Missing Mary Road

Also known as ferroelectric ice. From Physorg:

Various forms of ice have been found in many locations within the frigid reaches of our galaxy, from interstellar clouds to comets, moons, and planets. But a particularly intriguing and rare type, “ferroelectric” ice – ice crystallized so perfectly that it can sustain a giant electric field – has never been detected by astronomers.

A recent study, however, has produced evidence that ferroelectric ice, also known as ice XI, likely does exist out there. Performed by a team of scientists from the U.S. and Japan, the study revealed a very narrow range of temperatures in which “normal” ice can transform into ice XI in nature. The research was led by Hiroshi Fukazawa, a scientist at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency.

Normal ice, which forms all natural snow and ice on Earth, is known to scientists as “ice Ih,” where the ‘h’ stands for hexagonal, the shape of the molecular crystal. In ice Ih, the bonds between the hydrogen and oxygen atoms are oriented randomly, resulting in a crystal that looks fairly messy. At very low temperatures, however, the bonds begin to line up and point in the same direction; high pressure enhances this ordering effect. As a result, the tiny electric fields naturally carried by each water molecule add up to produce one large field…

A blind man suffering déjà vu. It sounds like a contradiction in terms – but the first case study of its kind has turned the whole theory of déjà vu on its head. Traditionally it was thought images from one eye were delayed, arriving in the brain microseconds after images from the other eye – causing a sensation that something was being seen for the second time. But University of Leeds researchers report for the first time the case of a blind person experiencing déjà vu through smell, hearing and touch.

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a long time ago i mentioned space elevators. i guess they’re back in the news. unfortunately though, the reason is humans might not survive space-elevator travel thanks to the whopping dose of ionising radiation they would receive travelling through the core of the Van Allen radiation belts around Earth. the first floor might just prove a bit too deadly.

They would die on the way through the radiation belts if they were unshielded,” says Anders Jorgensen, author of a new study on the subject and a technical staff member at Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico, US.

Space elevators had been planned to be anchored on an ocean platform near the equator, with the other end tied to a counterweight in space.

At the equator, the most dangerous part of the radiation belts extends from about 1000 to 20,000 kilometres in altitude. The region did not hurt the Apollo astronauts in the 1960s and 1970s because their rockets delivered them swiftly through it.

For a space elevator travelling at the current proposed speed of 200 kilometres per hour, however, passengers might spend half a week in the belts. That would hit them with 200 times the radiation experienced by the Apollo astronauts.

From The National Geographic:

With its conspicuous blue eyes and shiny orange claws, this colorful crab seems hard to miss. But it’s one of many species that had likely never been seen until scientists went exploring in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument this fall.

An international team of biologists made the discoveries in October during a three-week survey of a remote coral atoll called French Frigate Shoals.

More here.

it is the ten year death anniversary of the only Pakistani Nobel Prize winner, Dr. Abdus Salam. It really is too bad he wasn’t considered a Pakistani nor does the state acknowledge any Pakistani to have one a Nobel. The Pakistaniat covers in depth the life and contributions of the Doctor. Also cited is the Daily Times entry which truly explains what a sad state of affairs the country is at this point, that we have to outcast our own citizens. It is a sham, a lie and a farce all at the same time.

The tragedy of our treatment of Dr Abdus Salam

Dr Abdus Salam (1926-1996) died ten years ago. He was the first Pakistani to get a Nobel Prize in 1979. But he might be the last if we continue to allow our state to evolve in a way that frightens the rest of the world. Our collective psyche runs more to accepted ‘wisdom’ than to scientific inquiry; and even if we were to display an uncharacteristic outcropping of individual genius the world may be so frightened of it that it might not give us our deserts.

We are scared of honouring Dr Salam because of our constitution which we have amended to declare his community as ‘non-Muslim’. When Dr Salam died in 1996 he had to be buried in Pakistan because he refused to give up his Pakistani nationality and acquire another that respected him more. But the Pakistani state was afraid of touching his dead body. He was therefore buried in Rabwa, the home town of his Ahmedi community whose name is also unacceptable to us and has been changed to Chenab Nagar by a state proclamation. But that was not the end of the story. After he was buried, the pious, law-abiding and constitution-loving people of Jhang, which is nearby, went over to Chenab Nagar to see if all had been done according to the constitutional provisions regarding the Ahmedi community to which he belonged.

Click here for more.

Hitachi’s new neuroimaging technique allows its operator to switch a train set on and off by thought alone, and the Japanese company aims to commercialize it within five years.

Mind-machine interfacing isn’t unheard of: just weeks ago, a young patient was given a chance to play Space Invaders through the power of thought. And this all comes hot on the heels of a revolution in microsurgery, allowing artificial limbs to be wired to the brain by reusing existing nerves.

Keep reading at Wired for more.

i wonder if nat can hook this shit up in his garage.

thiago olson created his own nuclear fusion device in his parents basement using deuterium and 40,000 Volts. impressive. knowledge in the fact that fusion is a sustainable, viable option to alternate energy may mean that it becomes more accessible in the future.

