Lenin at the Bottom of the World;
Scientists trekking towards the South Pole of Inaccessibility were rather surprised to find a bust of Soviet revolutionary Bolshevik Vladimir Lenin peering across the icy wastelands towards the former Soviet Empire.
The bust marks the place where an old Soviet base was established and occupied for a few weeks in 1958. The cabin which made up the base now lies buried under the ice. Before the Soviet team left, they fixed a bust of Lenin on the chimney which is now the only part of the structure visible over the ice.
The Inaccessibility Pole marks the point on Antarctica that is furthest from the ocean. At 3718 meters above sea-level it is in the Australian zone and seldom visited. Supposedly, if you dig down through the ice and into the remains of the cabin, you’ll find a golden visitors book to sign.
Slippery Dick (Halichoeres bivittatus)
The slippery dick is a species of ocean dwelling fish belonging to the wrasse family. There is a wide colour variation within the species, with colours ranging from purple to green.
Kevin Bryant on Flickr
drunk science
Music Was Better in the Sixties, Man
After analyzing data on the diversity of notes and timbres in music from the 1960’s to today (part of the Million Song Dataset), Spanish scientists show that music has gotten more homogenous in the past few decades.
So, maybe not better, but same-er.
This is why every song on the radio sounds the same to me.
Obit of the Day: Astronaut Sally Ride
Sally Ride, who became the first American woman in space in 1983*, has died of cancer at the age of 61 years old. She decided to join the space program, in 1978, after answering an ad in the newspaper.
Dr. Ride had spent over 340 hours in space on two separate missions, both on the Challenger in 1983 and 1984. When the Challenger exploded in January 1986 she was training for her third mission, instead she found herself on the panel investigating the disaster. Prior to the tragedy she was one of the only individuals to support Roger Boisjoly’s warnings of an imminent disaster. (Boisjoly died in February 2012.)
Sally Ride left the space program in 1987 and worked at her alma mater, Stanford University as well as UC-San Diego. In 2003, following the destruction of the shuttle Columbia, she was invited, once again, to help investigate the accident. (She was the only person to serve on both investigative panels.)
Dr. Ride was inducted into both the Women’s Hall of Fame as well as the Astronaut Hall of Fame. And she was an English major.
Sources: npr.org, wikipedia.org, and biography.com
(Image of Dr. Ride while aboard the Challenger is courtesy of wired.com)
* Prior to Dr. Ride’s launch in June 1983, the Soviets had sent up cosmonauts Valentina Tereshkova (1963) and Svetlana Savitskaya (1983).
I believe it is possible to connect two brains in such a way that their owners share a single conscious state that I call mindmelding. The possibility of mindmelding also forces several interesting changes in the way we conceive of our sense of self, in how our brains represent the world, and in how we speak about the minds of others.
A fascinating recent discovery may shed light on these issues. Krista and Tatiana Hogan are 4-year-old twins who were born conjoined at the head. Images of their brains reveal a bundle of fibers connecting their thalami, an organ at the center of the brain vital for perception and consciousness. Controlled studies are now underway to test the hypothesis that they have “internal” access to each other’s minds, but there are some tantalizing clues that they do. One sister will laugh at a television program only the other can see (their heads are joined in such a way that their fields of view are angled away from each other). Scientists who have examined them believe that sensory information entering through one girl’s eyes is actually split and sent to visual areas in both of their brains.
But, if this is correct, they are not experiencing the same conscious perceptions, because the split has occurred early enough in processing to result in two separate conscious states that are very similar to one another. Thus this provides room for doubt as to whether they are really experiencing each other’s conscious states, as opposed to copies of them, since one can doubt the fidelity of the copy. What if we made the split later in processing, however, so that there was only one conscious percept, which the twins might react to differently? Then they would be experiencing the same conscious perceptual state, even if they react differently to it. If this could happen, the consequences for the age-old debate about the nature of our minds will be huge.
"UC Berkeley scientists have developed a system to capture visual activity in human brains and reconstruct it as digital video clips. Eventually, this process will allow you to record and reconstruct your own dreams on a computer screen.
more here
O_O
Technology: you awesome, but you scary. O.o
Simulating the Tsunami
The Japanese government estimates that 5 million tons of debris was sucked out into the Pacific Ocean following the devastating earthquake and tsunami of 2011. About 1.5 million tons is thought to still be floating. Where will it end up?
This surface current model shown above estimates that the debris field is about 5,000 km by 2,000 km across at this point. Some may reach the west coast of the North America within a year or two, as this Japanese fishing vessel recently did, but most will end up in the great Pacific garbage patch.
Here’s a really cool GIF simulation of the debris field path, and an old story about what rubber ducks can teach us about ocean currents.
[W]hen thinking about difficult, exciting, interesting activities, such as investing in a new business, or perhaps buying a $10 million lottery ticket, the brain areas associated with emotion — such as the midbrain dopamine system — become more active.
Images, colours, music, even social discussion means that the midbrain emotional area becomes dominant, and the rational part of the brain finds it hard to resist the temptation. The emotional centres of the brain simply tell the rational part to shape up or ship out.
…
The rational part of the brain agrees, and starts to look for evidence that supports the emotional brain — it becomes an ally in the search for reasons why the emotional choice is a good one.
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Swiss ‘janitor satellite’ would clean up space junk
With more debris in space than ever, companies and countries are looking for ways to protect their satellites.
