10 Strange Things About The Universe Space The universe can be a very strange place. While groundbreaking ideas such as quantum theory, relativity and even the Earth going around the Sun might be commonly accepted now, science still continues to show that the universe contains things you might find it difficult to believe, and even more difficult to get your head around. Theoretically, the lowest temperature that can be achieved is absolute zero, exactly ?273.15°C, where the motion of all particles stops completely. However, you can never actually cool something to this temperature because, in quantum mechanics, every particle has a minimum energy, called “zero-point energy,” which you cannot get below. One of the properties of a negative-energy vacuum is that light actually travels faster in it than it does in a normal vacuum, something that may one day allow people to travel faster than the speed of light in a kind of negative-energy vacuum bubble. Relativity of Simultaneity Antimatter Retrocausality
20 Most Influential Women Intellectuals Women intellectuals have been playing an increasingly important role in shaping thought and culture. Here is SuperScholar’s list of the 20 most influential living women intellectuals. Margaret Atwood (1939– ), an iconic Canadian feminist novelist, expresses both the “goddess” and “activist” modes of the mid-twentieth century movement, via a confrontational style that gained converts by avoiding both violence and eccentricity. Aung San Suu Kyi (1945– ), a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and scholar living under house arrest and many other restrictions imposed by her native Burma’s (Myanmar’s) military rulers, leads a popular political movement and party whose non-violence and civil disobedience offer hope for eventual democratic government. Karen Armstrong (1944– ), formerly a Roman Catholic nun in her native Britain and widely considered a force for ecumenism, now considers herself a “creative monotheist,” whose many books offer iconoclasm regarding major monotheist religions.
Discovery Education | Siemens Science Day 100 Best (Free) Science Documentaries Online No matter how much you know, there is always something new to learn about science. While your college courses may cover the basics, you can get a more in-depth look at a wide variety of topics from Internet resources such as these great documentaries. These selections will help you explore everything from the inner reaches of the human mind to the outer areas of our universe and just about everything else in between. Health and Medicine These documentaries cover topics like health care, diseases, nutrition, nursing, and more so you can get great insights into health and medicine. Super Size Me: In this movie, filmmaker Morgan Spurlock attempts to subsist on only a diet of McDonald’s for a full month. Drugs Learn how drugs impact the brain and the variety of legal restrictions imposed upon them from these documentaries. Ecstasy Rising: Watch this video from Primetime to learn more about ecstasy, its effects and more. Genetics Evolution and Biological History Physics Environment Geology Space
Why Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek who ever lived Additional notes from the author: If you want to learn more about Tesla, I highly recommend reading Tesla: Man Out of Time Also, this Badass of the week by Ben Thompson is what originally inspired me to write a comic about Tesla. Ben's also got a book out which is packed full of awesome. There's an old movie from the 80s on Netflix Instant Queue right now about Tesla: The Secret of Nikola Tesla. It's corny and full of bad acting, but it paints a fairly accurate depiction of his life.
A Fun Video Explanation of Cavities As a kid I dreaded going to the dentist's office (as an adult I still don't love it), but love it or hate it, if you have teeth you should visit it. One way to make the experience easier is to practice good dental hygiene and avoid cavities. To help kids understand how cavities start and grow, Josh Kurz produced a short entertaining video about cavities. Watch the video below. Cavities from JoshKurz on Vimeo. Here are some related items that may be of interest to you:Combating Food DesertsThe Family MealScrub Club Teaches Kids About Disease Prevention
100 Incredible Lectures from the World's Top Scientists Posted on Thursday June 18, 2009 by Staff Writers By Sarah Russel Unless you’re enrolled at one of the best online colleges or are an elite member of the science and engineering inner circle, you’re probably left out of most of the exciting research explored by the world’s greatest scientists. But thanks to the Internet and the generosity of many universities and online colleges, you’ve now got access to the cutting edge theories and projects that are changing the world in this list below. If you’re looking for even more amazing lectures, check out our updated list for 2012 with more talks from great minds. General Let the world’s top scientists explain exactly how they do their job when you listen to these lectures. Science and Engineering From materials science to the study of thermodynamics, learn more about the science of engineering here. WTC Lecture – collapse of WTC Buildings: Steven E. Biology and Medicine Chemistry Physics and Astronomy Earth and Environment Technology Science and Business
Why I decided to learn languages (14 and counting) Alex Rawlings, who won a competition to find Britain's most multi-lingual student in 2011, explains why learning foreign languages is so rewarding, and how his school helped set him on this path. The UK, my home country, can be a place of great contradictions. We’re famous for being reluctant to speak other languages and indignant about whether they even have a use. And yet, we live in an environment that is brimming with multiple languages and opportunities to speak them. Growing up in the UK surrounded by languages As a child, every bus journey inevitably took me on a quick whirl around the planet, with conversations in Spanish, Cantonese, Icelandic, and Urdu going on all around. School exchanges and other language opportunities I was fortunate to go to a school with a head teacher who believed in the importance of languages and made them compulsory for all. I went on several school exchanges to France and Germany, which were a real game changer for me.
