” — Napoleon Bonaparte, when told of Robert Fulton’s steamboat, 1800s.

23. “Fooling around with alternating current is just a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever.” — Thomas Edison, American inventor, 1889 (Edison often ridiculed the arguments of competitor George Westinghouse for AC power).

24. “Home Taping Is Killing Music” — A 1980s campaign by the BPI, claiming that people recording music off the radio onto cassette would destroy the music industry.

25. “Television won’t last. It’s a flash in the pan.” — Mary Somerville, pioneer of radio educational broadcasts, 1948.

26. “[Television] won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.” — Darryl Zanuck, movie producer, 20th Century Fox, 1946.

27. “When the Paris Exhibition [of 1878] closes, electric light will close with it and no more will be heard of it.” – Oxford professor Erasmus Wilson

28. “Dear Mr. President: The canal system of this country is being threatened by a new form of transportation known as ‘railroads’ … As you may well know, Mr. President, ‘railroad’ carriages are pulled at the enormous speed of 15 miles per hour by ‘engines’ which, in addition to endangering life and limb of passengers, roar and snort their way through the countryside, setting fire to crops, scaring the livestock and frightening women and children. The Almighty certainly never intended that people should travel at such breakneck speed.” — Martin Van Buren, Governor of New York, 1830.

29. “Rail travel at high speed is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia.” — Dr Dionysys Larder (1793-1859), professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy, University College London.

30. “The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to no one in particular?” — Associates of David Sarnoff responding to the latter’s call for investment in the radio in 1921.

taken from http://listverse.com/2007/10/28/top-30-failed-technology-predictions/

- yourhydra