Omniscience. Now that would be the epitome of perfection! To be within it all; encompassed; surrounded and surrounding. A gestalt approach to existence. You are the cage; you are the sand; you are the cat; you are the mouse. You are the camera; you are, potentially, human.

The gestalt approach is most often used in dream therapy and calls for the dreamer to role play and identify with each part of the dreamscape. i skipped gestalt 101 but its not rocket science and its quite easy to grasp. We understand that a cage is an object designed only to confine and reluctantly free; that sand is illusionary and slips too easily between loosened fingers – from one end of the hourglass of love to the other end of loss or hate. We understand that every story has two polar opposites; lovers and haters; friends and enemies – protagonists and antagonists.

On a not so complete tangent: photography is the selfish craft of capturing your perspective and pawning it off as omniscient objectivity. To force another to believe in the reality of the contents of the frame. The shot will invariably land in albums, web-galleries, blogs etc and because it is deemed an actual image and not an artist’s painted perspective, everyone will believe and accept whole-heartedly, unreservedly, religiously even, that the images and words neatly printed and bound are reality.

Personify the sand; be each grain filling a blank canvas, coating its emptiness with deceptive intentions. You are the prey flying behind the hunter; you are the shifting ground the prey spins upon; you are absorbing the blood of food chain victory. This has become survival of the fittest. The cat is caged, a hunter confined. Yet, this creature is proud, sleek. she is confident and dominating while maintaining a natural state of relaxation. Every movement of bone beneath skin is revealed without care. The predator usually wins – any deviance from this lends to madness. Once established that death is eminent, acceptance should naturally ensue. The mouse’s cage is delicately placed in an opposing corner; the latch is removed and the victim is released from this detention chamber. You refuse to role play this underdog; it is not a positively calculated risk; mathematics and science do not enter this equation. A hopeless predicament bound to the constraints of history and the rigid and unmoving laws of nature’s wilderness. Thus, the only option available is to run in panicked frenzy from the hunter’s thirst for blood.

Voyeurism, in mainstream society, is often frowned upon as an immoral act of cowardice. Yet the camera is a part of this human, merged into the body as if this very machine was a new and currently unidentified limb eagerly waiting for nature to appear in the artificial; waiting for the prey to be gloriously defeated without challenge. The mouse runs, the cat chases; a primal re-enactment of conflict at its most crude and basic moment.

Anything chased will inevitably run away. So don’t chase the scene; let the scene chase you, reveal itself to you; your anticipating eyes open wide watching as the cat approaches its prize. Watching as the mouse turns, spinning above the uneven ground, tiny claws out, teeth exposed. The mouse screeches, refusing to be taken without some resistance.

Click. Flash. The moment is captured like perfection before the sacrifice to more powerful beings, happily ingested. The image returns, birthed as nature obscures the artificial. The sand is now real; the cat is real; the camera is real; omniscience is real.

Humanity is artificial.

so for all you ali_g and borat fans out there, indextube has pretty much every clip of his floating around the internats.well most of them anyway. i just saw one of cohen’s appearances on the daily show, and i think it’s the first time i ever seen him give an interview as himself. must have been a really old clip.

weirdly enough, he’s got a cousin named simon baron-cohen who is one of the world’s leading voices of autism research. he is also one of the dozens of scientists who have forecasted science for the next fifty years in today’s edition of scientific american magazine.

click image for more info. wikipedia entry here.

so dark matter just got visible. or so they say. they keep saying. but they sorta still have no clue.

Most of the universe, it may surprise you to know, is invisible. About 80 percent of all matter is “dark,” emitting no light and interacting with normal matter only through gravity.Or that’s what physicists have long suspected, without direct proof. Then two massive colliding galaxy clusters in the constellation Carina caught the attention of Marusa Bradac of the Kavli Institute at Stanford University and her colleagues, who saw this cosmic smashup as a chance to watch dark matter in action.

A colossal reservoir of energy stored up under the Tibetan plateau has been discovered – and it can only be fully released by mega-earthquakes striking about every 1000 years, researchers have found.

The study suggests that earthquakes in the past 200 years in the central Himalaya, while catastrophic, are small in comparison to what the region has seen in the past – and will see again.

The energy builds up as the result of the collision between the Indian subcontinent and Asia, and the movement of the two continental plates was tracked using GPS technology.

The reservoir of energy is so large because of the nature of the two plates. They are both continental, and therefore made of relatively low density rocks. This means that, rather than one heavier, denser plate plunging deep under a lighter plate, as happens when dense oceanic crust plunges under a continental plate, they both strive to float near the surface of the planet. This generate a lot of friction, causing a huge amount of energy to be stored underneath Tibet

A hurricane-like storm, two-thirds the diameter of Earth, is raging at Saturn’s south pole, new images from Nasa’s Cassini space probe reveal. Measuring 5,000 miles (8,000km) across, the storm is the first hurricane ever detected on a planet other than Earth.

this is an 11MB quicktime movie courtesy aip. it will take a few minutes to load. hope you enjoy it.

click here to view.