Physics Lover

Amazon unveiled the newest addition to its Seattle campus today — three glass and concrete domes filled with a jungle's worth of tropical plants. The Spheres, as they're called, are meant to serve as a place for meetings and collaborative work. Communal spaces, many in the shape of nests, are scattered throughout the lush interior. The $4 billion project is a chance for Amazon to flaunt its continued success and wow potential employees, but it could also function as a test of sorts. Green from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2E2GwXI via IFTTT

Amazon unveiled the newest addition to its Seattle campus today — three glass and concrete domes filled with a jungle's worth of tropical plants. The Spheres, as they're called, are meant to serve as a place for meetings and collaborative work. Communal spaces, many in the shape of nests, are scattered throughout the lush interior. The $4 billion project is a chance for Amazon to flaunt its continued success and wow potential employees, but it could also function as a test of sorts. Green from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2E2GwXI via IFTTT

Good friends like to think they're on the same wavelength. They aren't wrong. Besties laugh at the same jokes, like the same movies and hate the same people. And underlying all these likes and dislikes, close friends also share strikingly similar neural activity while thinking about them. Researchers at Dartmouth College analyzed brain scans of close friends and found that their brains tend to respond to the world in similar ways. As a next step, researchers want to see if it's possibl from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2no853g via IFTTT

You hear one thing, but the computer hears another. What's going on here? Two researchers from the University of California, Berkeley have exploited the technique computers use to decode human speech to hide messages inside snippets of audio. When translated by a speech recognition program like Mozilla's DeepSpeech, the computer ends up transcribing the hidden message instead of the sounds we hear. Do You Hear What I Hear? The method basically involves hiding a quiet sample of the audio from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2DOZ2nd via IFTTT

You hear one thing, but the computer hears another. What's going on here? Two researchers from the University of California, Berkeley have exploited the technique computers use to decode human speech to hide messages inside snippets of audio. When translated by a speech recognition program like Mozilla's DeepSpeech, the computer ends up transcribing the hidden message instead of the sounds we hear. Do You Hear What I Hear? The method basically involves hiding a quiet sample of the audio from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2DOZ2nd via IFTTT

Good friends like to think they're on the same wavelength. They aren't wrong. Besties laugh at the same jokes, like the same movies and hate the same people. And underlying all these likes and dislikes, close friends also share strikingly similar neural activity while thinking about them. Researchers at Dartmouth College analyzed brain scans of close friends and found that their brains tend to respond to the world in similar ways. As a next step, researchers want to see if it's possibl from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2no853g via IFTTT

Maybe their moms told them nobody likes a showoff. That would explain why many species of chameleon are hiding fluorescent bone bumps on their heads that scientists only just discovered. Chameleons also have independently moving eyeballs, superlative tongues and sophisticated color-changing skills. The animals might use their glowing head bumps as signals to each other. These patterns of dots are invisible to a human eye, but may light up deep blue to the eye of another chameleon in a shaded from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2ElqqG9 via IFTTT

Maybe their moms told them nobody likes a showoff. That would explain why many species of chameleon are hiding fluorescent bone bumps on their heads that scientists only just discovered. Chameleons also have independently moving eyeballs, superlative tongues and sophisticated color-changing skills. The animals might use their glowing head bumps as signals to each other. These patterns of dots are invisible to a human eye, but may light up deep blue to the eye of another chameleon in a shaded from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2ElqqG9 via IFTTT

 Perhaps you've heard that many bird species are monogamous, including swans and whooping cranes. But have you ever wondered how these long term lovers get together? Do they "date", or is it love (and breeding) at first sight? These scientists set out to answer these questions by studying the life history of the whooping crane. They found that "a substantial portion (62%) of breeding pairs started associating at least 12 months before first breeding, with 16 of 58 breeding pairs beginning to from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2FtyK64 via IFTTT

 Perhaps you've heard that many bird species are monogamous, including swans and whooping cranes. But have you ever wondered how these long term lovers get together? Do they "date", or is it love (and breeding) at first sight? These scientists set out to answer these questions by studying the life history of the whooping crane. They found that "a substantial portion (62%) of breeding pairs started associating at least 12 months before first breeding, with 16 of 58 breeding pairs beginning to from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2FtyK64 via IFTTT