Random International installs torrential rain in Barbican gallery | Art and design Ever wondered how Moses felt as he divided the waters of the Red Sea? Well, wonder no longer, as you too can now control the elements and part a deluge of torrential rain in the Barbican's Curve gallery. The latest work by a young experimental practice, Random International, Rain Room invites brave visitors to enter a hundred-square-metre downpour, without getting in the slightest bit wet. Set on a raised plinth at the end of the dark, curving corridor space, powerfully backlit by a glaring spotlight, the perfectly rectangular chunk of rain appears transposed from a parallel place, with the precision of a carefully staged experiment. As visitors step up on to the stage, these identical vertical lines of driving rain begin to be repelled, as if each body is giving off a kind of invisible magnetic field. The apparently simple trick is the result of a lengthy period of development, which came out of playing with large-format printing. "The best bit is watching what people do," says Ortkrass.
The 11 Best Science Books of 2011 by Maria Popova From Infinity to Fibonacci, or what religious mythology has to do with the inner workings of field science. After the year’s best illustrated books for (eternal) kids, art, design, and creativity books, and photography books, the 2011 best-of series continues with a look at the year’s most compelling science books, spanning everything from medicine to physics to quantum mechanics. Rebecca Skloot is one of the finest science writers working today. When Henrietta Lacks (1920-1951), an African-American mother of five who migrated from the tobacco farms of Virginia to poorest neighborhoods of Baltimore, died at the tragic age of 31 from cervical cancer, she didn’t realize she’d be the donor of cells that would create the HeLa immortal cell line — a line that didn’t die after a few cell divisions — making possible some of the most seminal discoveries in modern medicine. Henrietta and David Lacks, circa 1945. Deborah Lacks at about age four. Originally reviewed in July.
The Food Timeline--researching a food history question? Food Timeline Food history research tips...we make food history fun! Food history research tips & basic strategies What is the history of your favorite food? That depends upon the food and how deep you want to dig. Take tiramasu. EVOLUTION VS. Where to begin? Advanced techniques One of the most challenging aspects of recipe research is identifying common themes and making connections. 1. 2. PRODUCT HISTORIES If the product is still being made, start with the U.S. "LOST RECIPES" Family favorites can sometimes be recovered. RESTAURANT DISHES Signature recipes from famous restaurants fall into three categories: 1. Selected signature recipes released by the restaurant and/or copyright owners. 2. Recreations based on memory. 3. Many beloved Horn & Hardart recipes fall into this category. TOOLS OF THE TRADE Researching the history of a specific cuisine, recipe, food, or product often requires using a variety of sources to develop a complete and accurate picture. How do recipes get their names?
Looking at Photographs of Marilyn Monroe Reading | Affidavit February 25, 2019 There are more photographs of Marilyn Monroe reading than there are of her naked. Almost always, these images are captioned with a kind of perky can-you-believe-it paternalism. “Those books aren’t just for show!” Beauty is a lot easier to prove than intelligence. In 1999, Christie’s auctioned off nearly 400 books from Marilyn’s personal library, a roster of classics ranging from Proust to Hemingway, which publicly solidified her intellectual identity and provided hard evidence against all those who claimed the plentitude of reading photographs were staged.1 But staged, of course, they were. To understand why there is such sustained, cultivated disbelief in her smarts, we must first understand how we came to believe she was dumb—iconically so. The archetype Monroe would come to define was barely sketched out as she began acting. In 1952, Howard Hawks cast her in Monkey Business, starring Hawks’ favorite Cary Grant and an Astaire-less Ginger Rogers.
Open Science is Kinder Science | NCEAS Commentary: How open software can enable kinder culture IRL — and why we need this in science By Julie Lowndes. A version of this commentary was published originally in Scientific American. Photo provided by Julie Lowndes As a marine ecologist, I never expected I would one day advocate that science should operate more like the tech industry. This is not about “moving fast and breaking things.” Open software, both a driver and result of Silicon Valley’s success, has been game-changing for me as a scientist. But it is not only about the tool sets and skill sets. When I truly began learning the open source programming language R in 2014, I was part of a small team of marine ecologists who needed R to bring order to the chaos of repeating an annual and massive analysis of global ocean health. Otherwise intimidated and somewhat scarred by previous experiences coding on my own as a scientist, the kindness and inclusion I experienced from the open-source community was a revelation. Dr.
Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill (Note: Read Bruce Levine’s latest post: Anti-Authoritarians and Schizophrenia: Do Rebels Who Defy Treatment Do Better? In my career as a psychologist, I have talked with hundreds of people previously diagnosed by other professionals with oppositional defiant disorder, attention deficit hyperactive disorder, anxiety disorder and other psychiatric illnesses, and I am struck by (1) how many of those diagnosed are essentially anti-authoritarians, and (2) how those professionals who have diagnosed them are not. Anti-authoritarians question whether an authority is a legitimate one before taking that authority seriously. Evaluating the legitimacy of authorities includes assessing whether or not authorities actually know what they are talking about, are honest, and care about those people who are respecting their authority. Some activists lament how few anti-authoritarians there appear to be in the United States. Why Mental Health Professionals Diagnose Anti-Authoritarians with Mental Illness