Featuring...

Self-awareness

By: Tateru Nino

One of the largest barriers to our own understanding of ourselves is that we don’t actually understand what we are. The human brain is – at once – a ferociously complex, and an extremely simple thing. We understand how all the parts function individually, but that helps us understand the brain about as much as understanding a transistor helps you build a colour television.

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Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) and Georgia Institute of Technology are seeking volunteers with at least 50 hours experience in Second Life virtual world to participate in exciting new research that will focus on the association between real world personality and avatar behavior.

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It’s so you

By: Tateru Nino

Seems that if we’re left to ourselves and free to customise, our avatars reflect our personalities.

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Ever wanted to know a little bit more about cellular mechanics? Ever wish someone would build a browser-based casual game that would teach you the basics of cell biology while you relaxed and had some fun?

That would be… let’s see… about five of you. The rest of you are missing out. Cell biology is fun!

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Spirit

By: Tateru Nino

The “Spirit” rover on Mars was designed to last just 90 days in some of the harshest conditions we’ve ever dumped equipment into. After 2,213 days Spirit has finally had to be declared as a stationary research station, and is expected to maybe last a few more months until the accretion of sand prevents it getting power from its solar panels.

It’s both a sad and a proud moment.

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Size matters

By: Tateru Nino

I thought this was kind of cool, actually.

Just grab the slider below the image and drag it along.

Top marks to the University of Utah for giving such a neat display of sizes.

It takes work

By: Tateru Nino

Looking back over human history, rationality has been the anomaly. Being rational takes work, education, and a sober determination to avoid making hasty inferences, even when they appear to make perfect sense. – Wired.com, An Epidemic of Fear.


And to establish a new trade-route to Asia. The part about the trade-route is correct, but it is commonly held that Columbus had difficulty securing funding for his famous voyage because he had difficulty convincing people that the Earth was round.

Actually, very few educated people believed that the Earth was flat since before the birth of Christ. Indeed, the science of navigation by Columbus’ day had long since relied on the fact that the Earth was round. The tools and techniques used were different to those that would have been used if the Earth had been thought to be flat.

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Science! Virtual Environment Sickness (sometimes referred to as VES or as Simulation Sickness) was first officially researched by the United States Air Force back in the 1990s after the unexpected deaths of two experienced Air Force pilots.

It was determined to affect between 20 and 30% of the general population, and is more commonly experienced these days in assorted video games, though not usually with any deadly consequences.

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