On the morning of January 31, people with clear skies across western North America will have front-row seats to the first total eclipse of the Moon since September 2015. For 76 minutes, the full moon will lie completely immersed in the darkest part of Earth’s shadow, and the only light hitting the Moon will be the reddish glow from all of our planet’s sunrises and sunsets. But don’t fret if you live farther east — residents across the eastern half of the continent will still see an impressiv from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2Em4jPP via IFTTT

On the morning of January 31, people with clear skies across western North America will have front-row seats to the first total eclipse of the Moon since September 2015. For 76 minutes, the full moon will lie completely immersed in the darkest part of Earth’s shadow, and the only light hitting the Moon will be the reddish glow from all of our planet’s sunrises and sunsets. But don’t fret if you live farther east — residents across the eastern half of the continent will still see an impressiv from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2Em4jPP via IFTTT

Strava is a fitness app that allows users to map their jogging routes, and recently it released a heatmap of where people are getting their fat-burn on around the world—secret military bases included. Oops. Strava released the heatmaps in November, and they showed off the fun side of generating data points while you sweat. But then someone came along and ruined all the fun. An Australian student tweeted that the route maps made United States military bases across the world easily iden from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2EkIP60 via IFTTT

The Romantic Period of the early 1800s was marked by a morbid fascination with mortality and death. Poets, novelists and other artists tackled the eternal void head on, rather than whisking such dark topics under the proverbial rug. With death in vogue, even mathematicians took a stab on the beauty of ceasing to be. In 1825, British autodidact Benjamin Gompertz found the risk of death increases exponentially with age. After the age of 30, his depressing model shows, the risk of dying on a from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2DJZZZQ via IFTTT

The Romantic Period of the early 1800s was marked by a morbid fascination with mortality and death. Poets, novelists and other artists tackled the eternal void head on, rather than whisking such dark topics under the proverbial rug. With death in vogue, even mathematicians took a stab on the beauty of ceasing to be. In 1825, British autodidact Benjamin Gompertz found the risk of death increases exponentially with age. After the age of 30, his depressing model shows, the risk of dying on a from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2DJZZZQ via IFTTT

Strava is a fitness app that allows users to map their jogging routes, and recently it released a heatmap of where people are getting their fat-burn on around the world—secret military bases included. Oops. Strava released the heatmaps in November, and they showed off the fun side of generating data points while you sweat. But then someone came along and ruined all the fun. An Australian student tweeted that the route maps made United States military bases across the world easily iden from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2EkIP60 via IFTTT

Sick of asking people for a light? Trying to put the spark back into your life? One solution: Buy yourself a flamethrower. If you're looking to burn a hole in your pocket, Elon Musk's Boring Company is selling the fiery devices for just $500 (plus taxes and shipping), and by all indications, they're going fast. Musk has been tweeting order counts by the thousand, and he most recently pegged the number at 7,000. The Tesla and SpaceX founder says he's planning to sell 20,000 total, in what from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2BCOz85 via IFTTT

Sick of asking people for a light? Trying to put the spark back into your life? One solution: Buy yourself a flamethrower. If you're looking to burn a hole in your pocket, Elon Musk's Boring Company is selling the fiery devices for just $500 (plus taxes and shipping), and by all indications, they're going fast. Musk has been tweeting order counts by the thousand, and he most recently pegged the number at 7,000. The Tesla and SpaceX founder says he's planning to sell 20,000 total, in what from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2BCOz85 via IFTTT

People think they want holograms, but they (usually) don’t. These are illusions, images trapped on two-dimensional surfaces that give the impression of a three-dimensional object. What people really want are “volumetric images” — a display of free-floating light that actually takes up 3-D space, visible from all angles. (Bonus points if you can interact with it.) Many of the coolest movies have them, from Tony Stark’s displays in Iron Man, to the projection table in Avatar, and perhaps th from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2rOIC8H via IFTTT

People think they want holograms, but they (usually) don’t. These are illusions, images trapped on two-dimensional surfaces that give the impression of a three-dimensional object. What people really want are “volumetric images” — a display of free-floating light that actually takes up 3-D space, visible from all angles. (Bonus points if you can interact with it.) Many of the coolest movies have them, from Tony Stark’s displays in Iron Man, to the projection table in Avatar, and perhaps th from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2rOIC8H via IFTTT

Having a good laugh is, among other things, a great way to bond socially. In fact, we’re much more likely to crow when we’re with other people than we are when we’re alone. And once you hear someone start, it’s hard not to crack up, too. However, a recent study in the journal Current Biology posits that this phenomenon might not be contagious for everyone, specifically for teen boys at risk of psychopathy. Elizabeth O’Nions of the University College London and her team tested three gro from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2n11Kuw via IFTTT

Having a good laugh is, among other things, a great way to bond socially. In fact, we’re much more likely to crow when we’re with other people than we are when we’re alone. And once you hear someone start, it’s hard not to crack up, too. However, a recent study in the journal Current Biology posits that this phenomenon might not be contagious for everyone, specifically for teen boys at risk of psychopathy. Elizabeth O’Nions of the University College London and her team tested three gro from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2n11Kuw via IFTTT

Diederik Stapel. Brian Wansink. Nicolas Guéguen. Anyone who's been following recent debates over research integrity in psychology will recognize these as three prolific and successful academic psychologists who have suffered a total (Stapel) or ongoing (Wansink, Guéguen) fall from grace in the past few years. If you're not familiar with these cases, you can start by reading over Nick Brown's blog. Brown has been at the centre of the investigations into irregularities in Wansink and Guéguen, a from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2mXPUBn via IFTTT

Diederik Stapel. Brian Wansink. Nicolas Guéguen. Anyone who's been following recent debates over research integrity in psychology will recognize these as three prolific and successful academic psychologists who have suffered a total (Stapel) or ongoing (Wansink, Guéguen) fall from grace in the past few years. If you're not familiar with these cases, you can start by reading over Nick Brown's blog. Brown has been at the centre of the investigations into irregularities in Wansink and Guéguen, a from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2mXPUBn via IFTTT

These goblins don't work in banks, nor do they lurk in basements. They do, however, creep through the underbrush and conceal themselves in forest canopies in the hopes of waylaying oblivious passers-by. Goblin spiders are tiny, usually on the order of just a few millimeters long, but they can be ferocious hunters. One paper describes them leaping onto the backs of springtails and biting them into submission, despite their unfortunate steed's attempts to throw them off. There are many spec from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2EeqWGb via IFTTT

These goblins don't work in banks, nor do they lurk in basements. They do, however, creep through the underbrush and conceal themselves in forest canopies in the hopes of waylaying oblivious passers-by. Goblin spiders are tiny, usually on the order of just a few millimeters long, but they can be ferocious hunters. One paper describes them leaping onto the backs of springtails and biting them into submission, despite their unfortunate steed's attempts to throw them off. There are many spec from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2EeqWGb via IFTTT

By January of 1986 America was already bored with spaceflight. It was, in part, NASA’s own fault. The government agency had debuted the space shuttle program five years earlier with an aggressive public-relations message that the reusable vehicles would make access to space both affordable and routine. Projected frequency: more than 50 flights a year. But had space flight become… too routine? Even as the shuttle undertook fewer than one-tenth that many flights, excitement quickly wa from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2Ec16Cx via IFTTT

"Social priming" has recently been one of the most controversial topics in psychological science. With failures to replicate proliferating, the field has been called a train-wreck. But what exactly is it? Here's how I defined social priming in a 2016 post: “Social priming” has been the punching-bag of psychology for the past few years. The term “social priming” refers to the idea that subtle cues can exert large, unconscious influences on human behaviour. The classic example of a from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2nb72o7 via IFTTT

"Social priming" has recently been one of the most controversial topics in psychological science. With failures to replicate proliferating, the field has been called a train-wreck. But what exactly is it? Here's how I defined social priming in a 2016 post: “Social priming” has been the punching-bag of psychology for the past few years. The term “social priming” refers to the idea that subtle cues can exert large, unconscious influences on human behaviour. The classic example of a from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2nb72o7 via IFTTT

By January of 1986 America was already bored with spaceflight. It was, in part, NASA’s own fault. The government agency had debuted the space shuttle program five years earlier with an aggressive public-relations message that the reusable vehicles would make access to space both affordable and routine. Projected frequency: more than 50 flights a year. But had space flight become… too routine? Even as the shuttle undertook fewer than one-tenth that many flights, excitement quickly wa from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2Ec16Cx via IFTTT

"The Ring of Fire is really active!" Yup, that's what the headlines say. The supposed "Ring of Fire" -- the chain of volcanoes and earthquakes that sits at edge of the Pacific Ocean -- appears to be in the news a lot right now because of the eruptions in the Philippines and Indonesia and earthquakes in Alaska and California. However, this is all normal for these parts of the world, so let's not get all worked up about it. Let's start off with the basics: the "Ring of Fire" is not a thing, from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2DR9BFu via IFTTT

"The Ring of Fire is really active!" Yup, that's what the headlines say. The supposed "Ring of Fire" -- the chain of volcanoes and earthquakes that sits at edge of the Pacific Ocean -- appears to be in the news a lot right now because of the eruptions in the Philippines and Indonesia and earthquakes in Alaska and California. However, this is all normal for these parts of the world, so let's not get all worked up about it. Let's start off with the basics: the "Ring of Fire" is not a thing, from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2DR9BFu via IFTTT

Photo: flickr/phphoto2010 You’ve probably heard of “false confessions,” when pressure from the police and long interrogations can make someone confess to a crime they didn’t actually commit. According to this study, it’s actually not that difficult to give someone a false memory of a serious crime. Here, researchers tried to make undergraduate volunteers believe they had committed a crime when they were younger by conducting interviews in which the researchers used “suggestive memory-retr from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2DENC5o via IFTTT

Photo: flickr/phphoto2010 You’ve probably heard of “false confessions,” when pressure from the police and long interrogations can make someone confess to a crime they didn’t actually commit. According to this study, it’s actually not that difficult to give someone a false memory of a serious crime. Here, researchers tried to make undergraduate volunteers believe they had committed a crime when they were younger by conducting interviews in which the researchers used “suggestive memory-retr from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2DENC5o via IFTTT

A Fresno, Calif. man is rethinking his diet after one of his favorite dishes came back to bite him in the butt. Dr. Kenny Banh who works in the emergency room in the Community Regional Medical Center in Fresno shared a horrifyingly fascinating story about one of his patients on a recent episode of "This Won't Hurt a Bit," a podcast where experts of medicine share strange and fascinating medical stories. As Banh explained, a young man came into the emergency department complaining of b from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2DAl1he via IFTTT

When it comes to climate change, speed kills. The temperature changes that are causing heat waves, intense storms and other climate aberrations are dangerous today because they're happening so fast. The climate has indeed been as warm, and warmer even, in the past, but it reached those temperature levels over the course of thousands or millions of years — long enough for the changes to occur gradually. This time around, the climate is being altered too fast for animal and plant life to ad from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2F54WwC via IFTTT

An eruption at Japan's Kusatsu triggered an avalanche at a ski area on the volcano, injuring at least 25 with possibly more people missing. UPDATE 1/23: One person has died and at least 15 were injured. The eruption was unexpected, with so far no evidence of any warning signs from the volcano. News reports say that rocks littered the upper slopes of the volcano and the ski lodge was hit by volcanic debris as well. Additionally, the blast "triggered an avalanche". Although the reports I've se from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2DzGcAp via IFTTT

While many people in the lower 48 states were asleep, Alaska experienced its largest earthquake in over 3 years. A M7.9 earthquake occurred 280 kilometers to the Southeast of Kodiak Island ... or, in other words, in the middle of the ocean near almost nothing. However, when it comes to earthquakes, occurring in the middle of the ocean has the potential of being just as dangerous as on land as there is the potential for a tsunami. Directly after the earthquake, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Cen from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2GaOts7 via IFTTT

Considering viruses are thought to be the most prevalent biological entities on Earth, you would expect that plenty of research has focused on finding them in space, right? Wrong. To date, almost no research has looked into the possibility of viruses “living” in space or on other worlds. But now, Portland State University biology professor Ken Stedman wants to kick-start the search. According to an article published in the February 2018 issue of Astrobiology, Stedman and his colleag from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2DzYPnD via IFTTT

Passengers aboard jetliners making transatlantic flights are getting from point A to B much far faster. On Thursday, a Norwegian 787 Dreamliner reached a speed of 779 mph after getting some help from a vigorous, 224 mph tailwind. The flight, DY7014, set a new subsonic transatlantic record, flying from JFK Airport in New York to London’s Gatwick airport in 5 hours, 13 minutes. That’s roughly 30 minutes faster than average, and three minutes faster than the record set in 2015. “The passe from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2n5HUhy via IFTTT

Light as a feather, stiff as a board: It's a game you may have played growing up, anxiously repeating the phrase in the hopes that your friend would start levitating. Thanks to new research published Monday in Physical Review Letters you might have an alternative means to lift you and your friends' besides fingertips and witchcraft. Researchers from the University of Bristol demonstrated that it’s possible to steadily trap particles larger than a wavelength in an acoustic tractor beam. If from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2Dz9JtR via IFTTT

I'll go ahead and answer that for you -- it's a definite "no." At least according to this study, which looked at what grows in the biofilms ("goop") that form along dishwasher door seals. First of all, it's kind of amazing that anything can survive the crazy environmental fluctuations of a dishwasher: from heat to salts and detergents, dishwashers are designed to destroy organic matter. But life finds a way, and apparently in biofilms, which in this case included large numbers of bacterial a from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2E67POm via IFTTT

In the Philippines, Mayon is erupting spectacularly, creating a lava flow that stretches over 3 kilometers (2 miles) from the crater, 600-meter lava fountains, pyroclastic flows that followed gullies for 5 kilometers (~3 miles) from the summit and explosions that are sending ash and volcanic debris over 3-5 kilometers (10,000-15,000 feet) into the air. Videos (below) show ash plumes and glowing debris spewing from the crater during these blasts and lava fountaining episodes. It's a notabl from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2n6ist0 via IFTTT

A recent call from British Member's of Parlaiment to put a 25 pence levy on disposable coffee cups, and bans on plastic products cropping up across the country, show that the UK is getting serious about tackling collective individual behavior which threatens the environment. Large-scale programs aimed at changing people’s behavior are rare – but they do happen. Take Britain’s various carrier bag charges, for example, which led to plastic bag use in England falling by 80 percent in just on from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2Dy0tSP via IFTTT

The world recently welcomed a pair of monkeys that were created using the same method used to clone Dolly the sheep. In a study published Wednesday in Cell, researchers successfully produced two genetically identical, long-tailed crab-eating macaques. Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua were born eight and six weeks ago, respectively, at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Neuroscience in Shanghai. It’s a technical benchmark that could have future applications in clinical research. Specie from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2n7vaaX via IFTTT

What pairs well with chicken wings? Maybe you're thinking buffalo sauce, beer or even celery sticks, but one company wants you to finish your wings with a fun drone flight (or crash, really depends). KFC announced Tuesday that customers can get a limited edition KFO (Kentucky Fried Object), which is a DIY drone, with select orders of Smoky Grilled Wings. Sure, it’s a lovely PR stunt, but exposing people to drone tech nonetheless. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQVgmwQGBT0 The onlin from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2E5neOL via IFTTT

By Egle Marija Ramanauskaite, Citizen Science Coordinator at EyesOnALZ December 21st, 2017, just might enter the history books as the first day a citizen science trophy was ever awarded to a school. The trophy, bestowed to 250 students for contributing to Alzheimer’s research, is now proudly displayed next to sports trophies & special achievement awards at a middle school in Boise, ID. But the story really begins back in May, 2017. By a happy coincidence, Erin Davis, a technolo from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2DAvdlO via IFTTT

This past holiday season, you may have been one of the millions who either gave or received a home assistant like the Google Home or Amazon Echo. Voice-activated assistants are helpful, increasingly affordable, and make you feel like you’re truly living in the future. But, like, any new technology, there’s some reason to be cautious of our newest roommates. In a recent article exploring the social impact of the technology, Jennifer Yang Hui and Dymples Leong explain that much of the conce from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2E8CVEQ via IFTTT

NASA is holding its annual Day of Remembrance today to honor the crew members of Apollo 1 and space shuttles Challenger and Columbia, as well as other NASA employees who have lost their lives while advancing space exploration. This year marks the 15th anniversary of Columbia’s last space shuttle mission, which suffered a catastrophic and fatal end. The unfortunate event shook the science community and the public, but the lessons taken away from the incident overhauled NASA’s approach to s from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2Gez35U via IFTTT

Last week’s sea rescue of Australian swimmers by an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is just the start of a robotics revolution. On January 18, an Australian lifeguard piloted a drone over the turbulent ocean off the far north coast of New South Wales to rescue two teens in distress. As thrilling as it was to watch a tiny drone drop a flotation device to the two struggling swimmers, the rescue was relatively easy, using proven robotic technology in an ideal, wide-open environment. #RESCUE from Latest Blogs http://ift.tt/2rBzCU4 via IFTTT